Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders/Volume 3/Eva Emery Dye
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, 1910, on Capitol Hill as Bismarck, North Dakota. The grave of Sacajawea has been located at the Wind River Indian agency in Wyoming and a bronze tablet was unveiled there in March, 1910. Petitions, originating in New York city, have been sent to the secretary of the treasury for a vignette of Sacajawea upon the new bank notes to be issued by the government. The Montana Daughters American Revolution, have a movement on foot to secure a statue, and the Sacajawea Chapter, D. A. R. of Olympia, Washington, are also preparing to raise a monument in her memory. There is also talk of a statue in Idaho, where Sacajawea is supposed to have been born. Other statues have resulted from "The Conquest," among them a fountain to Chief Paducah, by Lorado Taft, erected by the women of the Kentucky town, Paducah, after consulting with Mrs. Dye concerning that notable Indian mentioned in "The Conquest;" also one to Chief Mahaska, in Iowa, and several to George Rogers Clark, and other leading figures in that epic of our national life. In time, Mrs. Dye hopes to see every character mentioned commemorated with a heroic statue by the respective states to which they belonged.
In 1906 Mrs. Dye's third book was published, "McDonald of Oregon, A Tale of Two Shores," recounting the actual adventures of Ranald McDonald, whose break into Japan, where he taught the first school in English, prepared the way for Commodore Perry. After a sale of forty thousand copies, Mrs. Dye's publishers, A. C. McClurg & Company, of Chicago, are preparing new editions of these standard works. Altogether, Mrs. Eva Emery Dye has done more than any other writer since Irving to popularize the dramatic story of the new northwest. She is now engaged upon a tale of "Old Oregon and Hawaii."