Along about this time, an Indian woman came from Lummi. She was pregnant and had a sick child at the boarding school. She and her husband were staying at the school in one of the bedrooms in the club house. She was going to have the baby, so her husband walked down to the hospital to see the agency doctor. Of course, he got kind of upset. They had twelve hospital beds: six in the women’s ward and six in the men’s ward. The doctor wouldn’t put her in the hospital, and he told her to go someplace else. “We don’t have facilities for maternal care of any kind.” He loaded them into a car. He brought them in the woods up here with another family. It was after midnight, and the family was sound asleep. She just barely got into the house. She didn’t even get to a bedroom before the baby was born.
Another case was a brother and sister who were in their seventies or eighties. They lived across the creek. They were a widow and a widower. They had been married long years before, and their families had all died. There was nobody here to take care of them, so they moved down here to be near my father and my mother. The elderly woman cut her hand with an ax. She was splitting wood, which is what everybody did way back then. She cut her hand badly. The tendons on her first two fingers were cut, and the wound was open. She and her brother walked a mile and a half to the hospital. It was 8 A.M. The doctor had already seen the school boys and girls who came down for medical care at the hospital. The nurse came out. They were sitting on benches in the hall, and she asked what was the matter. She said, “You should not be here.” So the brother said, “She cut her hand.” His sister had her hand wrapped up in a clean dishtowel. We used big flour sacks for towels that were washed until they were nice and white. She had it wrapped with a couple of those, and she wrapped it some more, but the blood went through her skirts and was going past her feet out into the hallway. The nurse said, “You can’t stay here. You’ll probably have to go home. Just go home and wrap it up.” The brother tried to tell her it was bleeding badly; it should be wrapped better. The nurse was “yakking away,” telling them to go home and get out of there. She saw the blood and said, “What is that?” And then she went back and told the doctor.
She told the doctor the first time around, “A couple is out there—an Indian woman with her hand cut by an ax.” The doctor said, “Oh, tell them to go home. A cut isn’t anything.” When the nurse saw the blood and went back to the doctor and told him the woman needed attention, the doctor finally did see her.
Those two people came to the house and told my father about it. The Indian woman was trembling. She had an awful shock. My father gave her an aspirin. My father and mother didn’t take aspirin, although they had it because I sometimes used it. Anyway, my father took them home and made a fire in their cook stove. It was just a one- or two-room shack. My father often heard about experiences like that one, but my brother got roaring mad when he heard about it. They called a meeting.
Calling a meeting was done very carefully way back then. Indians were discouraged from having a gathering of any kind. The agency didn’t trust meetings of all of the people. We had the Tulalip Improvement Club by then, by 1912, but they weren’t involved in claims against the government until later. There had been wars all across the United States, and they didn’t want Indians around the agency here. Anyway, my father and the others talked it over. They went to Everett and got an attorney. Way back then, attorneys didn’t know anything about Indian law. But they felt that kind of treatment—to anyone—was just not acceptable. So it was in the newspaper, because my father talked to the editor, somebody he knew in Everett, and it created a big upset. My brother belonged to the American Legion in Everett. He talked to them, and their organization expressed their sympathy and their interest in helping the Indians. He wrote to James Wickersham, the Washington State representative in Congress then. Usually Congressmen didn’t know anything about Indians, and they couldn’t care less. But Mr. Wickersham was somebody who actually got involved in Indian troubles, such as when he helped the members of the Indian Shaker Church.
The Tulalip Improvement Club
The first tribal organization here was the Tulalip Improvement Club that was started during the years 1912 to 1914. My brother and father said to call it the Tulalip Improvement Club, since how can they quarrel with us for meeting if we say we are trying to improve ourselves? My father said if we say “improvement” that ought to mean something. The club helped the Indians to get together in the earlier years. The Indians never got together, really, except for the Improvement Club, because for quite a lot of them, they would have to hitch up their horses or come in their cars on real bad roads down here to a meeting. As I said, the agent told us we could not meet together. It was not permitted. The man who was called the farmer, at the agency, would come to their meetings. He stayed at the school all of the time. But he came and talked and listened to them several times. Otherwise, the Indians went ahead with their own Improvement Club. Sometimes the meetings were not well attended because the club was not doing much, so there was not as much enthusiasm. They put on the Indian fairs from 1915 until after World War I in 1918. Then no more fairs were held.
The Tulalip Improvement Club put on the fairs, but they used to meet through the year and they talked about our roads and our cemeteries. The Indians took care of the roads from the agency to Marysville. If they needed gravel, then they picked out certain people to haul the gravel, and that was done with horse and wagon. It was real slow work. The road from the agency to Marysville has been considerably straightened. All of those turns have been changed and the road made straighter. The Indians used to work every year on that road to widen it and to bring in more gravel. Some families who worked on the road camped out in tents. It was enjoyable to them because they were together again. They paid the man who had the workhorses and wagon to haul the gravel. They collected the money to pay him. Some families might give a dollar and others twenty-five cents.
The Indians took care of the graveyards, too. The only time my father could go was on Sunday since he worked twelve to fourteen hours in the sawmill at the agency. One time I went with him to work in the cemetery. I found the list of Indians who donated the money to put a fence around the cemetery.
Indian Fairs
When they had their Indian fairs from 1913 to 1918, my father was the president of the Tulalip Improvement Club. The Indians here got together. They had the nicest gardens. They had their potatoes, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, cabbages, and so on, all lined up on display, and the women came with their baking—bread, pies, and cakes—and then dressmaking, and quilt making, and all of the handcrafts were displayed. We have a few pictures of some sections of the fair that show some of the quilts in black and white. There was no color film way back then.
A lot of the people who came were merchants who had stores in Marysville and Everett. My brother and my father went from store to store in Marysville, and since most of the owners knew my father, they donated prizes for the fair. Sometimes they were pretty dishes for the women for best bread making, best dress, or best quilt. The prizes were on display and it was a nice, exciting time. The merchants from Everett came with their families and there was a picnic all day long. It was called the “merchant’s picnic.” They came on the boat because it was easier. There would always be rivalry. They had foot races, baseball games, and sometimes canoe races—the racing canoes and the war canoes. Sometimes they invited the Lummi Indians; the Swinomish and the British Columbia tribes came in their racing canoes. That was a big, exciting time.
My mother and my sister-in-law said later they hardly ever saw my father and my brother during that time. They were strangers. They left early in the morning and ran home at noon to grab something to eat and ran right back out, and they were still eating when they were leaving the house. At the fairs you could see that a lot of the Indians were good workers. I don’t know how the Indian and white communities would get along now, but the Indians in Seattle, who are from different tribes, put on a salmon bake by the American Indian Women
’s Service League at Alki Point, and a lot of people come to it.
The club met at least four times through the year, not only to put together fairs but to get together if there was a funeral in any family. Indians always get together for a funeral and collect money and donate food, since there would be many Indians gathered together, and they had to provide three or four meals a day for several days.
People like my brother spoke English all of the time. The older Indians could understand most of it, but they spoke in our own language at the Improvement Club. Later, the younger people just talked English. They stood up and talked about what was needed or made a report on what they were doing. They talked about their gardens and about their orchards. Some of them took turns at the gate at the fair and charged each wagon an entrance fee—or people coming in cars, later on.
Now and then I used to hear the older people say, “Now we’re like white people. We talk in their language.” The pressure wasn’t that bad in the late 1920s and 1930s about being civilized, but it seemed to me that when I was in the boarding school and just a little later that business of being Christianized and civilized was just a terrific pressure. It was a big pressure on the Indians, especially the Indian children.
They talked about our roads. The Indians took care of the roads from the agency to Marysville and the cemetery. Working on the road was enjoyable because they could be together again. The Indians were separated on their allotments by several miles, and the roads were practically nonexistent, so they walked over muddy trails. Some had horses and farm wagons, but to go very far with a farm wagon was really something because the roads were in bad condition. They went over stumps and logs. My father and the Indians got together, and they worked about three days each in the summertime on the roads. If the Indians needed gravel, then they picked out certain people to haul gravel, and all of that was done years ago with a horse and wagon. It was slow work. The road from the agency to Marysville has been straightened considerably and widened. Of course, women worked there, too. Women and children helped by cutting the wild roses and other brush.
It looked like it was a lot of fun because there were children there. I asked my mother, “Why can’t we go and camp out halfway between here and Marysville?” with the families who did. They camped out in tents, and the children could play. They didn’t get paid. They collected money and paid the man who hauled the gravel. Some of the Indians were very poor. If they gave, it was a dollar from each family. Elderly widows might give fifty cents. As they widened the road, the brush had to be piled up, and they burned it after it was piled there for several weeks, when it was dry. Prisoners also did quite a lot of the roadwork.
Today the Indians still take care of the graveyards. They come and volunteer. If the tribe hires two or three men, then they are paid the going wage. I have a list of the Indians who donated money for the fence that is around Tulalip cemetery. I remember hearing them talk about the cost, and where they should put the entrance—a small gate for people who are walking in. There was a big gate for the horses and the wagons to go in. My father worked at the cemetery on Sundays because he worked at the agency twelve to fourteen hours a day during the week. So the only time he had to go to the cemetery was on Sundays.
The club meetings were stopped during the war years. There were no meetings except for talking together outside the church after Mass on Sunday. Sometimes the men met for half an hour outside the church, even if it was frosty. They stood around and talked. A few times I saw them talking with my father somewhere. They gathered around his horse and wagon. The women usually went to the wagons and sat there waiting because the men were talking. That was the only place they were able to meet.
After World War I, when my brother and the others came home, they knew how to write, so they started keeping minutes of the meetings of the Tulalip Improvement Club. Once in a while, the assistant superintendent from the agency, Mr. Walters, attended. Later on, the Indians went on with their own meetings and nobody from the agency came. I think they must have had somebody to tell them what was discussed, since during all of those years it seemed the Indians were watched all of the time.
The Indians who came to the meetings were the Snohomish and Snoqualmie tribal members. The two tribes were polarized, but they tried to come together. The Snoqualmie all sat together. Now that I remember, I used to be scared of some of them. There really wasn’t anything to be afraid of; they had their children and grandchildren with them. But Snoqualmie have a reputation for fierceness. The Snoqualmie stayed together. There was rivalry. My family were Snohomish, not Snoqualmie. But at first when they met, they were still together. Snoqualmie and Snohomish and Skagit and all the Indians that were on the reservation met together. Sometimes the Snoqualmie met in Carnation, so the Snohomish started meeting here. Then they would talk about their gardens, their orchards.
The Tulalip group wanted to talk with the whole group of Indians, not just the people on the reservation, and said we ought to invite all of our tribe to the meetings and let them know we are meeting and we are talking about trying to get better medical care, better hospitalization, and more land. There are too many landless and homeless Indians. Some of our cousins lived on Whidbey Island. Another cousin worked up here in a big logging camp. So when they went home on the weekend, they told their brothers and sisters. So the organization got bigger and bigger. The Snohomish tribal members decided to write letters so people knew to come to the first meetings. We had a cousin who lived in Port Townsend. They left their address, and my brother wrote to them. The Snohomish organization grew.
Treaty Rights
When the fairs were revived again after the war, then the Indians were starting to talk about their claims against the government. Eventually my father would have noticed the problems of our people, but it was really my brother who started the claims against the government. In 1923, I started high school. In 1924, the Club, my father, and my brother invited people here. We met with a government attorney, Mr. Stormont. We took the testimony of some of the elderly people who came to our house so that they could bring the fraudulent land sales and other matters such as fishing rights to the federal government. My brother and I helped them to type a lot of the testimony and the minutes since we could understand their language. Later, the Boldt Decision came pretty much out of what those elderly Indians said or testified to Mr. Stormont. My brother and father made a big difference from 1923 to 1926, because the Indians were supposed to receive medical care from the agency doctor. It says so in the treaty—but the doctors refused to treat them. The Indians talked about their treaty rights when nobody else paid attention to the Indian. Treaty rights are almost like a drumbeat—treaty rights.
My brother and my father got the older Indians together, talking to them. I have two pictures of our parents’ home. Out in the yard, fifteen or twenty of the older, older Indians in my grandmother’s generation were gathered in a meeting. I really don’t know how my brother accomplished that—getting those people together. An attorney, Mr. Stormont (I don’t remember his first name), came from Washington, D.C.; he had a secretary with him who took down every word. He asked questions of the Indians. My father or somebody interpreted, because none of those Indians spoke English, and most of them could not understand all English words. They could probably understand “yes” or “no,” like my grandmother could. It took hours, several days, for them to take their statements. Each person who testified told where they were born—such as on Squaxin Island, where their father and mother were visiting, out on the Pacific Ocean, or on one of the rivers south of Aberdeen.
One of the people who testified was a cousin of my mother; his last name was Edwards. He was a frail, elderly man, but he had been at the treaty signing in Mukilteo, January 22, 1855, when he was a teenager, like my grandfather Wheakadim. He said they brought presents for the Indians. The presents that he received were one fishhook and one yard of narrow red ribbon. That was the big payment he received for giving up his share of the lan
d—from the Canadian border and from the islands, all of the way to the Cascades and all of the way south of Seattle—giving up millions and millions of acres of land. His share was one fishhook and one yard of red ribbon. Those were the kinds of presents the Indians received. Others received, maybe, mirrors and beads. You read it in the history of or recorded minutes in treaties such as in the Middle West—Colorado or somewhere—where big, big tribes would receive maybe a couple of yards of red ribbon or a looking glass. The Indians had never seen mirrors.
I have a string of beads that were given to the Indians at Tulalip about four or five years after the treaty. They were Hudson’s Bay trade beads. They are a pretty bead. They were brought by the English Hudson’s Bay traders. They are two shades of blue Venetian glass. They are good glass. They are not cheap. It is Venetian glass that came from Italy. The English brought tons of them to Alaska and all along here, but I don’t think any farther south than the Columbia River. Hudson’s Bay trade beads are a part of the Northwest now. You read in the history where they got glass beads. They were the first of the trade beads. A short time after that, another kind of bead came from China. They were called a “cranberry bead” (but they are not really red)—handblown—because they are perfectly round and none is exactly the same. The glass beads came from China; they were distributed by the Hudson’s Bay traders or any trader. They are also heavier than the others.
We went to federal court for more money and more land, for the land we gave up. The reservations in this area were not big enough, even if they received allotments, and many Indians were left landless and homeless because they didn’t receive allotments. We wanted more land, but it didn’t have to be eighty acres. We had an attorney from Seattle, Arthur Griffin, a kindhearted man. We had to collect money to pay the fees. We had dinners, and people gave what they could. Some of the old, old people just gave a dime or twenty-five cents. Some of those who were working gave one dollar or five dollars. They collected money time and time again. Our attorney had to appear in the Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The judges there ruled against us. They said there was no more land to add or to allot. I don’t know what else they said now, but we didn’t have a case.
Tulalip, From My Heart Page 24