Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 3.djvu/190

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184
THE CITY OF PORTLAND

Politically Mr. Dye has been a consistent advocate of clean politics, a republican and a believer in the idea that laws should be made and administered for the protection of the weak rather than to aid the strong, that at present laws are enacted too largely to protect property rather than to aid all men to have an equal opportunity, that the rich and strong will take care of themselves, the poor and the weak need the protection of organized society; he believes, too, that the saloon is a public menace and should be suppressed by law. In the advocacy of this and other public causes, he has spoken in almost every precinct of Clackamas county, and for twenty years has been before the public as a lawyer who settles difficulties rather than encourages litigation. In connection with his practice he has built up a reputation for business ability and unimpeachable integrity. He is a member of the Congregational church, where for many years he was a superintendent of the Sunday school and is now teacher of its Bible class for men.

Mr. and Mrs. Dye have four children: Emery C, born in 1884, was graduated from Oberlin College in 1905; Trafton M., born in 1886, was graduated from Oberlin College in 1906, from the law department of Columbia University, New York city in 19 10, and is now a practicing attorney in Portland, Oregon; Everett W., born in 1896; and Charlotte Evangeline, born in 1897.



EVA EMERY DYE.

Eva Emery Dye was born in the old town of Black Hawk's Indian prophet, Prophetstown, Illinois, shortly before the breaking out of the Civil war. Her first poem was written at eight years of age and at fifteen she began to be known as "Jennie Juniper," in the local press of Illinois and Chicago. Deciding even then upon literature as a life work, in 1874 she went to Oberlin College, Ohio, graduating in 1882, after seven years of classical study, including the usual courses of literature, history, mathematics, Latin, French and German, with Greek as a major throughout. Miss Emery, who was called the "poet laureate" of the college, wrote the Latin class song and in due time received the degrees A. B. and A. M.

One week after graduation she was married to her class-mate, Charles H. Dye, of Fort Madison, Iowa, and removing to that state was able to devote but fragments of her time to fugitive verses until 1890, when Mr. Dye took up the practice of law in Oregon City, Oregon. Amid the general cares of wife, mother and housekeeper, Mrs. Dye wrote "McLoughlin and Old Oregon," published in June, 1900. This book met with instant recognition from the best literary critics of the country and is now in its seventh edition. Two years later "The Conquest, The True Story of Lewis and Clark," appeared, thousands of copies selling before it left the press. Sacajawea, the heroine of this book, was hailed as a second Pocahontas, and the foremost sculptors of America have vied in chiseling statues in her honor. First Bruno Louis Zimm, of New York city, was commissioned by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition to prepare a statue for the St. Louis Fair in 1904. The noted sculptor spent a year in special preparation, visiting Wyoming and studying the Shoshone tribe, to which Sacajawea belonged. A second statue, cast in bronze, costing seven thousand dollars was designed by Alice Cooper, a pupil of Lorado Taft, after directions outlined by Mrs. Dye. This statue, (see frontispiece) erected by the women of the northwest, in honor of the brave Indian girl and pioneer mother who led Lewis and Clark through the mountains of the continent, was unveiled at the Lewis and Clark Fair in July, 1905, and now stands in the City Park of Portland, Oregon. A third statue, to which the legislature of North Dakota appropriated fifteen thousand dollars, was modeled by Leonard Crunelle, and unveiled in May,