Czajkowski, Boleslaw
( - Oct. 1891)
Indian fighter

Most Czajkowski families in the United States don't know about Boleslaw Czajkowski, who came from the clan of the same name in Miloslaw, a small village in Wielkopolska between Wrzesnia and Jarocin, Poland, and much less care. Had he been married, his children and the children's children would probably be interested in a few details about him. Had he been a Catholic missionary, he could have established the first Polish church in the United States at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where I found he was in 1855, for a bunch of Polish immigrants had turned up in the 1840s to lay out a railroad line up in the mountains of Pennsylvania. The 1850 census of Luzerne County listed the names of these track layers, in odd spellings of Polish, German, and Irish names, in two temporary boarding houses - one in Abington Township, near Wilkes-Barre, and the other in Providence Township, near Scranton. Whether one of the Polish track layers was Boleslaw Czajkowski is anyone's guess. Certainly there were enough Poles in the boarding houses to form a religious congregation.

Instead of remaining in Luzerne County, where 26 Polish churches would later be built by coal miners from Mocanaqua to Avoca, Czajkowski enlisted for five years in the U.S. Army, probably at Wilkes-Barre, and was assigned to Company G of the 9th U.S. Infantry. In 1856, shortly after Yakima Indians killed 14 white settlers and three soldiers at Cascade Rapids on the Columbia River, Washington sent the 9th Infantry to deal with the Indian raids. The leader of the expedition. Major Robert Selden Garnett, who graduated from West Point in the 1840s, found Fort Dalles, nothing but a log fort on the Columbia River, too small to house eight companies of troops. For the most part the fort in Oregon, where the seat of Wasco County was established, was first used by pioneers to await small boats to carry them to the Williamette Valley.

Immediately Major Garnett designed a new military post and named it Fort Simcoe. His troops erected it in the foothills of the Cascade mountains in Washington territory. It was there that Private Czajkowski injured himself. Following six weeks of treatment, he received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army and, unlike the first time he was out of work up in the mountains of Pennsylvania, he remained in the Far West. For a while he drove a wagon train to the military posts in Oregon and Washington territories.

On January 14, 1858, he asked permission from Major Garnett to open a small shop at Fort Simcoe to sell dry goods. The following year, however, the fort was turned over to the Yakima Indian agency, and Czajkowski was out of business. Still, he remained in Washington territory, for from July 4, 1862, to July 11, 1865, he was an infantryman in the territory's first regiment. Ironically, when Virginia, where he was reared, seceded from the United States, Major Garnett returned to Virginia, together with Robert E. Lee, and was the first Confederate general killed by Union troops near Beverly, West Virginia.

It's conceivable that Czajkowski met very few persons from Poland in his travels. In 1860 Washington Territory had 11 known immigrants from Poland. The number in Oregon Territory was 48. In Portland, Oregon, where he probably arrived in a ship from the East Coast to fight the Indian in 1856, he went back into the U.S. Army on July 25, 1865, and, by design or accident, served again with the 9th U.S. Infantry until he was discharged at Angel Island, just north of Alcatraz, and near San Francisco, California. To Czajkowski, who couldn't keep out of saloons, San Francisco was an ideal place to spend the next three years. When he joined the Army again on September 8, 1868, doctors found that he was "incapable of performing his duties" because he was a heavy drinker and was discharged on May 13, 1871.

Evidentially Czajkowski settled in the section where he made his exit from the army, but little is known of his life, as is typical of disciples of John Barleycorn, for the next two decades. Before the cripple of Fort Simcoe took off uniform, California had 708 persons from Poland in 1860 and 784 in 1870. Without Polish relief organizations to help him, Czajkowski managed to find help at the Veterans Home in Napa Valley. It was opened for disabled veterans of previous wars in 1884. Unfortunately, he died there in October 1891, without collecting a pension. He was probably buried at Pioneer Cemetery in Yountville.

From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)