Tulalip, From My Heart

by Dover, Harriette Shelton

  As Long as the Rivers Run is a film by Carol Burns that Darleen showed us at the college. It shows the “fish-in.” Deputy sheriffs, who weighed about 280 pounds each, were shown clubbing those Indians. It’s too bad the Indians didn’t bring charges against them for that kind of roughness and cruelty. One of the last shots in the film shows them in the jail with the bars all around them. Indians were sitting on the cold floors with no chairs. They were thrown in there like a bunch of cattle. Some of the boys and girls were only twelve, fourteen years old. They spent all night and all day in jail with nothing to eat.

  But, anyway, James Tobin and his wife are the grandparents of Bill Frank Jr. They were people I heard talking two or three times when I was little. When I was growing up, we were down there for two or three days at a time at the Tobins’. Of course, my father and they would talk and talk at meals and in the evening.

  If it is in the evening meal, the Indians cooked so much food: a lot of baked salmon, a lot of roast beef, a lot of homemade bread, a lot of butter, a lot of coffee, tea—you name it. Many other people came; some were neighbors and relatives. There would be almost two dozen people sitting there and talking. Sometimes some of them were just listening.

  Bill Frank’s mother is Angeline. She is one of my father’s cousins. Our Wayne used to get around to different places for meetings on tribal business. He met a lot of cousins, and Bill was one. That was interesting. Wayne would come back and I would tell him who were our cousins. We have cousins at Lummi; Cagey, Sam Cagey, is a big family there. There is another man at Nisqually too.10 Bill Frank’s aunt and uncle, cousins, and then my mother had cousins. Wayne had them too in Neah Bay. Marcus Dennis. They are quite prominent in their councils.

  About ten or twelve years ago, I was down to Nisqually to a wedding. I had a letter from Angeline, Mrs. Bill Frank Sr. One of her granddaughters was getting married, so she invited me to come with my family, but Wayne couldn’t go. I met Iona Hawk; that was her maiden name. She was just a little bit older than me. I hadn’t seen her for years. I was sitting by Angeline. The wedding was going to be outside on the lawn. It was a beautiful sunshiny day.

  We were just talking. Then a woman came. There were several people who came from Pendleton, Oregon. They were relatives the other way. They were Angeline’s relatives and therefore they were mine, too, but I had never seen them. Angeline said to that woman, she wanted to shake hands with me, and she said, “dišdəkwilit sidiša.” How about that? Dišdəkwilitsidiša. I had not heard those words spoken by anyone for so long. In their language, kwil means “a relative.” In the Snohomish language, it is spoken as ssya’?ya?. Ssya’?ya? and kwil in the Snohomish language are the same thing. Then, she said sidiša. In these languages, a word changes by just an addition to the front of the word. For instance, if I had been one of her men cousins, she would have said, “tsidiša, dišdəkwiltsidiša.” Only I was one of her women cousins. She said sidiša and tsidiša, with a “ts” sound. Words for cousins and others are changed by a few sounds in the beginning of the word, just as in those two words, sidiša and tsidiša. If you are talking about a man or cousin or some little boy, you say tiya. That word is in my language: tiya dibida, “my son, my child.” If it is my daughter, it is siya?ya?dibida. “My son,” “my daughter,” just by that difference: tiya and siya.11

  Then I have William McCluskey. He was my mother’s cousin. He is a Lummi Indian. He used to stay at our house if he had business at the Agency too.

  I have Mr. and Mrs. John Hawk. Just plain Hawk and Emily. Emily Hawk was one of my father’s cousins too. They are Skokomish12 and Nisqually and Puyallup. Their language is similar to Snohomish, except some of the words are different.

  1 The preferred spelling today is S’Klallam.

  2 In the traditional kinship system, the sister of a grandmother is addressed and referred to as “grandmother.” See Smith 1940.

  3 Mrs. Dover is referring to a list of sources for her information about the early days of the reservation beyond her own immediate family. You could say that this was a life-long research project. Later she explains who these people are, most of whom were well known in their time.

  4 Tulalip served as the federal agency in western Washington.

  5 Refers to the area where the Skagit, Swinomish, and Kikiallus tribes live.

  6 Philip Drucker, Northwest Coast Indian Cultures (Menlo Park, Calif.: Chandler Publishing Company, 1968), 28.

  7 Husband and wife. This couple illustrates a Coast Salish custom whereby the wife and children take the husband’s first name as their surname.

  8 The Lummi Tribe is in Bellingham, Washington.

  9 Fishing rights activist and executive director of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

  10 From east of the Cascade Mountains.

  11 Lushootseed is taught today" at Tulalip’s Department of Cultural Resources.

  12 From the Shelton and Hood Canal area.

  1 / Treaty Time, 1855

  THE first time Tulalip was mentioned in white history, you might say, was January 22, 1855, when these Indians, the Snohomish Tribe, the Duwamish (which was Chief Seattle’s tribe), and all of the people from Seattle to the Canadian border signed a treaty at Mukilteo.

  Tulalip is mentioned in the Point Elliott Treaty, in article 3, in which it describes the Tulalip area as the area that will be our reservation. But Tulalip, as you know, is really a very old name. It comes from a prehistoric time. It is also the name of our tribal organization, the Tulalip Tribe of Indians. When our people appeared in Judge [George] Boldt’s court, when the United States v. Washington was being argued in 1973, our group was allowed to appear as the Tulalip Indians, but the Tulalip Reservation is composed of members of the Snohomish, Skagit, Stillaguamish, Snoqualmie, and a few other tribes.1

  At treaty time, some of the Indians were having their usual gatherings, their potlatches, their meetings, and the leading chiefs got together to talk about what they were going to do and what the treaty would probably mean to them. The tribes were gathered at least ten days before the scheduled day of January 22, when they were to meet with Governor Isaac Stevens for the actual signing. They had meetings morning, noon, and night with the different tribes, and they talked about the treaty.

  Təta?’zad—Not Quite “Yes,” Not Quite “No”

  Our Snohomish Tribe has a word, təta?’zad, which applies to treaty time and to a few other similar situations. Whenever my father listened to the radio, to President Roosevelt and a lot of the senators and candidates for offices, he would say, təta?’zad. “All they do is say ‘not quite yes’ and ‘not quite no.’ They behave like native pheasants.” I guess you would have to be a hunter to know what he meant. When you are hunting for pheasant, the mother pheasant has her nest on the ground, but she hides it. When the hunter approaches, she leaves the nest and goes on the trail, or wherever, making him think she has a broken wing. She will fly from one side to another just as though she is terribly wounded with a broken wing, and she hopes the hunter will follow her away from her nest. Well, the Indian hunters never disturbed babies. They would probably shoot or kill the male. They would take care in certain times of the spring to see and make certain that they always ensured the cycle of life, forever, for every living thing. The Indians didn’t kill birds or animals more than they needed. They just took what they needed and did not destroy or kill any more. This is the meaning of təta?’zad. I could go around in big circles with the meaning of təta?’zad.

  By and large, candidates that we heard on television during the election are nice people. Politics is one thing. But təta?’zad is when I would hear my mother talking to one of my nephews and she would tell him, “Do not prevaricate.” Something has happened outside where children are playing and somebody is crying, or there is the sound of a crash, and a mother wonders what happened. Well, sometimes, they—the old people—are explaining something. They tell them, “təta?’zad, don’t make excuses. Don’t say, ‘I didn’t see anything.’ ” />
  So, the Indians had this word that applied to many things. My parents applied it to politics, and, of course, it could apply to Indian politics, too. It applies to the time when our Indians signed the treaty.

  Another word that applies here is bəčad, or “to lay something down.” Another is gwaad, “to leave it alone or drop it.”

  My grandfather Wheakadim, my father’s father who they think was about eighteen years old when the treaty was signed, sat with his relatives in the council. My grandfather was there with his uncles, one of whom was Hixwəčkaydəm, or Bonaparte, who said, “You sit with us and you listen and you watch.” They told him to sit and listen to what the white man says. My grandmother remembered, too, when Governor Stevens got up to talk. They didn’t understand him because he spoke in English, and they had to wait for the translation from Michael Simmons, but they watched him as he started to talk. They were listening to him even if they couldn’t understand a word, and they said to each other, “It’s a lie. He’s lying.” But they never moved. They sat courteously and listened to him, and all the time they knew he was lying. They said, “Whatever he is saying is not the truth.” Anyway, if you read his speech—who knows what he said? The Indians didn’t know what he said. I read what are supposed to be the minutes of the treaty discussions. His speech said, “You are my children. I will take care of you because you are my children.” Of course, the Indians sat there and thought, “He is lying. Whatever he is saying, he is lying, ?ubadčəm.”

  The Indians sat in big half-circles in front of this great man from the white father in Washington, D.C. They heard him talking. He talked in English, and then what he said was translated into the Indian languages. The first interpreter was Michael Simmons. He was listed as the Indian agent and he spoke Chinook Jargon. He could understand what the Indians were asking for and so he talked. Governor Stevens talked just a short time, and then Michael Simmons explained in Chinook Jargon, a trade language, to the Snohomish, since they happened to be the nearest tribe to Mukilteo, and then all the way back on the beach the men from the other tribes were sitting. There were mostly men present, but the women came too. They sat in large half circles in front of Governor Stevens.

  My grandparents said a table was there that, apparently, came on the sailing ship the Decatur with Stevens on that day. They and the older people I talked to said there were soldiers with the governor. They wore blue uniforms with gold buttons, but they didn’t march off of the ship onto the beach. They walked and stood to the side of the governor—up in front. The soldiers stood on each side of him; then the others stood somewhat back from him. Of course, some of the Indians resented that because it was a show of power. It was harassment and intimidation since, as I said, the Indians had already talked about this. Michael Simmons had already talked to them about the treaty. The Indians were there ten days before they signed the treaty. They talked for hours and hours about what they were going to do.

  Pre-Treaty Discussions

  I want to talk about the person who was the ninth signer on the original copy of our treaty, Sqwəšəb. My grandparents called him Sqwəšəb, which means “mist,” “fog,” but on the treaty they called him Smoke. The name Sqwəšəb is like the morning mist. Smoke is what the white man could think of.

  On the days before January 22, he was the one who spoke the loudest. The Snohomish met back in their camps after they arrived. The minutes of the treaty say the Snohomish Tribe arrived the day before, on the twenty-first. George Gibbs, who wrote the minutes, said the Snohomish and Snoqualmie are in now, so the Indians are all in. The Snohomish were there days before, but sometimes they went back to Whidbey Island, to Possession Point, where a large longhouse of the Snohomish Tribe was located, and they talked. Several tribes met, and they talked about what they were going to do about this treaty.

  Sqwəšəb of the Snoqualmie Tribe jumped up and spoke (my parents and grandparents said) at a big council. He said, “Why should we sign anything? Don’t sign anything. That piece of paper is the white man’s piece of paper. Let the white man sign his paper; that is his paper. Let the white man sign it, because we don’t know what it says. The white man will tell us what it says, but we don’t know what it says. Don’t sign anything. Let’s kill them all. Why should we let them live? They are going to change everything. We don’t have to listen to them.”

  If you look at a map of Washington State, you will see that the Snoqualmie River is also another river that rises in the Cascades, but it empties into the Skykomish, and then into the Snohomish River.2 Sqwəšəb of the Snoqualmie is the one who articulated the thoughts of many of the Indians in his remarks, such as, “Why should we sign it?”

  Another who spoke was my father’s uncle, Tyee William. My great-uncle was one of those who said, “Why not sign the treaty? We are not going to be allowed to go home. You see what we have to go through every day. There are soldiers here, and they are here with their guns. They come here, get off of that ship and then stand around here with their guns. We have to sign that treaty—we should. We better sign it. Then we can all go home. Later on, perhaps, we can talk about this again. Maybe there will be a different white people we can talk to. There is no use trying to protest and create trouble. There is no choice. There is no choice.” This is what Tyee William said. On the Treaty he is called Stishail. He was one of the young chiefs there, my father’s uncle, his father’s older brother. I have always been sorry I don’t remember him, my father’s eldest uncle. His thumbprint is on the original treaty. He wore a cross, on a black ribbon, around his neck that was given to him by Father Chirouse.

  The chief they called Club Shelton—his Indian name was Tləbšiłtəd—was my father’s great uncle. My great-great-grandfather was Tləbšiłtəd’s brother. He spoke, and he said, “Tell the white man they are welcome to live on this land as long as they want to. We will sign a paper where we will allow them to use our land and then they can just pay us so much for a year. Someday in the future we will talk about it again, but to sign something and make it final—that we will sell the land and we take the reservation—we should not do that.”

  Some of the other Indians talked and said that it would be better if we could do that, but one of the things Governor Stevens told them at the meetings was, “You will sign the treaty. The white father in Washington, D.C., wants this paper to be signed. He wants everything straight between the Indians and the white people.” So the Indians themselves were not together. They were not of one mind.

  “If we go to war . . .” Some of the older Indians said, “Yes, we can go to war and kill a lot of them. We could get some of the Indians to join us and, like Sqwəšəb said, ‘Kill them all.’ Then in ten days there would be no white people’s eyes to see the break of day. They would all be dead.”

  Many of the Indians answered and said, “We can do that, but where is our enemy?” “čiad tiya?atos?” A?tos is “enemy”; čiad is “where.” “Where is our enemy? He is coming from the sea. Coming from the west in ships. Coming over the mountains. Coming from the north, from the King George men. Coming from the south. These people who are our enemies are all around us. We cannot fight an enemy like that. Our enemy has to be in front of us.” Any enemy has to be in front of you, but if he is also at your back and at your right and at your left, then you are indeed surrounded. You would have to make the best of that kind of surrender. That is what these Indians did. They talked about it, and they knew we had lost. We had lost just about everything, but we will hope the white man means what he says when he comes with the treaty. We will talk about everything that we wish for, that we are asking for.”

  But many of them said, “Let’s not sign the treaty. Why should we?” Tləbšiłtəd was one of them who said we should not sign anything. He was one of the people who left the treaty signing on January 22. He got up and announced that he was not going to stay and sign anything. He called on his people to leave, and he left. Two or three people left with him, but the majority of the Indians stayed there.
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  So, when we talk about the treaty, that is all it is, just a treaty that the Indians signed. No one knows or remembers how much trouble, how much worry they lived through, and how much discussion they had among themselves. When I think of them, I always feel lost. Personally, myself, I feel lost. They had no attorneys to advise them or to talk with them. Their leader was Governor Stevens. He was supposed to be standing up for their rights. The one who was representing them, or talking for them, was Michael Simmons the Indian agent and the superintendent of the Territory. Many Indians said they thought if Michael Simmons was there, everything was all right. Those Indians could not read or write. They could not understand the English language. The sections of the treaty were explained in the beginning, first by Governor Stevens, who talked, and then by Michael Simmons, in Chinook Jargon.

  Young people today wonder about the treaty. Wayne, my son, read the treaty when he was a sophomore in high school. He read it two or three times. When he came home from school in the afternoon he would read for two or three hours. Several days after he read our treaty, he came into our dining room, where I was drinking coffee, and said, “If they presented a thing like this to us today we would refuse to sign it.” I said, “Anybody who could read would refuse to sign it. It is just nothing but a pile of words.” He said, “Why does it say in our treaty that we should have a doctor, a nurse, a farmer, and a blacksmith? Why did they ask for a blacksmith?” You have to think about the time—the 1850s. If you read the history of the United States, you will find out that the blacksmiths had a lot to do with conquering the West.

  Blacksmiths made the covered wagons. They made the wheels, and they put on the steel rims that covered the wagon wheels. Without the steel rims, the pioneers would have been a lot slower coming across the great continent. So the blacksmith made wheels or whatever people wanted. He made anything that a city or community or village wanted, such as fry pans. He could make kettles. Some of the early blacksmiths, during the Revolutionary War, were gunsmiths. They could make not only guns but revolvers. So the Indians asked for a blacksmith.