I was the youngest in my family. My sister Ruth was a year and a half older than me. I loved her dearly, but now and then I would forget and I would say, “Me first, I’m first. I’m closest to my mother. Me first.” I would take a step in front of my sister. One time my grandmother was there, and my mother was making doughnuts. My mother was a marvelous cook and a good housekeeper. She let us put sugar on the doughnuts she made. My grandmother was there knitting Indian socks. I said, “Me first. I choose this. I want the biggest doughnut with the most sugar on it.” We had to sit down and eat. We were not allowed to run around like chickens. When we got through, I was talking to my grandmother.
She said, “Let me tell you a story.” It was about two sisters. The younger one was selfish: always saying, “this is mine,” “me first,” “mine, mine,” “me first.” One evening they were sleeping outside. They could see the whole wide sky. They were looking at the stars. The younger sister said, “I choose the red star; that is the prettiest. It’s mine. You can have the blue one.” Her sister said, “All right, mine is the blue star.” They watched those stars twinkling. When they fell asleep, the Great Spirit came, and he lifted them up into the high sky. He said, “Now, each one of you will meet the red star and the blue star.” The red star was a young man with very sore red eyes, and the blue star was handsome and beautiful. My grandmother said, “You must remember not to grab at everything, not to say, “me first,” “this is mine,” “me first.” You are going to have a husband with red sore eyes.”
When she told me that legend, it made more of an impression on me than saying over and over, “Now you stop it, stop it.” It’s a long story, and it is very pretty and romantic, but it is shortened to teach the girls not to be “grabby” and selfish and say, “Me first!”
Can you imagine what a nice society it was? All Indians. And each one not pushing and not grabbing; no one is laughing out loud or in a loud voice. Nobody is squealing; no girls are squealing. How quiet, helpful, really helpful to each other they were. They shared everything. When everybody shares, it gets to be a very loving, quiet place. Of course, that is not to say that we were good all of the time. You can’t be. There were bound to be mistakes.
Religion
I have talked with some of the girls I went to school with, in my age group, and many of them never heard about where the longhouse came from or about the mysterious animal Lətsxkanəm saw in Puget Sound. Most of the girls I went to school with were all very strong Catholics.
When I think about those times, when I was small, I remember how strong the teachings of the Catholic Church were. How fearful, I thought. I was terrified of the priest. I never ever wanted to see the priest, but I went to church because my mother went every Sunday. I remember being in church a lot of the time during those days.
When I was real small the priest lived here. The priest I used to see was Father Gard. He didn’t speak English very well. I guess he came from France. I remember he used to always point at me with his cane, and I died ten thousand deaths. I was always hanging on my mother’s skirts. I would try and hide from him. Every time he saw me, he would ask who I was. I thought he couldn’t remember, but that was all he could think of to say to a child. “Who is that, and what is your name?” But he would talk with my father and mother. Friendly talk.
One year—it must have been Christmas—because I could hear the choir singing in St. Anne’s Church—my mother and the Indians were lined up. All of us carried candles, and while the choir sang, we moved toward the altar and over to the side to the statue of the Virgin Mary. The Indians brought special candles that were made of beeswax, and they were used on the altar of the Catholic Church.
I think that is interesting. My father and mother wanted me to know about our Indian history, our legends, and at the same time they wanted me in the boarding school. I talked with my grandmothers in our own language. When you are little, from the time you are a tiny baby, you are learning your parents’ language, and I was learning from my grandmother. Most of the time my parents talked in our own language, although they spoke English, too. But my grandmother did not speak English. So here I was, really, learning two languages simultaneously. Then I had to learn the Catholic religion, all of its prayers—the ordinary mass of the Catholic Church. I was learning a lot of things. On Sunday in the boarding school, we spent the evening listening to Dr. Buchanan4 read verses from the King James version of the Bible.
I wonder if anybody ever had that many religions? I was hearing my grandparents. They wanted me to know the legends and everything about their time and the ways and traditions because they tried so hard to make me into a fine Indian lady. There were some white people who thought it was a great, wonderful gift for us when they came with civilization and Christianity. I have always felt differently. A lot of Indians felt differently. A lot of our Indian life involved our customs where we wouldn’t care about things like the Indians of today. Way back then, people were together.
We learned two religions. When you are little, you are learning a religion from your folks or the pastor or the priest. At the boarding school—in the morning and most of the time—we were Catholics, and in the evening on Sunday we were Protestants. Now a psychiatrist or knowledgeable people among the white people talk about a young person in trouble. They talk about how they had a mixed-up childhood. I think if anybody had a mixed-up childhood, we did—two religions, two different gods, and two different traditions, shall we say. Although they emphasized nearly the same principles: you must always tell the truth; you must be honest to yourself and to everyone. I remember I used to wonder, “How could I be honest with myself?” But I didn’t ask—not my grandmother and not my mother.
My paternal grandmother spent so much time with me every day before I went to the boarding school and during the summer months when I was home. I would run down to her place. As I said, she only lived a couple of blocks away, but I could run that far for a little while. For hundreds of years grandmothers had a lot to do with raising their grandchildren. They always showed an interest in us young children. I used to meet other older women about the same age as my grandmother, and sometimes they told me the same things that my grandmother told me, things that would help me in my lifetime. For instance, I don’t know how many told me about keeping my hair combed and clean. Of course, my parents emphasized that too. Hair always shows when it is clean, shining, and looks alive. But if it gets somewhat dirty, then it loses its shine. So it just seems to me the older women talked a lot about their personal appearance. All of the women I ever saw washed their hands first, before they handled food.
They had so many things to say about everything, such as being physically clean. They emphasized that over and over. I was to wash my hands and wash my arms and wash under every fingernail before handling food. I used to see the Indian women doing that, and I never thought about it until some years ago that that was always what they did. As I said, there was not any running water, so hands and arms had to be washed in a basin right outside the back door. That was a really strict rule from my grandmothers and they emphasized that so many times: washing my hands and washing under the fingernails. It seemed the grandmothers always talked about personal appearance. I was to bathe every morning. Get up early. How I was to wash my hair every few days, shampoo my hair at least every week. My grandmother showed me a plant that grew in a damp place near where we lived.5 It had a nice fragrance to it, quite a penetrating fragrance. I was to take the leaves and little branches of it and braid it into my hair after every shampoo, and it would make my hair smell good. It was supposed to be done all of the time.
I remember after I got older, I was going to ask her, “What am I going to do in Tulalip School,” since there would be no plants to use for my hair. I don’t think I quite realized how much my grandmother meant to me until some time after she was gone. She was my only grandmother by the time I was twelve years old. It broke me up when she died. All of the long years since she died, in 1921, I have missed
her just as much. I spent so much time with her. It seems to me, I spent more time with her than I did with my mother.
One of the things I remember so well, that seemed to help me when I was in the Indian boarding school, was when I was five or six years old. My grandmother and I were walking home. It was a summer evening. She had been visiting cousins a couple of miles away. I always held her hand when we walked any place. When we arrived at the fork in the road where we lived, she said it was time for me to tell the spirits of the earth who I was. I didn’t ask her what she meant exactly. The other grandmother was visiting, too, so there were two grandmothers.
My grandmother stood in the middle of the intersection, and she had me walk in the four directions: east, north, south, west. When I walked in each direction, she stood in the middle of what would seem to be the intersection and watched me and told me to walk slowly—very slowly. When I got to where she wanted me to be, I was told to raise my arms and look out over the trees and the sky and tell my name. Of course, we were speaking in Indian. I spoke out loud because I started when she told me to, and then she said to speak louder—“Louder so that the earth and its spirits can hear you.” I called out in a loud voice, looking out over the trees, up in the sky, and I told them my name—my Indian name [Hialth]. I called out and said my name, and then I had to tell the spirits of the earth who my mother was and give her name, give my father’s name and give the names of my grandparents so that the earth would know me, recognize me, and help me to grow up and to grow old.
I will always remember the first time I called out my name to the first direction. I must have expected an answer because I looked up in the sky and on the trees, but nobody answered. She told me to walk back to her, and so in that way I walked four directions, and each time I called out loud and told the earth who I was—my name, my parents’ names, and my grandparents’ names. That made a deep impression on me.
Now that I think about it, I didn’t tell my mother or my father about walking in the four directions and identifying myself to the earth. Of course, they must have known about it, and I do know that my father did that for my son Wayne. But William, my younger son, didn’t have that done for him. It made an impression on me; I used to think about it when I was in school. I used to get so homesick. We all did, because none of us went home for ten months out of the year. I used to call out, when I had to, to Dukwibəł.
Dukwibəł was the creator of our world, our people. The tribes around here have legends about Dukwibəł. My father and mother used to tell a legend about our languages: why there are so many smaller tribes here in Puget Sound country. Dukwibəł, the Creator, came from far to the east, and as he walked toward the west, he created the land and the people, and in his hand he carried a handful of languages. As he created each group of people, he gave them a language. When he arrived here, and he created this Puget Sound country, he stopped at the edge of the big water, and he turned around and looked at what he had made, and he said that he had created enough land and enough people. This was the most beautiful land that he had made, and this was the end. As he looked over this beautiful Puget Sound country, he still had a handful of languages left. So he took those languages and threw them, broadcast the languages here in western Washington, because he didn’t want to create more land or people. So the many languages that were broadcast over this western Washington area is why we have so many tribes and more languages. Over toward the east of this country, the languages were different and the tribes were bigger.
My grandmother followed the Indian way, but she knew how to pray with a rosary even though she didn’t go to church. Somebody would have to take her. She couldn’t see very well, and now that I think about it, I think my mother ignored her. I better not say it quite that strongly since she was her mother-in-law. My grandmother came almost every day to our house and sat in the afternoon and talked a little bit. My mother would be ironing or doing something. When my grandmother left, I walked with her, holding her hand.
As we walked, I learned to notice how everything appeared, because my father talked about how the sky looked too. They noticed how the sky looked and how the sunrise looked and what kind of clouds were in the sky: Were they big overcast dark clouds, or were they puffy clouds moving across the sky? Were they moving fast, or were they just moving? Sometimes my grandmother and I walked over toward Mission Beach to have our lunch. She couldn’t see anymore, but I held her hand, and she would ask me the color of the sky. Are the clouds white, puffy, like wool? How does the water look? Sometimes the bay looked a very deep blue, and I think they would have called it a cobalt blue. You don’t see it like that anymore. Sometimes the water looked green. So I told her. I told her how the mountains looked. She liked to know how Mount Rainier looked—if there were puffs of clouds near the top of the mountain. The Indians used to be able to tell by the puffs of clouds that were on Mount Rainier what the weather would be.
Once in a while, people ask me about the weather. I say, “I don’t know.” I don’t know if it is going to rain, or if it is going to be a cold winter or what. Somebody said to me they thought Indians knew all about the weather. I said. “I didn’t.” I didn’t grow up at home. I grew up in an Indian boarding school. So I couldn’t tell about the weather.
My grandmother used to say, “Don’t be discouraged. kwikwatsqwaligud. Don’t ever be discouraged.” She didn’t really know much of anything about school. I guess she used to see the Mission School once in a while, and she learned about classroom work when my father went there to school.
I was told you are to live your life according to Dukwibəł’s teachings. If you do all your life what is right, then Dukwibəł will look upon you. If you do something wrong, or continue in the wrong, he will turn his face away from you—what they call xwoh’osəd. He will turn his face and will look upon you with his face turned away, but he has his eye on you. If he looks at you like that, then you will have bad luck, and he no longer looks upon you. He never said that is the only way to go. Live the life that is right in everything. But for the Spirit Creator to turn his face away from me was almost like condemning me. Things would happen to me that didn’t happen before. It seemed I heard that a number of times, and my father repeated it: “Whatever you do that is good and kind to other people will be returned to you. Whatever you do that is bad, mean, or cruel to other people will also return. Somebody will do mean, cruel things to you—perhaps not now, tomorrow, or next year, but it will surely come.” This is a teaching. It made an impression on my father and mother when they were little. It was not repeated every day. It was told to me by my grandmother at one time, and then my father said it twice in his lifetime. Perhaps the third time I heard it, I was grown up and married, and he was just remembering and repeating things. My grandmother and my father and my mother were very special when I was five or six years old.
My grandmother said that when I called out to the spirits of the earth, it was so that the spirits of the earth would know me and always be sympathetic and helpful to me. If I did all of the teachings and followed all that Dukwibəł said, he would look upon me, and he would always be sympathetic and helpful to me. My father and grandmother emphasized how Dukwibəł would turn his face away from me, and he would look at me with his eyes slightly averted. This look would be in the form of a cross.
I Remember My Grandmothers
I used to hear my grandmother and the others talk about Semiahmoo Bay, Lummi Bay, and Victoria and Sxlahad, or San Juan Island, where a village of that name was located. The word means “an enclosure,” from later times when they saw a fence or a stockade around the village. Some of the Indian tribes stopped there in their canoes. So, they were just being prepared or careful about who was going to be coming through the gates. So that is the name of San Juan Island; it was called Sxlahad.
Chuckanut, the highway that goes to Bellingham along the waterfront, would certainly surprise my grandmother. She would be actually astounded at the number of cars, and how fast they go, and may
be she would be afraid. She was one of the first ones who told me when I was twelve years or so old, “Forgive the white people. They don’t know anything.” I didn’t laugh way back then at anything she said to me. I was sitting on a box, on a big pillow, by where she was sitting knitting socks to sell. I sat there, and she told me legends, or I asked her about when she was a girl, and she remembered things to tell me. One day I said some white people stopped at our place, and I was running down the white people. We didn’t see that many white people when I was little. The only white people were at the boarding school. They were employees. Otherwise, there were no white people out here. The nearest were in Marysville.
My grandmother never, ever spoke English. She always spoke in our language. When I talked with her I always talked our language. She said you must have pity on the white people. I was just going to say something, but we never answered our elders, not ever; you were to just sit and listen and thank them for what they said. She said you must have pity on the white people. They really don’t know, most of the time, what they are doing. Wherever they came from, they were a lost people. So what they do around here, around this country—she was just speaking of our Puget Sound country—what they do seems, you might say, crazy. You must forgive them. They don’t know any better. Whatever manners they might have had have just been dropped or forgotten. You have to have pity on them.
Tulalip, From My Heart Page 14