Francis and I broke up, and I told him to get out of my house and stay out. I was surprised I got up enough “steam” and packed all of his clothes. He came home one day, and I said, “Here are your things. Your things are all packed.” I had his other suit and overcoat. “Take these things and get out of my house.” He was quite astounded because he stood there, and he said, “All right. All right. You just remember I am going to pay you back for this.” I said, “All you have to do is walk out of the same door you walked in. Don’t ever speak to me again.” He did call up. I told him, “I am not asking for money or anything. Don’t speak to me.” It was a big shock for me because in February 1938 my father died, and then I broke up my marriage. It was breaking up anyway.
I thought about it and I finally did come home. We had Wayne. It didn’t make any difference to Wayne. My father was the man Wayne knew. I think that is why Wayne is a different kind of person. Quite a lot of the young people and boys who were his age grew up with no father. Until he was ten years old, my father was a big influence on him. Wayne is a good public speaker. He seemed to learn a lot from my father, but William, my younger son, never knew my father. I think William is a nice person too.
About every two weeks we (Wayne and I) came up here to visit my folks. It was a long drive—by then he was asleep. He was just a little boy going to school. Then when we were home, he saw my father every day. Having my older boy seemed to complete my marriage; how I felt about it, anyway, but I still was not happy even though my father was an understanding person. Wayne stayed with my folks so much it didn’t upset him for us to divorce. He was already with my folks quite a bit every weekend, since he came home with them on Friday evening. My parents—both of them—were there to pick him up coming out of school at Mukilteo, where Wayne went. On Monday morning, they brought him to school. He had a lot of attention.
I finally got a divorce during the war years, World War II. He got married again. He married a white woman he was already living with. Ten or eleven years after I was divorced, I met George Dover.
So after my father died I had one son, and I came home to stay with my mother. There was no income. In the hospital when my father was sick, he said he was sorry to leave my mother without anything. I remember my mother took his hand and said, “Don’t be sorry about anything and don’t worry.”
My father was an Indian, and he was not able to buy life insurance, although he tried to buy some several times. He tried in his early thirties. He went to Seattle to talk to an attorney about getting a life insurance policy. He was always turned down because he was an Indian. They wouldn’t insure an Indian. So when my father was dying, that was one of the things he worried about.
I keep saying I am going to write to Haskell Indian Institute where Henry Roe Cloud was the superintendent, because he took some of my father’s letters with him after he was here to talk with him. I thought I would write to the agency and just ask if they knew where those letters are. Those letters were probably burnt up a long time ago, but I could ask on the slim chance that Henry Roe Cloud might have left them at the agency. All I do is talk about it. Henry Roe Cloud got sick and died suddenly. We got a message from the agency that Mr. Roe Cloud had died after my father died. I used to be over there every other day. That’s where the post office was, and so I would walk over there. Everybody did. Our newspaper came by mail and we would pick up our newspapers even though they were already a day or two old. So I would be at the agency office and talk with different ones and then walk home again. That’s where I heard that Mr. Roe Cloud had died.
On the Board of Directors
I was on the Board after my father died. Bill Steve and some others said I ought to try and get on the Board. I thought, I don’t know who would vote for me. I don’t know if I would vote for myself. Anyway, I got on. Quite a lot of Indians voted for me. There were two other candidates who got more votes than I did. One was Lawrence Williams. All of the Indians thought the world of him. He is Herman’s father. We had one woman before, in 1936 or 1937—Edith Parks. She told me several years after that the Board members were not quite rude, but they didn’t really listen to her. I didn’t say much of anything because I liked Edith. Whatever I said, the members of the Board listened courteously to me. They followed through on whatever few thoughts I had on something.
I was on the Board of Directors from 1938 until I resigned in 1942. Then I was back on in 1944, 1945, and 1946, and got off for good in 1950 or 1951.
We met at least once a month. The constitution said the Board should meet on Saturday afternoon or Saturday morning. We met on Saturday afternoon, and we were through with our business by 5 or 6 o’clock. Now the Board meets at 9 A.M. and they talk, talk, talk. They break for noon lunch and talk some more through to about 5 o’clock, if they are lucky, since they can still be talking at 7 o’clock in the evening—tribal business and problems got bigger and bigger each year.
When I was on the Board in 1939, quite a number of white people were already living along the beach, such as Mission Beach. Of course, the tribe had it surveyed into lots. I don’t know how big those lots were. Then they surveyed the inner bay here, Tulalip Bay. I think somewhere else they had lots, but those especially at Mission Beach were of interest to us. In 1939 those people along Mission Beach were right on the beach, with their houses; some of them just started as a summer home with only three rooms: a big living room, a big front veranda, and maybe a couple of bedrooms and a small kitchen. We never said anything about the amount they paid for their annual leases. We talked about it once in a while, but for somebody like me, it was a totally new topic. For people like Bill Steve and some other people, they already knew quite a bit about it, because those white people had lived there for several years. I don’t know where they paid unless they paid into the agency.
Another topic we discussed was the Priest Point beach. A lot of people were living on the beach. The Tribe talked about it briefly, because we had other big problems, too. But, according to what we always understood, Indians owned the beach land on this reservation. Those people, the white people, brought in fill, and the houses are built on the fill. Several of us went out to look, and you could see where it is filled in; it is a beach, a point. The Tribes should get revenue from the beach area, but it never did. When that allotment was sold—it belonged to Charles Hillaire—a real-estate dealer in Marysville bought it. He is affiliated with Duryee, a real estate company in Everett. He bought the allotment; then he got the beach and just went ahead and sold the beach land. I was going to go out to the courthouse and check the county map. It shows every square foot of land and who it belongs to, but we just never went ahead with Priest Point. I imagine it would be a big lawsuit, and we probably wouldn’t win. I don’t know. Priest Point was one problem.
The area we call “the agency school land” is three hundred acres along Tulalip Bay. Tulalip Mission School—the Catholic Mission School—and Tulalip Indian School, across the Bay, were located there. It was where the Indians wanted the school to be built when it was established in 1857. When I was on the Board in 1940, we asked about the land, since the school was no longer there. It was just vacant buildings.4 The Tribes thought that they could survey it into lots and lease it out and have some tribal income. At that time, we had a big fight with the agent. He said, “It doesn’t belong to you.” He came from Portland; they called him the “area director.” We talked about a number of things. I remember he got up from the tables and slammed out the door. The last thing he said before he slammed the door was, “It isn’t yours. It never was, and it never will be.”5
Well, the three hundred acres was just sitting there. Finally, it came to the Tribes without any warning. Nobody said anything. We got the notice that the land was ours. Before that, while the land was just sitting there, the Boys, Girls, and the Club Buildings—those two- or three-story buildings—were torn down by some white people. I think some of the cottages on Tulalip Bay, on Mission beach, were built from the lumber. It was g
ood lumber. It was what they called “old growth.” I don’t know if any of the Indians got any of the lumber, there might have been one or two, to build a house when the Board got it. It cost the Board quite a bit to have the land surveyed into lots. I think there are fifty lots.
Tribal Enrollment
In 1951 I was secretary of the Board of Directors. I was chief tribal judge of the Tulalip Court of Tribal Offences, Tulalip Indian Court, and then I got sick and I was in the Cushman Indian Hospital in Tacoma. When I got out, we worked on our tribal roll. We didn’t have an actual tribal roll; we only had what the agency called a census roll. So we had the Board of Directors and people who came to our March annual meeting appointed a committee of fifteen people to go over the census roll. There were over five hundred names listed of people who were supposed to be Tulalip Indians, but quite a number of those—two or three hundred—were not. They just happened to come to the boarding school, and I guess whoever the clerk was thought, “Oh well, just put Tulalip Tribe.”6 Some of them came from Suquamish, and some of them came from Blaine.
We took about two hundred names off the list, and then we sent the roll to Washington, D.C. It came right back. They said, “You have to give reasons why you took off the names.” A woman came from Washington, D.C., and two or three people from the Portland office, and we had several meetings.
The roll goes family by family. Sebastian Williams and I worked on the roll. Williams is a common name around here for a lot of Indians, but there were not many Williamses on the roll. There were a number of Andersons, Sokalofskys, Skoogs. Guess who that is? My niece. She was my brother Robert’s little girl. She lives in Minneapolis, and she married a Skoog. We have the names of her four children on our roll. Sub (Sebastian Williams) said, “Skoog?” Then, he didn’t say anything for a few minutes, and said, “What is happening to our tribe anyway? Skoog? We have Duplisises, Skoogs.” He named some others.
Of course, he knew I was thinking about it, and we talked about it. Sebastian was quite a leader here. But that is what is happening to our tribe. They have all kinds of names. Someday we are going to have to get the tribe to vote what degree of Indian blood we recognize for our tribe, our tribal roll. There is no requirement for the amount of Snohomish tribal blood someone had to have in order to enroll. Some tribes say what blood quantum members should have: any person who is less than one-quarter Indian is not Indian if they are one-quarter Indian and three-quarters white. But if it is less than that, say, they are one-eighth Indian and are nearly all white, they are not Indian. I think Wayne and some of the others are going to talk about it. We are going to have a big “upset” if we ever come to that and specifically say anybody less than one-quarter Indian is not Indian. We have some people on our roll who are one-eighth Indian, and they know that is not Indian.
I told Wayne, some months ago, “It is too bad I can’t drive anymore. I would like to see that settled, and have it in our tribal constitution—that anybody who is less than one-quarter Tulalip Indian is not Indian. Of course, some of the Indians will want to start a big, big fight. Some of the younger Indians aren’t going to accept it. One of the attorneys asked in Judge Boldt’s court if Tulalip had a tribal roll. We really don’t. Our list has lots of names on it of people who just happen to work here at the agency or the school, or who lived here for a while but were not born here, aren’t members. I know, of course, it will be a big knock-down, drag-out fight. My niece in Minneapolis, Robert’s daughter, has grandchildren now. She said she knows her great-grandchildren could be eligible for enrollment, but, certainly, they are not going to be Indian.
Indian Health
We talked about Indian health often, but we never got anyplace. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, there was a big change. I will always remember him. There was some money then for Indian health, but the hunger and sickness went on through the thirties and forties.
Before the Roosevelt Administration, if anything happened to any Indians—you were a student in school, boarding school—they told you to stay home, because the doctor at the agency could tell you were going to die. They sent boys and girls home, and the next year you wouldn’t see them again. If they came from Lummi at Bellingham, Swinomish at La Conner, we asked about different girls we were friendly with who had gone home, and the girls from there said, “She died.” The boys and girls who went home didn’t live more than two or three months. They were already dying in the school.
Indian parents went to the agent to complain and said, “Our children are dying, and we want them to have a doctor’s care.” Usually there was a doctor at any agency, but sometimes he refused to look at Indians. He took care of the white employees: the superintendent, an assistant superintendent, a chief clerk, and other clerks. In about 1940 or 1950, our agency was small. There was an agent, a chief clerk, a farmer, and a forester. The agent had an assistant and a road supervisor who had a couple of assistants.
As I say, since President Franklin Roosevelt there has been better hospitalization and medical care for Indian people. The only people who had medical care were the boys and girls who went to the Indian boarding schools. The doctor didn’t go out on the reservation. Once in a while, the doctor went out on horseback and looked at somebody who got hurt in a logging camp. They broke an arm or a leg. Indian health always bothers me because of my sister dying of tuberculosis in 1917.
Some of our Indian people were taken to Cushman Indian Hospital, now Cascade Vascular Diagnostic Center, in Tacoma. Years ago the buildings there were wooden frame buildings. Now Cushman is a modern brick building. It is no longer a hospital. It was abolished in the 1950s when the Republicans elected Dwight Eisenhower. A number of Indian hospitals all over the United States were closed. Indians were sent home, or in Seattle they were put in the Public Health Hospital.
Health care and hospitalization for Indians was just nonexistent. The Indians just stayed home and had no medical care. I was talking one day about the lack of medical care and hospitalization to a group of about twenty-five women from a church in Everett. On several occasions, I met with women from churches in Marysville and Everett. They came here to discuss problems of Indian people and, in many cases, impressions. One of the women in the group said her sister died of tuberculosis, and there was no care for her either. She didn’t think I had any reason to be complaining about it.
I told her, “I have no doubt a lot of white people died of tuberculosis way back then, but the white people had one very important thing that the Indians never had and that was freedom of choice. The white people could go anywhere in the United States that they wished to go. All they needed was enough money to get there. People could move from the East Coast and all of the way to California or Washington. They had freedom of choice and the Indians did not.”
Right now we have Indian Health programs within the BIA, and people like me have Medicare. I often wonder how the doctor’s bookkeepers keep track of us. I would like to see complete medical care and hospitalization for American Indians. I think we should have it. Most of the years of my life we didn’t have complete medical care.
Alcoholism has been the curse of the Indians. A group of women used to come to my house to see me every month from a church in Marysville to see our Indian collection. One of the things they talked about was drunk Indians. One of them said, “They’re always drunk and falling around the streets in Marysville.” Drinking has been our problem for a long time. It is for many people, but it seems it is worse for Indians because, I think, it is more noticeable for us. If Indians are under the influence of alcohol and drunk somewhere, they are very noticeable. A few times I have seen Indians really far out on alcohol in some of the big cities. I am always sorry, because I know they have had to meet a lot of prejudice.
I told her, “Sometime, even if it’s hard, look at one of those young men you see on the street. He is a young man. He is staggering around in that part of town. He can hardly walk, he is so drunk. If you try to talk to him, he will look at
you, and it will be a while before he will see who you are.” I used to try and talk to one of these men sometimes. I tried to share a couple of dollars with him. I told him, “Will you take this?” He is an Indian, although he doesn’t look like much of an Indian.
Let me tell you about that one. Jack. Absolutely so drunk he couldn’t stand up. He was drafted in World War II and went overseas. He was in the U.S. Army—the first and earliest army units to land in North Africa. They fought the Germans when they retreated with General Erwin Rommel, who was one of the famous German generals. He was in North Africa, where his army surrendered, and that is where Jack was. They moved their outfit, or what was left of it, from North Africa because so many of them were killed. He landed in Sicily with the U.S. Army because they were going to Italy, into France, and on into Germany. They were just “slogging” along and fighting all of the way because the Germans were in Sicily and Italy too. They landed there, and a number of them got too far ahead because they were all moving ahead, carrying guns and loaded with shells so that they could hardly walk. They had something to eat, not much, what they could carry, what soldiers carry. But, anyway, he was captured by the Germans.
After about two months, his letters stopped coming. Then the Department of the Army in Washington, D.C., notified his parents here that he was missing, and they thought that he was a prisoner of war. Every day the mail came in, and every day his mother and father came to the post office. They thought there would be a letter from their boy. I was postmaster here—or postmistress, some people would call it.7 A letter finally came from the War Department. His mother just kind of “folded up.” She wasn’t well, and she died a short time later. He had a younger sister—a pretty girl. After losing her mother and her brother, not knowing where he was, caused her to “fold up,” and she died too. So that left only his father. Jack was a prisoner of war in Germany for two or three years. Long after he came back, he talked about it. He never really stopped crying. He would land in a tavern and say, “I kept writing to my mother. I didn’t know she was dead.”
Tulalip, From My Heart Page 29