Charles Erskine Scott Wood was an 1874 graduate of West Point. As a young army officer in Washington Territory in 1877, he took part in the campaign against the Nez Perce Indian tribe led by Chief Joseph, a tragic episode in American history.
It was Wood who recorded Chief Joseph's famous words of surrender, "I will fight no more forever!" The two men became friends in later life and even "traded sons" for a summer.
Wood left Portland to begin a new life with poet and suffragette Wood and Field came to Los Gatos in 1919, looking for a place to settle. They purchased 34 acres just south of town, and their home was completed in 1925. They called it "The Cats." The estate remains in private hands and is not open to the public.
Source: Hooked on Los Gatos, the Library and Museum History Project
Provided by Los Gatos librarian Henry Bankhead
