Sheep wool was of tremendous importance to the dearest grandmothers and to all of us. It was carefully washed several times, worked over or “teased,” carded, spun on native Indian spindles, and wound into large balls of soft wool ready to be knitted into socks and sweaters. I learned how to knit before I was six years old. I could help my dearest grandmother with only the straight knitting; the heels and toes came later, after much heartache caused by my mother’s reprimands.
My one remaining grandmother was my paternal grandmother. She was baptized by Father Chirouse with the name of Magdeline. She was a very pretty girl, so she received that name, which became Medline to us. But they didn’t call her by that name. They called her zatskoliksə. The other grandmothers were Mrs. Mary Jake and Sally, who came from Suquamish.
I learned so much from my grandmothers and from grandmother Medline in particular. They loved me every time I saw them. I used to go running down there to their house every morning as soon as I could, and they would take me on their laps and hold me as they visited and talked, and I would fall asleep on a grandmother’s lap. They wore velvet blouses and skirts, so that falling asleep on a grandmother’s lap that had a velvet dress on and then waking again in her arms was the nicest feeling.
These people on the list I have here [see p. 15–16] came to our house and from them I learned about the early days of the reservations in this area.3 These are some of the Indians I said I talked to during my lifetime. Some of them were Snoqualmie. They were very old. Some of these Indians were older than my grandparents. They were of different tribes, such as Snoqualmie and Lummi. They talk in English now. They would sometimes stay for several days and eat at our house, and they would walk over to the Agency to see about their problems, to talk with the agent or with the land clerk.
I remember my parents, these people, and my cousins and relatives would talk for several hours, and then they would get on to something else, like I do, and we would get back to it again. I would have a piece of paper and wait for them to get back to a topic, and then I would finally get to ask them: “What would the Indian names for March or April be?”—or whatever I was wanting to know, and then they would get to remembering what they did when they were children.
Speaking of the months of the year, someone I talked with one time heard the names of the Snohomish moons of the year. He didn’t quite believe us that there are thirteen months in a year. He left to do some research; then he came back and stayed for several hours, talking to my father and some other Indians. I remember he told my father, “There are thirteen months in a year. I didn’t know.” I guess a lot of people don’t know. We just go by the twelve months in a year. We didn’t name the days of the week like the white people do. The Indians had names for them after the priests came here. There was Sunday and the whole week.
I want to talk about the moons or the months in the Snohomish language. Our tribe, the Snohomish tribe, had names for the thirteen months of the year. Now, in the white man’s calendar, you have twelve months, but with us we had the thirteen moons and there are thirteen months. They had names for all of them, and usually the name referred to what was available to eat at that time. Let’s see, I have April. It’s called pəd waq̓waq̓waqus; you should try that! It is the Moon of Frogs. I guess if you live in a city you never hear frogs. But in March and April they start croaking, you know, like a great big orchestra. My father used to tell us when we lived across there, across the road, just come out here and listen to my orchestra. Even if you were in the house you could hear them. There used to be millions of them along here, along this kind of a wet, damp area where this little crick runs, but they make those croaking noises for, I don’t know, three or four weeks, I guess. Anyway, you know it’s spring. These Indians called April the Month, or Moon, of Frogs. If you always lived in a city you never ever heard them, but you should.
Then, there is the Moon of Whistling Robins, pəd ww̓a’aac. Robins have a certain kind of song in the spring; it is a whistle, the whistle of robins, and that is after March. The Month of Frogs and the Month of the Whistle of Robins is almost all together.
May is pəd a?əb, the Moon of the Camas Roots or the time of digging camas bulbs. a?əb is usually when our people went out to the prairies just south of Puyallup and Tacoma and on out to the prairies around Olympia, where they used to dig camas roots. And this is pəd a?əb, the Month of Camas Roots.
June is pəd təgwa’d, the Salmonberry Moon. təgwa’d is salmonberries. If you never ate them, you have missed something. July is pəd gwədbiw, the Blackberry Moon. August is pəd t’aqa, the Salal Berry Moon. September is pəd kwəxwic, the Silver Salmon Moon. October is pəd xwiib, the Challenging Calls of Deer and Elk. I will come back to that again. November is pəd xwa’y?, Dog Salmon Moon.
December is pəd səxw šic̓əlwa?s, and that means Sheathe the Paddles. It’s a real stormy month, and the people put their paddles up on the walls of the longhouse so that they were put into mats or something; that’s why it says sheathe. It means to put something away. January is Hunger Moon, pəd iq’s, when people don’t get enough to eat. February, pəd səxwpupuhigwəd, in our language is wind, really (breeze is something else), and means Month of Many Storms and Winds. March is pəd wc̓abiigwəd, the Moon of Changing Weather. Then there is April, pəd waq̓waq̓us, the Moon of Frogs, where I started, and that is thirteen. qwq̓w.
I heard the challenging calls of the deer and elk on television. I think it was one of those documentaries on the elk, the Olympic elk, and that is where I heard it. You could hear them, a real loud call. My father said that was the male elk, and deer do that too. You know the Indians saw everything, heard everything, and so they used to hear those and that is really pretty loud because my father said it would echo through the trees and through the valleys. I thought it was quite a majestic thing. It is sort of a call of strength and power, and, of course, deer and elk will fight. Sometimes they lock horns and are locked for days and so that is what this challenging call of deer and elk is about. My father used to say, “Oh, you should hear that.” They used to go out hunting and camp by Lake Stevens; that is a long time ago, the 1890s, and they would camp over night, and then they would hunt coming back—walking all the way. They say you hear that call at night and you really wake up and listen.
We didn’t have days of the week like the white people do. Well, Indians had names for them after the priests came, when there was Sunday and the whole week, but I don’t remember them now.
I would just happen to meet some of these people somewhere too, at a potlatch gathering, and then I would go around and sit down and talk with them. My grandparents and my parents said, “Talk and shake hands and greet the elderly people.” They are alone because, for many of them, a lot of their family has died and they were almost alone. If they reminisce about their early growing up years, then you learn where they lived, what games they played, and what they heard; what was happening; what their parents talked about; what were the worries and the problems of the time.
I think in the American white man’s civilization there is not much communication between the elderly people and the young or middle-aged. They seem to be quite separated. In my growing up years, my grandmother lived almost right next door.
While discussing the people on this list, I will tell which reservation they came from. Most likely the reason they came, as I said, was to go to the Agency Office and talk about some of their problems, which mostly seemed to involve land allotments on the reservations.4 So many families died and left allotments where the nearest relatives were probably third or fourth cousins, so that land was divided up and given to distant cousins.
A lot of these people came to Tulalip, and they really came. Today, you can come all of the way from Bellingham down to Seattle in a matter of hours. Way back then, it would take them two or three days, because they traveled in a canoe and they just paddled. They were not really in a hurry like today, when you have to make time. Whole families would come—the uncles and the
ir families. As they came along, they stopped to eat lunch and they camped at night.
Indians around here knew places where there was running water, fresh spring water. I remember my mother and my aunt Elizabeth Shelton, my father, and my grandparents would recall the places they had been so many times when they were growing up. They would remember where the running water was, the fresh running springs. As soon as the canoes touched the beach, the children were off and running. Any place you go today, you notice when the cars come to park, no matter where it is, if it is in a city, you will see the children hop out, and they are already on the sidewalk talking with one another. They are ready to go. The mother is hauling out the purses or clothes or coats. That was the way with the Indian children. As soon as the canoes touched the beach, the Indian children were off running up and down the beach. So when these people got together, they would remember the places where they had been and where they played.
My father used to remember that they would run on the drift logs. They would race to see who could run the farthest, all the way over to the Point [Skayu Point], and all the way back. He said they ran as hard as they could. The drift logs were not all the same size and they were not the same distance. If you fell off and into the sand, then so many points were taken off. Afterwards, my father, my mother, and the others said, “You can really get hurt running on drift logs like that.”
Usually the girls didn’t get to run around with the boys. We were supposed to be ladies. But Indian children played together and, usually, wherever they went, they could go either along the beaches or along the trails, and some grandparents or aunts and uncles walked along with them.
I remember my grandmother and her cousins. We used to go over there to Mission Beach and run up and down that beautiful beach. It was acres and acres of nice clean sandy beach. We could run up and down and make tracks—all kinds of designs—while we were running. We could be two, three, four blocks ahead of our grandparents. I would turn and look and see where my grandmother and the others were. They would be walking along and talking. I guess they remembered the times when they used to run up and down the beaches. She would be walking with her cane, talking and remembering.
The Tulalip Indian Reservation as it was during Hariette Dover’s lifetime
My grandmother’s sister was also my grandmother, so she was my other grandmother. Her husband and some of their cousins came from La Conner.5 Some of their language is different from ours, but I understood them, since I heard them speak it so many times. They came to Tulalip from La Conner in canoes.
I will always remember when the canoes used to come into Tulalip Bay. When we were in Tulalip Indian School, if we had a chance, we used to watch the canoes come in. I don’t think there is anything more beautiful than the canoes that we had—the Puget Sound canoes. However, any anthropologist I ever talked to about our canoes said the Puget Sound Indians copied their canoes from the Haida or northern style of canoe.6 I always said I will challenge that statement. The heads of our canoes were different from the heads of the Haida canoes. Nobody would notice, except maybe us, but as soon as we see a canoe out there, we know right away if it is a Puget Sound canoe.
When my grandmother and my other grandmothers came, I waited for them down at the beach. I would call out to them and say, “Where are you folks going?” Of course, I was talking in Indian, in our Snohomish language. They would tell me where they were going, if they are coming to see my grandmother. A lot of people wouldn’t bother to answer a child, just listen to them—or maybe you don’t even listen. But that time my other grandmother came from La Conner and they were visiting and talking.
List of Sources and Commentary
William Shelton or Wheakadim, his Indian name. He was Snohomish from Tulalip. Ruth Shelton, Siest-nu, Klallam and Samish. Johnson Williams, Klallam. Emily B. Williams, Tsimshian. James Goudy, Puyallup. Jerry Meeker, Puyallup. Joe Swayell, Snohomish. Ellen Swayell, Snohomish. Elizabeth Shelton or Tsolitsa, Snohomish. Maggie Bagley, Snohomish. Charlie Shelton, Elder, Snohomish. Joe Sahlpud, Elder, Snohomish. Mrs. Joe Sahlpud, Duwamish. Bill Kanim, Snoqualmie. Mrs. Bill Kanim, Snoqualmie. Mr. and Mrs. Sam Wyakes, Snohomish. Jack Klatasby, Swinomish. Jenny John and John Long,7 Snohomish. Magdelaine Wheakadim, Snohomish. Mary Moses, Snohomish. Peter Kwina, Lummi. Elder Chief Kwina, Lummi. William McCluskey, Lummi. John Hawk, Skokomish. Emily Hawk, Skokomish. James Tobin, Nisqually. Mrs. Tobin, Leschi, Nisqually.
I see the first person on the list is, of course, my father. He is of the Snohomish Tribe, which is also the name of the county and a city. He died in 1938.
My mother’s name is Siastənu, Ruth Shelton, and she came from the Klallam Tribe which is the area from Port Townsend and Port Angeles to Clallam Bay. She was baptized with the name of Ruth.
Then I have my former mother-in-law and father-in-law. His name was Johnson Williams and he was a Klallam Indian. My former mother-in-law was Emily Brown. She was Tsimshian from southeastern Alaska, but they left there when she was a girl. Here were two different people who talked about the old days, from two different tribes.
Then I have James Goudy. He was one of my father’s cousins. His mother came from Puyallup, and so he talked that language: Puyallup.
This next one is Jerry Meeker, who was also Puyallup, and then Joe Swayell. He was much older than my father. Joe Swayell was a small, small boy at the signing of the Medicine Creek Treaty on December 26, 1854. Of course, he just heard them talking. He couldn’t see over the heads of people to where Governor [Isaac] Stevens was standing, but he could hear his voice. Our treaty, the Point Elliott Treaty, was signed just after the Medicine Creek Treaty, on January 22, 1855. When you drive to Olympia you go by Medicine Creek. The name of the creek is xwidadəb, Healing Place of Helpful Spirits. In our language it refers to a medicine man, someone who has a xwudab. He has a guardian spirit for healing, and he has sqəlalitut power too.
I have Ellen Swayell and Elizabeth Shelton or Tsolitsa. She was from this tribe, the Snohomish. She is one of the people who gave Professor Tweddell [1953] his information. Tsolitsa did not speak English, so when she answered I translated into English to Professor Tweddell. I already knew what these people, my mother and Elizabeth, talked about, since I heard it so many times in my growing-up years.
There is something interesting about Tsolitsa. All of my years that I was growing up, she was my apus. An apus is aunt. She was my aunt, but she was not the sister of my father or my mother. She was the first cousin of my father, but in our Indian relationship, she was just like a sister to my father. Her father, Tsolitsa’s father, and my father’s father, my grandfather, were brothers. Tsolitsa’s father was older than my grandfather, but they grew up together way up the Snohomish River on the Skykomish River. They spent every year—spring and summer—on Whidbey Island with the other Indians, fishing and drying salmon and hunting and visiting. During my growing-up years, she was my apus. When my father died, she was called my yəlab. Yəlab is like a grandparent. They said no matter where I went, if I said “This is my yəlab,” people would know that either my father or my mother had died even if they never saw me before.
I have Maggie Bagley. She was of the Snohomish Tribe.
I have Charlie Shelton. He was the elder. He was very old when I used to see him and hear him talk. He was from this tribe.
Joe Salpud or Salpuf lived on this reservation. He and his wife, Mrs. Joe Salpud, belonged to the Duwamish Tribe, Chief Seattle’s tribe. I used to talk to them about Seattle and Chief Seattle. They knew him; they were related to him. These were the people who told me about Chief Seattle’s younger brother. His name was Swiyayb.
I have here on this list Bill Kanim. Right now I can’t remember his Indian name. Mr. and Mrs. Kanim were Snoqualmie Indians.
Then I have Sam Waykes and Mrs. Waykes. They are Snohomish.
And I have Jack Klatasby; he was from Swinomish, from La Conner, and John Long and Jenny John. They were from Swinomish.
Then I have my grandmother. Sh
e had been baptized with the name Magdeline Wheakadim. I have my other grandmother, Mary Moses.
Then, I have two people from the Lummi Tribe, Peter Kwina and the Elder Chief Kwina.8 I used to hear them talk, and they used to talk to my mother in the Lummi language which I didn’t understand, but they also talked in the Snohomish language. They would talk for hours and hours with my father in the evenings. They would go on and on. My mother would want to put me to bed. I would say, “No, no!” While I’d sit there on somebody’s lap, I would keep collapsing—falling asleep—but I was listening to them talk.
Then I have Mr. and Mrs. James Tobin. They were from Nisqually. James Tobin’s grandson is Bill Frank Jr.9
Bill Frank Jr. is a little older than my son Wayne, who is fifty-two. Bill Frank was arrested many times for fishing on the Nisqually River. He was the one who actually started the lawsuit that resulted in the United States v. Washington trial in 1973.
One time when they were arrested at a fish-in on the Nisqually River, I told Wayne, my older son, “I’m going down there just to be there.” Wayne told me, “Don’t go. There is liable to be trouble and you are liable to get hurt.” But, I thought, I could bring potato salad. I could stop at some delicatessen and bring fried chicken and sandwiches, bread, butter, salt, pepper, coffee, and tea. We had big coffee pots; I was going take some of them. I got started late. We got a carload of some of our people, but we only got up to the gas station. They said there is no use going any further. The state patrol was all around the roads that led into the Nisqually Reservation. They told the occupants in any cars they found along the road to turn around and leave.
Tulalip, From My Heart Page 5