The Waterbury clock, as if to make the whole scheme official, tolled eleven times. Chris, noting the late hour, hurried off. The Reverend, thrusting the buttered heel of the bread into the pocket of his waistcoat, did the same. Edith laughed, added a packet of sausage, pecked him on the cheek, and pushed him out the door.
After we swept up the breakfast, Edith showed me how to prepare the dough to bake half-a-dozen loaves, enough bread for the rest of the week until Sunday. It was work, but also fun. Edith was sixteen, old enough to run a household, but still a girlish friend and companion. After we arranged buttered lumps that we set in pressed metal loaf pans on top of the wood stove to rest and rise, Edith said, “Tomorrow, I’ll teach how to say How are you? in French. Today you’re too tired. Let’s go up to my room and find you proper clothes.”
Upstairs, I stripped down to my cotton slip. I skipped to and fro to keep warm, while Edith rummaged through a heap of discarded clothing. Altogether the morning had sapped her. With the clothing laid out, she leaned against the pillows.
I pranced around half-naked on tiptoe, trying to amuse her; I put on this and that: a velvet jacket, a stacked-up skirt, a silk hat. With a wicked laugh, Edith offered up a playful name for this charade: “Female Boarding House.” At the time, I had no idea what that term meant, or “den of iniquity,” or “cat house,” or “brothel,” all names for the enterprise that was a keystone of the Key City’s economy. When I recall her brother’s determined effort to keep me from the waterfront, it strikes me as ironic that one of the most corrupt elements of city life was introduced to me by my coy mistress that first day.
The fit of giggles turned to wet hacks, which could not be soothed. I prepared for Edith a hot brew of Oolong tea and honey. Sipping it slowly, she recovered herself enough to ask, in a pleading, teasing way, “Well, are you going to stay here with me, or not?”
“Don’t you want me to?”
Impatiently she piped up, “Then, unpack your bag. I want to see your things. But first remove those earrings. For here they’re too bright and too different. I’ll keep them safe for you.”
I shook my head. She shrugged. I spilled out my satchel on top of her lavender quilt. The weird little doll tumbled onto the bed.
“An Indian artifact. Where did you get it?”
“I found it. Rather, it found me.”
“Where?”
“On the Dungeness spit. Seventeen people were murdered there.”
“Good heavens. How did you ever manage to escape?”
Now it was my turn to smile. She knew more about the city, but I knew more about the wilderness of Dungeness. “The ambush happened twenty years ago. At nighttime, in a storm, they say you can still hear the people screaming.”
“Who did it?”
“S’Klallam Indians.”
“Oh lord. Are they fierce?”
For an educated girl her ignorance astonished me. During the day, tribes from California to Alaska traded in the marketplace and shops. At night they camped on the beach at Point Wilson. Locally, the S’Klallam outnumbered them all. The esteemed S’Klallam Chief Chetzemoka, who had died quite recently, long before had prevented an Indian uprising to wipe out the white settlers. All this was news to Edith, who listened with perplexity, as if I were speaking in the S’Klallam dialect of L’Kungen.
I replied, “My mother Annie is S’Klallam. She gave me the fish earrings. As far as I know, she’s never killed anyone.”
“Praise God,” Edith exclaimed. Though I meant my statement as a jest. I suddenly began to feel like a weird Indian artifact. Would Edith, now that she had seen my “savage” side, send me away? Actually, Edith made no sign that she was about to reject me. Quite the opposite, if the twinkle in her eye was a telltale sign, then I had improved in value, like an unusual and most-excellent toy.
After a moment’s thought, she declared, “As we all know, there are two types of Indians: the good and the bad.”
I asked her, “What do you mean?”
“For example, you are good because your skin is fair. Not as fair as mine, of course. I know everything about it, because—” With guilty delight, she declared, “I’ve read James Fenimore Cooper. Please, don’t tell Chris. He’s read it more than once himself, and doesn’t find it suitable.”
Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans did more than any other work to burn diametrically opposed images of “good” and “bad” Indians into the minds of white Americans and Europeans. In 1826, the year the novel was published, Jefferson’s decision to remove Eastern Indians west of the Mississippi still excited hot debate. Contrasting stereotypes, of the Noble Savage and the Wildman of the Woods, made Indians appear ill-adapted to life in the industrialized Northeast. In fact, Indians, especially those with land, very often thrived, even if the wealthy ones did tend to give more of their money to kin and community than the average white person. That aside, white liberals and conservatives never tired of debating what to do about Indians degraded by poverty, exploring every solution except the restoration of their acreage. Thus, in the next decade, the forced removal of 16,000, aka the Trail of Tears, was carried out by Presidents Jackson and Van Buren with nearly genocidal results.
I would like to say these exaggerated images did not affect me. The truth is: the moment I stepped onto Union Wharf in Port Townsend, my idea of the world, and my place in it, inverted. Back in Dungeness, my natural pallor indicated ill health, especially when contrasted with Annie’s vigor and good looks. Now as I looked down at my own freckled hands, I wondered if heritage would exclude me. If indeed I did prove acceptable, as my father Carl hoped, would this new identity prompt me to renounce half of what had made me?
Meanwhile, Edith, “the good,” seemed lost in her own pastoral meanderings. With a faraway look, she said, “How romantic.”
“What?”
“You, Millie, you.” Enthralled, she went on. “My brother is one year older than me. He wants to be a missionary to the unenlightened. Don’t you see? That makes you an ideal partner for him. However, we need to make him believe the idea was his own.”
She grasped my wrist. The sudden motion caused the little carved figure on top of her lap to commit suicide over the edge of the bed. It hit the floorboard with a thunk. I knelt to retrieve it. The crone glared at me through the hole in her palm. But, except for a tiny dent on the back of her skull, she looked all right.
“As the earrings are a gift from your mother, I will permit you to keep them.” Edith pointed to the trunk at the end of her bed. “But you must stash the doll. Though my brother is a paragon of empathetic understanding, I can only imagine his reaction. No doubt he will call it ‘a false idol.’ Bury it. If you do as I tell you, soon you will become my grateful little sister.”
Good and Bad Indians
c. 1854-1858
In the history of the Washington territory, as elsewhere, the newcomers’ lust for land led to minor violence between the new white immigrants and indigenous land-dwellers. As more incidents occurred, testy government officials called on the settlers to “take down their rifles.” Despite the rising tensions, white farmers, manufacturers, and merchants still relied on Indians for food, transportation, and labor. Therefore, in this new “call to arms,” it became expedient for white settlers to distinguish “good Indians” from “bad ones.”
Locally, this attitude is best exemplified by the white response to two famous Indian leaders: Chetzemoka, a S’Klallam, and Leschi, of the Nisqually.
Chetzemoka: A Good Indian
In 1854 the first settlers of Port Townsend arrived to find the site of their future town occupied by the S’Klallam. The tribal leader was Lach-Ka-nam, who became known to whites as Lord Nelson. Wary, the old chief abdicated in favor of his son, S’Hai-ak, or King George. Soon after, S’Hai-ak drowned. His brother Chetzemoka, aka the Duke of York, succeeded him.
To assess the impact of whites, Chetzemoka journeyed to San Francisco in the brig Franklin Adams. There he met James Swan, back fr
om the gold rush, with nothing to show for it except his pocket lint. Swan offered to take the S’Klallam leader around. In return, Chetzemoka invited Swan to be his guest in Port Townsend. This exchange of hospitality altered both of their lives.
In San Francisco, Chetzemoka concluded that the whites—with their superior numbers, technology, and government troops—could not be vanquished by the coastal tribes, diminished by disease. Like Chief Seattle of the Suquamish, Chetzemoka cautioned his people not to resist, but instead to accommodate the newcomers. As if to demonstrate the point, after he returned from the Gold Rush city, Chetzemoka favored Western attire: a navy suit with red stripes ripping down the sleeves and trousers, topped off by a sailor’s cap.
When territorial governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens proposed a series of local treaties, he declared Chetzemoka the chief representative of the S’Klallam and the Chimicum. Negotiations took place on a sandy point north of Port Gamble called Haud-Skus. The 1841 Wilkes expedition renamed this arrowhead of land on the northeast extreme of the Kitsap Peninsula “Point No Point.” It was a fit name for the coercive agreement which over time made little attempt to compensate tribes for their stolen property. Chetzemoka detected little benefit in the treaty, but believed that any attempt to resist it would only accelerate the demise of his people. For this reason, he did his best to persuade the leaders of the other tribes from the Olympic and Kitsap Peninsulas to sign it.
Skokomish Chief Hool-hole-us was not persuaded. “I don’t want to sign over my right to the land. All the Indians have been afraid to talk . . . It makes me sick . . .”
For Chetzemoka, who had witnessed the future in San Francisco, the S’Klallam must cooperate in order to survive. Not only did he sign the Treaty of 1855, he argued for other tribes to do the same. He said, “Before the whites came we were always poor. Since then we have earned money and got blankets and clothing.” He added, “I hope the Governor will tell the whites not to abuse Indians as they are in the habit of doing, ordering them to go away and knocking them down . . .”
According to one account, Chetzemoka “saved the day” with his well-timed words. White historians have lauded his role in the Treaty negotiations.
In fact, Governor Stevens never doubted that the Indians would comply. Really, they had no other choice. In the 1855 Point No Point Treaty, the signatory tribes were offered $60,000 in exchange for 438,430 acres of land, paid out over the next twenty years. The Natives of Puget Sound were also guaranteed schooling and medical services, and the right to fish in their “usual and accustomed places.” The majority of these promises were never fulfilled. As a result of the document signed at Point No Point, the S’Klallam and half-a-dozen other tribes were reassigned to a reservation representing less than one percent of their original territory, located southeast of Port Townsend at the mouth of the Skokomish River.
Governor Stevens’ son and biographer, Hazard Stevens, called the treaty negotiations of 1855 one of his father’s proudest achievements. Yet his account shows the negotiations occurred at a time when the tribes were weakened by illness, overwhelmed by the weapons technology of the whites, and divided. Hazard Stevens wrote: “The success and rapidity with which he carried through these treaties were due to the careful and thorough manner in which he planned them, and prepared the minds of the Indians . . . Besides, the Indians realized their own feebleness and uncertain future . . . when they understood the wise and beneficent policy and liberal terms offered by the governor, they gladly accepted them . . .”
Chetzemoka’s wife, See-Hem-Itza, an eyewitness of the treaty, offered up a different point of view. When was asked what compensation she received, she replied, “About three yards of calico, some beans, some molasses, but no money.”
Soon after the 1855 Treaty council, outraged local Natives made a plan to rout the whites. Chetzemoka, once again, stepped in. He convinced the rebels to put up their arms, and then climbed a hilltop above the city to signal to the whites that they could stand down. For his support of the treaty, and his intervention after, Chetzemoka was called “the proven friend of the Whiteman.”
According to the white view, Chetzemoka qualified as “a good Indian.” The record recalls Chetzemoka as an astute leader dedicated to the survival of his people.
A Bad Indian: Leschi
In the treaty negotiations of the mid-1850s, and the period of tension that followed, whites hoped that “the good Indians” would exert their influence over “the bad,” but many feared the reverse. In the autumn of the year of 1855, rumors spread of a Native insurgency against the broken promises, displacement, and starvation brought about by the treaties. Settlers, dramatically outnumbered, worried that Indian leaders would call upon their tribes to rise up against local whites and the territorial government in Olympia.
The captain of The Decatur, a government ship docked in Seattle, warned his white friends that “every tribe is more or less connected, that is, every tribe has friends or relations in the adjoining ones, and the bad Indians are trying to corrupt the good ones.” He said that the Nisqually, southwest of the Hood Canal, had allied with other hostile tribes to resist the expansion of white settlement. The leader of this rebellion: Chief Leschi, an Indian so “bad” he would have to be executed as an example to others.
Ironically, not long before, Leschi had been considered one of the good ones. Due to his wealth—he owned more than one hundred horses—his height, and his calm demeanor, people looked up to him. For this reason, Governor Stevens appointed Leschi and his brother Quiemuth to represent the Nisqually in the treaty council in the winter of 1854. No one knows if Leschi signed the treaty or if, as one witness alleged, his “X” was a forgery. At the treaty council, Leschi rejected the proposed reservation, two square miles on top of a rocky hillside. With no direct access to the Nisqually River, the tribe would starve. Leschi went to Olympia to file a formal protest.
In mid-October of 1855, with tensions on the rise, some members of the Yakima tribe killed an Indian agent. As a precaution, then-acting Governor Charles Mason ordered Chief Leschi and his brother Quiemuth into “protective custody.” The two men vanished. When officials came to arrest them, all that remained was their plow, set up in the field where a moment before they had been seeding their crop. Chief Leschi organized a rebel band of about three hundred men. However, he soon realized his attacks on the local militias would delay but not prevent the expansion of white settlement in Nisqually territory. He pursued peace talks; his overtures were rebuffed. Eventually, Leschi was charged with the murder of a volunteer militiaman, Colonel Abram Benton Moses, and arrested.
His brother Quiemuth was also apprehended. While in custody, Quiemuth was killed.
The case against Leschi relied on the testimony of a single witness. Leschi denied killing Colonel Moses; however, he did admit to engaging in acts of war against the territorial government. Leschi testified, through an interpreter. “I went to war because I believed that the Indian had been wronged by the white men, and I did everything in my power to beat the Boston soldiers, but, for lack of numbers, supplies and ammunition, I have failed. I deny that I had any part in the killing . . . As God sees me, this is the truth.”
At Leschi’s first trial, the jurors considered any violence by Leschi as an act of war. The verdict split. In the second trial, Leschi faced a simple charge of murder. This time, he was found guilty. On February 19, 1858, Leschi was hanged at Fort Steilacoom.
If the jurors’ decision intended to demonstrate the American justice system to Natives, it failed. While the majority of white settlers opposed a pardon for Leschi, many prominent citizens, for example, the well-known pioneer Ezra Meeker, were belligerent in their attempts to stop the execution. The arresting sheriff put himself in jail to delay the execution of the Nisqually leader, in his opinion, an innocent man. The controversy around Leschi’s death sentence undermined the idea that the white system of justice had delivered an indisputably fair verdict. Indeed, many Indians said they had no idea why C
hief Leschi was even arrested. According to the Indian system of justice, even if Leschi had killed Moses, the murder of the volunteer militiaman had been repaid by the murder of Leschi’s brother Quiemuth.
Some claimed that Leschi never really died. Others said that he was killed, but came back to life. A Nisqually warrior named Wahoolit, Leschi’s grand-nephew, explained:
Just before the execution, Leschi told Wahoolit, “As soon as they hang me, loosen the rope from my neck and put me on my horse, and take me home quick. I’m not going to die. My power is going to help me.”
So that is what they did.
After Leschi was killed, the Nisqually set him up on his horse, and drove the beast home. When they took that rope off, Leschi came to, gasping for breath. That’s when Leschi sang his spirit song. His people helped him sing. Leschi had come back to life.
Afterward, some of his people became afraid that the unconquerable Leschi would encourage a new rebellion against the US Army. This time, they would all be killed. Afraid, the spirit doctors conspired to deprive Leschi of his “big power.” In doing so, they ended his life, once and for all.
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Swan Returns
c. 1890
Springtime on the Olympic Peninsula gusts like winter. At least once a day, the windows are shrouded from the outside by sheets of rain. When the clouds part and the sun breaks, the sudden heat pops the poppies and glazes the salmonberry. I, Millie Langlie, a housemaid, rarely had time to experience the healing, harmonizing care of the sun.
I went to church and market, through the drizzle the parted ferns, doubling in width and breadth overnight, unfurling in the morning. In Dungeness the shifting of the seasons inspired a calm feeling of pleasant anticipation. In the wilderness, the seasons blended. Here, in the city, the seasonal change, although pleasant, felt more jarring, like the curtain rising on the next act in an unknown drama; I wasn’t sure what to expect or even what to feel.
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