The Silver Earrings
The actual earrings from the Dungeness Massacre, fluted pendants with a bell-shaped cup on the bottom—not fish!—were extorted from the lone survivor Nusee-chus, sixteen years old and pregnant at the time of the attack. Did the instigator of the ambush, Lame Jack, aka Nu-mah the Bad, steal the earrings and leave her for dead, as Mary Ann Lambert suggests? The story is not confirmed. Years later, Joe Johnson, the youngest member of the raiding party, gifted the earrings to Lambert. Exactly how and when he acquired them is also unknown.
No member of the Lambert family was ever implicated in the massacre.
Where are the earrings now? According to Judy Stipe, the Executive Director of the Museum and Arts Center in Sequim, “That’s the biggest secret in the county.”
Opium Boat
Christopher Mathieson’s boyhood tale of the leaky rowboat caulked with opium comes from a true story first described in the July 11, 1929 edition of the Port Townsend Leader. Retold two decades later, photographer Paul Richardson speculates the sticky goo he and the other boys used to fill the leak in the four-bit boat could have purchased “a fairly good yacht.” Richardson’s account is reprinted in Thomas W. Camfield’s Port Townsend: The City That Whiskey Built.
Mary Sadla Tunmer
I learned of the incident from local historian Pam Clise after I revealed to her what seemed a rather extreme plot twist in my novel in progress, wholly invented by me or so I supposed, in which the creepy love interest Christopher Mathieson drives a nail through Millie’s right hand. As Pam shared the details of Sadla’s final moments on earth, I felt a chill. Later, when I learned that the incident took place not far from Lambert’s childhood home, the eeriness redounded. Still, the real significance here lies not in the odd similarity between the two stories but instead in the sad demise of the S’Klallam elder Mary Sadla, disregarded by the legal system and then sadistically killed.
On the rights of widows, James G. McCurdy in By Juan De Fuca’s Strait—an account that provided much useful fact and color in this account—describes how in court Emily Palmer Sconce, the widow of the murdered Ebey, won title to her husband’s land, “ thus establishing a precedent upholding widow’s rights that was never after questioned in the commonwealth.” Though possibly true for white wives, the frustrations of Katie Gale (the figure at the heart of Llyn Da Danaan’s excellent account) and the sad story of Mary Sadla Tunmer belie that claim.
Notes
Part I: On The Strait of Juan de Fuca
Chapter One: The Aia’nl (S’Klallam Folklore)
Gunther, Klallam Ethnography, 293 – 294.
Chapter Three: Vancouver “Discovers” the Strait (1792) Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery, 220 – 247.
Chapter Four: Swan Boat (1880)
1. Clark. Introduction to Northwest Coast, v – xxiii.
2. Doig, Winter Brothers: Season at the Edge of America, 18 – 24.
Chapter Five: Pestilent Spirit (19th Century)
1. Bancroft, The Native Races, 304 -307.
2. Bourasaw, editor. “S’Klallam and Chemakum Indian Tribes,” Skagit River Journal.
3. Eells, Notebooks Of Myron Eells, 30 – 31.
4. Lambert, Dungeness Massacre and Other Regional Tales, 25 – 26.
Chapter Six: Shake Up (1881)
1. Eells, Notebooks Of Myron Eells, 427 – 440.
2. Keeting, editor. Dungeness: Lure of a River, 75 – 76.
3. Strauss, The Jamestown S’Klallam Story, 143 – 145.
Chapter Nine: Shaker Bells (1880)
Barnett, Indian Shakers, 11 – 40, 232 – 233.
Part II: School Days
Chapter Ten: Spirit Canoe Paddle (1884)
1. Eells, The Notebooks of Myron Eells, 409 – 412.
2. Jilek, Indian Healing: Shamanic Ceremonialism, 138 – 145.
3. Elmendorf, Twana Narratives, 57. 5 – 57.11, 194 – 198.
Chapter Eleven: The Winter Ceremony (1872)
1. Eells, Notebooks of Myron Eells, 397 – 400.
2. Griffiths. “Secret Black Magic,” Town Crier, 10 – 37.
Acquired at the library at Little Boston.
Chapter Twelve: Siwash. (1886)
1. Keeting, editor. Dungeness: Lure of a River, 34.
2. Ibid, 57.
3. Ibid, 98 – 103.
Chapter Thirteen: Brave New World (1886 – 1900)
1. LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 15 – 54.
2. Chambers, History of Clallam County, 71 – 80.
Chapter Seventeen: In the Land of Salmon People (19th Century)
1. Everenden, In the Land of the Salmon People, A Skokomish tale. 87 – 88.
2. Strauss, The Jamestown S’Klallam Story, 3 – 5.
Part III. Zones In-Between
Chapter Nineteen: Steamboat Girl (19th Century)
Gunther, Klallam Folk Tales, 121 -122.
This story was told to Erna Gunther by Mrs. Robbie Davis of
the Elwa S’Klallam.
Chapter Twenty-One: Between Life and Death (19th Century)
1. Eells, The Notebooks of Myron Eells, 343 – 346.
2. Leighton, West Coast Journeys, “Port Townsend, Washington
Territory, April 4, 1869”, 92 - 93.
Part IV. Whiskey City
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Two views of a Massacre (1828)
Gorsline, Shadows of Our Ancestors, 3 – 29.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Port Townsend (1889)
Camfield, The City Whiskey Built, 89 – 90.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Port Townsend (1889)
Camfield, The City Whiskey Built, 27.
Chapter Thirty-One: A Sunbeam in the House (19th Century)
1. Gorham, Victorian Girls and the Feminine Ideal, 49 – 59.
2. “Joy’s Vegetable Sarsaparilla, “ Port Townsend Morning Leader, Jan. 31, 1892. A-2.
3. Hardy, How to be Happy Through Marriage. The 1887 Edition (7tth ed.).
4. Hunt, Bold Spirit. Especially Chapter Eleven: “New Women’s’ Actions Old Victorian Attitudes,” pages 137 – 149.
5. Seagraves, Soiled Doves, “Working Girls,” 55 – 74.
6. “A Queer Freak,” Port Townsend Leader, Jan. 28, 1892.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Good and Bad Indians (1854 – 1858)
On ‘good” and “bad” Indians.
1. Leighton, West Coast Journeys, 150.
On Chief Chetzemoka.
2. Gregory, “The Duke of York” in With Pride in Our Heritage, 124 – 139.
3. Strauss, The Jamestown S’Klallam Story, 141- 145.
4. Swan, The Northwest Coast, 17. The first page of Swan’s most famous account opens with an invitation to Port Townsend by the “Clalam” chief:
“ . . . I had always, from my earliest recollections a strong desire to see the Great River Columbia, and to learn something of the habits and customs of the tribes of the Northwest…This chief, whose name was Chetzamokha, and who is known by the whites as the Duke of York, was very urgent to have me visit his people . . .”
5. “With Pride In Heritage,” 124 – 131.
On the Point-No Point Treaty.
6. Gorsline, Part II: Point No Point Treaty” in Shadows of Our Ancestors, 33 – 70.
Reflections on the treaty from various viewpoints, including pieces by Governor Issac Stevens, his son Hazard, Chetzemoka’s wife See-Hem-Itza, and Mary Ann Lambert.
7. Strauss, The Jamestown S’Klallam Story, 138-139.
On Chief Leschi.
8. Eells, The Notebooks of Myron Eells, 351 – 352.
9. Harmon, Indians in the Making, 92 – 94, 146 – 148.
10. Kaylene, Judicially Murdered, 268 – 306.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Swan Returns (1890)
1. Camfield, The City Whiskey Built, 91.
2. Christopher’s tale of the “four-bit skiff” caulked with opium is based on the recollection of photographer Paul Richardson, as reported in the Port Townsend Leader (July 11, 1929), reprinted in Camfield’s book
, a whimsical collection of primary sources and essays.
3. Doig, Winter Brothers, 151 -156.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Cha-tic, The Painter (1818 – 1900)
1. Doig, Winter Brothers, 114.
2. Miles, James Swan, Cha-tic, 7 – 37.
3. Doig, Winter Brothers, 123.
4. McCurdy, By Juan de Fuca’s Strait, 138 – 139.
Chapter Thirty-Five: What is Happiness? (1890)
1. Doig, Winter Brothers, 183 – 202.
2. Miles, James Swan, Cha-tic, 24 – 37.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Katy, Makah Slave-Girl (1865)
Doig, Winter Brothers, 96 – 97.
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Murder Trial of Xwelas (1878)
Thrush, & Keller, “I See What I Have Done,” 168 -176.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Magic Lotus Lantern (The Song Dynasty)
Yuan, Haiwang, The Magic Lotus Lantern, 83 – 88.
Chapter Forty-Two: The Celestials (19th Century)
1. Boardman. “The Saga of Bobby Gow, ” Leader, Summer Magazine, 1987.
2. Clise. “Chinese Celebrate the New Year,” Peninsula Daily News, Dec. 25, 2005.
3. Kannenberg. “Chinese in Port Townsend,” Feb. 17, 1990. Jefferson County Archive.
4. Liestman. “Old Culture In A New Land,” Leader, Dec. 7, 1994. D-1 sec.
5. Liestman. “Opium, Immigration Laws,” Leader, Dec. 21, 1994. D-1.
6. Rice. “Chinese-Americans Share,” Peninsula Daily News, Sept. 12, 1993. A-1.
7. “Three Chinamen in the Cooler,” Leader, March 4, 1893.
8. “Townsend Again Visited By Fire,” Leader, Sept. 2, 1900.
Chapter Forty-Four: The Play Is the Thing (1880 – 1890)
1. Campbell. “Play Houses.” April, 1951. Jefferson County Archive.
2. Clise. “The Big Theater House Shuffle,” 1999. Jefferson County Archive.
Chapter Forty-Six: “Sir, There Shall Be No Alps!” (Autumn 1890)
1. “Port Townsend’s Own Railroad Was Inspiration for Boom Era,” Port Townsend Leader, Summer 1969. 14 –16
2. “Prosperity Rides the Rails,” Port Townsend Jefferson County Leader, Sept. 9, 1998. C-10.
3. “The Railroad Came,” Port Townsend Leader, Summer1978. 7 – 8.
4. Benton, Homer, “Port Townsend. Washington, Trolleys,” Electric Traction Quarterly, Volume 4, Number 4, Summer 1966. 25 – 33.
5. Hermanson, James. “Did Fight Between Prostitutes?” Port Townsend County Leader, Weds., Oct. 19, 1994. C-13.
6. McCurdy, By Juan de Fuca’s Strait, “The Railroad Comes and Goes,” 287– 302.
Chapter Forty-Eight: The Only Safety Is in Marriage (1869)
Lambert. The Seven Brothers, 24 – 25.
Part V: Return to Dungeness
Chapter Fifty-One: Fatal Injury by Starfish (1890)
Swan. “Fatal Injury Inflicted,” United States Fish Commission, Nov., 1887, Vol. 7: 33 – 48.
Chapter Fifty-Three: No Safe Haven (1906)
1. Clise, Pam McCollum. “Rich Family Heritage Runs Deep,” Peninsula Daily News, Feb. 23, 2006.
2. Tunmer Dep. 869; 251, April 24, 1908. Jefferson County Historical Society Archives.
3. “Coroner’s Jury Thinks Murder was Committed,” Port Townsend Weekly Leader, Jan. 6,1909, 2.
4. “Woman’s Mutilated Body Found,” Port Townsend Weekly Leader, Jan. 6, 1909, 6.
5. “Tumner Murder Remains Impenetrable Mystery” Port Townsend Weekly Leader, Jan. 6, 1909. Jefferson County Archives.
Chapter Fifty-Three: The Dungeness Massacre (1868)
Lambert. Dungeness Massacre, 1 – 4.
Afterword: Mary Ann Lambert: “I speak their language, I understand their way of life.” (November, 1878 – October, 1966)
1. Macgregor, Sherry. Personal Interview. Sequim, WA. Nov. 5, 2013.
2. Taylor, Thomas. Personal Interview. Sequim, WA. Nov. 5, 2013.
3. Bailey, Brinnon: Scrapbook of History, 52 – 56.
4. Gorsline, Shadows of Our Ancestors, 22- 23.
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Gregory, VJ. “The Duke of York.” In With Pride in Heritage; History of Jefferson County, a Symposium. First ed. Portland: Jefferson County Historical Society, 1966; 124 – 131.
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