My brother told about how they got an awful cussing when they first got there. But it was easy for him and his cousin to be in the Army because they had already been in an Indian boarding school. They knew exactly how to march. They knew which were “squads right,” “squads left,” “forward march,” and “come to a halt.” In Tulalip Indian School they knew how to do the right-hand salute by your numbers: “one,” and you had better have that little elbow out right at the end of your eyeball. You had better have your eyes front, chins up, chests out, stomachs in, and that is what they had to do in the Army. So it was easy. They already knew how, but for the others it was tough. They had to get up at five o’clock in the morning and run around out there in the cold, doing all kinds of exercises.
At the end of the three months, then, we knew maybe my brother would be going. But the strangest thing happened to him. One night they loaded the regiment on the train. The officers were counting the men as they got on. My brother said they were loaded down with their cans of food. Way back then, canned food was absolutely the lousiest food you could have. I think in World War II the cans of food the soldiers had were bad enough, but World War I was worse.
My brother was at the very end of the regiment. He was one of the shortest ones. He wasn’t more than five feet eight inches tall. Some of the young men were six feet tall, and they got on first. At least, that is the way the companies were lined up: from the tallest to the shortest. In the Army everything is hurry up and wait. It was dark. They were giving them a big cussing, and the whole group of taller soldiers went over to France. They took my brother and the others back to the barracks. Here they were up all night; then they had to get up again at 5 A.M. and start running around—exercising—again. They hardly got to sleep. He went from there to a spruce camp.
When they signed up originally, they had to put down their occupation. A lot of those young men had no job. My brother put down “lumberjack,” since he worked in a logging camp. I have a picture of him; it was made like a postcard. He was in Hoquiam, Washington. He said he was camped seventy or eighty miles from Hoquiam in a spruce camp in a large forest, and he was with a logging company. So my brother and his cousin spent the rest of the war there.
I have often said spruce was used in the frames of airplanes. There weren’t that many airplanes in World War I. Five hundred American soldiers were paid one dollar a day, plus their food, and they worked there for two years, until 1919. Wages were cheap. They should have earned more than one dollar a day, but that was Army pay, and the logging company got cheap labor. They wouldn’t have received much more than that if they were paid regular wages. They took out huge trees—three to four feet in diameter—and the company made plenty of money.
Elson James was a soldier who didn’t come back from Europe. Our other boys did. Some of them went to France. Elson, who was the same age as my brother, fought the Germans all of the way across France. He was in the battle of Argonne. He marched across Belgium, Holland, and then to Germany when they signed the treaty. They quit just as the American and English soldiers got to the border of Germany. The English, French, and Americans kept on marching in, because Elson didn’t get to Berlin. The Spanish influenza was just beginning.
Influenza went around the world. It was fantastic the way people died. People in the cities and towns in the United States had to wear surgical masks on the street so they would not catch Spanish influenza. Now it is just called the flu. Way back then, people got ferociously sick. You could catch a cold and by evening you would have a raging fever and by midnight be delirious with a high fever. It seemed as though there was nothing that would help. People died all over. They died on the streets. Elson went all the way through in every battle and every bullet missed him. Then, just as they were getting into Germany, he caught the flu. A lot of soldiers did. He died in some strange city with a strange name, and it was something like two years later that they brought him home in a casket.
The Indian soldiers who were in World War I—in fact, in World War II, too—were outstanding soldiers. They were good in scouting—that is what Elson did. A lot of Indians in World War I could crawl out of the trenches in the night across what they called “no-man’s land.” Of course, they carried hand grenades and their bayonets in their mouths. It was pretty close; what they call hand-to-hand fighting. Sometimes, if you were crawling along with a rifle, you could hit a rock and the enemy could hear you. The Germans, or both sides, sent up a very bright light, a light-gun that shoots up a light that stayed up in the sky for quite a while. It was a bright light, and it shone all over a big, big area, because then it shone all over the whole battlefield.
Elson James’s lieutenant wrote a letter to Elson’s mother. Of course, she couldn’t read or write, so the agent read it for her: about what a good soldier, what a good scout he was. It said he was an especially good combat soldier.
Three others from here were in the back of the German lines. Elson was the only soldier from here that didn’t come back. There were six or seven from here. All of them got to France, but the war ended before some of them got all of the way up there to Germany. One of our Indians was in the Engineers. He said, “We built railroad tracks all over that France.” I don’t think they knew what they were doing. They worked early and late. In World War I, they used the railroads a lot because they didn’t have trucks and jeeps like they had in World War II. He said he built enough railroad tracks to go around the world ten thousand times! Every once in a while there were some German airplanes that went over them, but nothing like in World War II. But every time they went by, they would have to run for the brush or the trees and fall flat, and if you landed in a ditch with water in it, that was tough. You had to keep working even if you were covered with mud.
When the Indian soldiers came back home, they had been to many places—England, France, Germany—and then even if they didn’t get overseas, they still had been to California, Kansas, Virginia—wherever the training camps were. So they got to see and meet hundreds and thousands of white people. They saw different parts of the world and met many people. Indians went to France and met French people; and after a lot of loud talking and waving warms, they finally understood that these American soldiers were American Indians. Many of the French came and looked and stood around and watched the soldiers. They were all over in cocktail lounges, in fraternal organizations and clubs, so Indians met a lot of different people in those places.
Some of the boys went to other places to work when they came home: maybe to a mill in Everett or over on the Olympic Peninsula in some of the logging camps. There wasn’t much opportunity for Indians to find work. The only places were logging camps or mills, but most of the mills wouldn’t hire Indians—even up to the 1950s. Some of the employment personnel in some of the mills in Everett would not hire an Indian if they had a choice. If there were several Indians and several whites, they took the whites, because they said the Indians were unreliable. They were good workers, and they worked every day and they learned fast, but when it came time for the fishing season in June, they said, “I have to go home.” The personnel directors said, “If they are going fishing for two or three months, they can just stay away. We’re not going to keep those jobs open for them.”
The 1920s all over the United States were still a time of high employment. Wages went up in the logging camps and mills—shingle mills, lumber mills. Some Indians were working in a logging camp in Monroe or on the Olympic Peninsula. They were making eight or ten dollars a day, which was a lot of money compared to what they got before World War I, which was a dollar and a half. After the 1920s, wages went up to twelve or fifteen dollars a day for an eight-hour day. That was really making money. Today, in some professions, you can make that much in one hour.
When my brother and the other Indian men came home from World War I to the Tulalip Reservation in 1919, there was a big change. They spoke up when they came home. They said we should talk about more land for the Indians. Many of them were landless an
d homeless. They said, “This reservation is too small.” They wanted their own land in addition to their fathers’ allotments, and they wanted medical care for our Indian people. The reservations were not big enough for all of the young men who were growing up. The money that was appropriated for Indian welfare was not reaching the Indians. I remember in 1934, 1936, Indians would always know in July or September that there was money in the agency, since the agent and his personnel would start going to town and all around in brand new cars. The Indians used to say there goes some of our money. There were brand new cars for the agent, the doctor, and the forester. The money was all supposed to be for the benefit of the Indians. Some of the minutes of those meetings are lost.
I think that is what happened to many Indian men in World War II as well. The young men were not going to put up with the agent giving orders. If the agent or the priest wants you in church every Sunday, you’d better be there. They almost had a life-and-death hold over every Indian. Everybody was supposed to be speaking English, although great numbers of our Indian people never learned English. Their viewpoint changed as a result of traveling in the different states and then across to France, from the perspective of the reservation to an Army camp. For the first time, they read the treaty our people signed at Mukilteo in 1855. My brother read it, and I read it. Of course, I was only fourteen or fifteen years old. I was interested, but it didn’t “tear me up.” They talked about the treaty and about the needs and problems of our Indian people, especially since many were still homeless.
For years and years, since I was small, I heard my parents and other Indians talking about the things that were happening to them. Indians came to our house every Sunday. They were cousins of my father, relatives of mine, and friends. My mother cooked a big meal, and then they stayed and talked to my father all afternoon. We would often have fourteen or fifteen people for dinner. It seemed all I did on Sunday was wash dishes.
I remember several times waking up in the night and hearing somebody talking or several people talking and some woman crying. The first few times I heard that, I thought it was my mother, so I got up and I went to my bedroom door and listened. It’s not my mother; it’s some stranger. Somebody from our reservation. Somebody in their family had whiskey or something to drink, and there was a big upset. My father would get up and get dressed, and my mother would go with him, and they took the woman home. She usually had one or two children with her. My father would get to where they were living and find the man and talk with him and square it away.
Different Indians came and stayed at our house and in the evening talked in our Indian language. I sat there and listened to their troubles and problems. In 1910 or 1911, I remember one Indian man, Walter Hathaway, who was a cousin to my father. He came from the upper Skykomish River, where he worked and lived in a small town. I think he lived in Index, in a logging camp. His wife died years and years before, and he never married again. He had one daughter who was in the boarding school for a while. She was not very well and she left and never came back.
He was wondering what happened to his allotment. He received a letter from the agent, Walter Dickens, telling him he had money in the office from a land sale. The agent was, shall we say, wheeling and dealing with the mills in town and the land sales here. Mr. Hathaway was surprised, since he had not signed anything. He was talking with my father when he came in from work. He said, “I wonder how I happened to sell a forty-acre piece of land with a beautiful sandy beach?” I don’t know what it is called now. Tulare is another allotment. Tulare Beach. All of the allotments have big, white settlements—people who have lived there for years now. They bought land lots on the beaches, and so they have very lovely homes. They have lovely homes on Tulare and Spibida and one or two other beaches in that area. That was a long time ago. I was a little girl. It was in 1911 or 1910, because I barely remember the evening when Mr. Hathaway said he received a letter that his land had been sold.
He said, “I didn’t give the agent permission to sell the land.” The agent said, “Oh yes, you did, because your name is on here.” Nearly all the Indians then couldn’t read or write. They had put their thumbprints where they were told on documents, but in many cases, they didn’t know that meant they were selling their land. Some of them didn’t receive any money from their land and never knew the land was sold.
One of my early memories is of Walter Hathaway wondering how he got the money for land he didn’t agree to sell, and it was located on such a beautiful, beautiful beach. Around Tulalip Bay it is muddy. Further out in some places, the beaches have gravel, but there is very little sand on them.
When my father was old enough to be a leader, by 1913, he talked to the Indians and asked them why they couldn’t have the reservation logged.1 The Indians had some meetings, and they thought that was a good idea. A lot of the Indians were doing hand logging. Today they call it “gypo logging.”
For several years, there was a company, the Everett Logging Company, that was logging trees on this reservation. They were taking out prize, prime cedar and fir trees, the biggest trees, which were commonly nine feet in diameter. The Indian owners of the allotments where those logs came from never received the money for that timber. There were big trees here—big, big timber—and that was one of the reasons the Indians picked out this area for their reservation. The land here was not really fit for agriculture, except for the growing of raspberries.
Roland Hartley owned the Everett Logging Company. He was also governor of the state for a couple of terms. During this time, off and on, my father and some of the other Indians were having trouble with the agent over the logs that were being taken off of this reservation. The Hartley family owned the mills, and thousands of dollars of prime cedar and fir logs were going out from the bay here to the Everett mills. The Indian owners of the allotments, where the logs came from, were not receiving payment for the timber. My father and a delegation of Indians went to the agent because of the timber Everett Logging was taking out. They were thieves, really, and the Indian owners were not getting credit. I guess it is all right to mention the awful thieving of Hartley’s company since it was documented in Norman Clark’s book Milltown. He tells about the logging of the Tulalip Reservation and the losses suffered by the Indians. (Sherry Smith mentioned that part, too, in her thesis when she graduated.2) Nearly all of the loss was on Indian land sales here. When they got through logging here, the Hartley family could retire. They made thousands and thousands of dollars just from the timber on this reservation, and it was all stolen from Indian land.
The Indians here complained for several years about the logs that were being hauled down to the railroad and off of this reservation. There was a railroad that went through this reservation. They had a dock just beyond the Catholic church. The logs were brought there—just splashed into the water—and then a boat company took rafts and rafts of logs to the Hartley mills. The Indians complained to the agent, Walter F. Dickens, who came here after Buchanan, that a lot of logs were not marked. Now, any person who is logging will mark their logs on the end with their own mark, so that when the logs are taken to a mill they will know who owned them, who brought them in, and who gets paid. Thousands of dollars worth of our timber went out of here like that, and quite a lot of it went to the Indian agents. Tulalip Indians were robbed of timber by the thousands of dollars by the logging company owned by Roland Hartley.
Mr. Hartley kept the money, or he also shared it with the Indian agent. The Indians would go in—four or six Indians—and talk to Walter Dickens. He would say, “All right, all right, I’ll find out. You don’t have to come back. I’ll just let you know.” The Indians waited perhaps a month, and then they went back. He said, “All right, all right, I’ll just let you know.” So for months, years, all of those thousands of dollars just went out.
I remember when I was a little girl at home, any Indians that came here from any reservation would come here to see the agent at the agency office because it took care of several India
n reservations. If those Indians had a complaint or something to talk about they came here and way back then the Indians came on trains or on the mail boat from Seattle or Everett. I remember different Indians coming and staying at our house, and in the evening they would all talk in our Indian language, or their tribe’s language, and so I would sit there and listen and I would hear lots of things—their troubles, their problems.
For the first time, many Indian families who had allotments had money from the timber sales, and then their allotments were logged off. We had a lot of cedar trees on this reservation up to 1950. Some of the Indian families had $20,000 to $30,000 coming to them from the timber sales. Of course, the money was paid into the agency office. The agent and the chief clerk handled it. The Indians would go in the first of every month—that is, the ones whose allotments were logged, since they thought there was money there. So they got their checks for maybe $100 or $150. Some of the Indians asked for $200, but the agent wouldn’t let them have it. He said they would just squander it.
If they were like me, I would squander it too. By the middle of the month, I am almost flat broke. I always want to go somewhere to eat. I took a Human Relations course at Everett Community College from Dr. Palmer. One time he had us write down what we liked to do best. We handed in our papers, and the next day he handed them back. He said, “To eat, Mrs. Dover?” I said in my paper I like (1) to eat, (2) to eat lots of food, (3) to have lots of really nice food prepared by someone else, (4) more food. I grew up in an Indian boarding school. I starved for ten months out of the year, for ten long years, from 1912 to 1922. Hungry, hungry, hungry.
Tulalip, From My Heart Page 23