“Among the old Indians and those who have not been educated, these old customs prevail, but with the younger generation who have attended school, the habits of civilization are followed in a degree. The Makah Indian agency was established in June, 1862, with Henry A. Webster United States Indian agent. I was appointed teacher and superintendent of the government building, and remained until August, 1866. My first pupil was a bright little boy about nine years old named James Claplanhoo, the hereditary chief of the tribe. Jimmie remained with me all the time I was on the reservation, and then went to live with the Indian agent as cook until he was old enough to marry, and then he married one of the schoolgirls, Mary Ann Charliquoa, and has a family of boys and girls. His eldest son, Jorji James, is captain of the sealing schooner Deeahks, and his eldest daughter, Minnie, is married to Chistoqua Peterson, one of the smartest young men in the tribe, a graduate of the Indian school, who owns the sealing schooner Columbia and is a regular trader.
“The Makahs are a self-supporting and thrifty tribe. When I went among them to reside officially, the largest vessels they had were canoes dug out of cedar logs, and they were the most expert surfmen I have seen. I advised them to get larger vessels and the government encouraged them, and in 1888 the United States marshal sold to Chistoqua Peterson, Peter Brown and John Tainsub, all Makahs, the seized schooner Anna Beck, of sixty tons gross measurement, which they named the James G. Swan. In 1880 Peter bought the old schooner Letitia and sold her to some Vancouver island Indians and bought the fine schooner Champion, which was lost on Vancouver island. James Claplanhoo bought the pilot boat Lottie, but she was wrecked. He now owns the schooners Deeahks and Emmet Felitz. Lighthouse Jim owns the C. C. Perkins. Yokum, the storekeeper owns the Matilda. The Puritan and August and several smaller sloops and boats are owned by others. During all the ‘hard times’ this thrifty tribe has made a comfortable living by sealing, whaling and fishing for halibut, cod and other varieties. Several of these Indians, such as Capt. James Claplanhoo, Chistoqua Peterson, Peter Brown, Shobid Hunter and others, have comfortable homes like white people, and Kobal runs the only hotel at Neah, which now looks like a little watering village, but the old Indians and those who live in villages on the coast prefer their large wooden lodges, and it will take another generation or more before they will abandon their old customs and adopt the white man’s style of living. But they show a degree of industrious thrift which could be profitably emulated by croakers and idlers in all our towns.”
CHAPTER XXXI
FOOTPRINTS OF UNKNOWN TRAVELERS
Antedating the first arrivals of white people to the Sound in the 40’s, were found in various parts of the country numbers of things showing that white men or civilized or half-civilized people of some color had visited the country. One instance particularly was the remains or indications of a settlement or camp at the mouth of the Duwamish river. As nearly as good judgment could fix it, this camp must have been located at the beginning of the present century. It is not improbable that at some very early day, some navigator bold built a new one or repaired very materially a sailing vessel at that place. Stumps of trees that showed they had been cut for scores of years were found, and the trees themselves gone; strong proof that whoever stopped there did so for a purpose, executed it and went on their way, leaving nothing behind by which their identity could be made known to those who came after them. The Indians had no recollection or tradition of those who cut the trees, though it is not improbable that some one of the early navigators shortly subsequent to Vancouver tarried there for a time.
Another find of later years was the uncovering of a strange and very old cave, an old tomb in one of the public streets of Seattle.
There was not line or marble, nor carving, trinket, old coin nor scroll to tell its history, to name its day. It was way back in the palmy days of 1872 when the old tomb was unearthed and once more saw the light. The toilers of that day were grading down to the virgin soil and carrying Front street to the north. In their path at a spot opposite where the Frye block now stands and just north of Marion street stood a small mound. It must be cut down, and cut down it was; and the dirt carried to a distance south of the present crossing at Marion street and dumped into a small ravine or depression through which an old log-run threaded its course to the higher ground. In the digging of the mound the workmen laid bare the old tomb; and such a tomb! In the center of the mound it was about five feet from the surface. Built up for two or three feet with four walls of stone, boulders from here and there, but in a way showing rudimentary knowledge of architecture and design. Inside was the half-mummy, half-skeleton of some one unknown. Filling all of the space of the sarcophagus was beach sand, apparently having been procured with great care and toil. Such was the story of the unknown dead. It astonished the local historian of that day as it is still the wonder of those same historians who are yet living here today. The old tomb was at least 100 yards from the then high tide line, and the carefully gathered white beach sand had most certainly been carried over the intervening distance from sea to grave. Some joints of the skeleton were decayed, others not. The skull was perfect and what caused the local historian to wonder, and wonder, and wonder again, was that the poll of the skeleton was not flattened. For 20 years after the whites settled here, and for times out of mind before that the Indians of the Sound had universally flattened the skull. But then it was not Indian, why? Because the Indians said it was not. Old Kitsap’s people said it was not, and the traditions and customs of all the local Indians disproved such a proposition. It was on the edges of the high bluffs around the bay, just underneath the grass roots and tufts that clung to the very edges of the bluffs, where the Indian dead were buried, had always been buried, and even up to the present winter days of 1895, when an unusually heavy rainfall may occur, the bones of the dead Indians may be found at odd spots along the bluffs. They never put their dead under ground. The local historian has two probable theories for the cave. In Vancouver’s first explorations of the Sound his ships anchored off Blakeley rocks; after coursing Admiralty inlet Lieu. Puget took a boat’s crew and paddled away even to a greater distance up the Sound. Naturally they would explore such a pretty bay as that around the rim of which the Queen City so proudly sits, and it might have been that one of his men died and was buried here. Lewis and Clark’s men or some early explorers may have ventured down the valley of the Duwamish river in the dawn of the present century. Trees had been cut and the stumps were still standing that marked the sites of the early camping grounds, and axes had been used in the cutting. It might have been one of those explorers bold, died and was buried in the stone grave so carefully arranged to preserve the bones placed within. But these are only theories and the wonder of the little mound will perhaps forever remain a riddle unsolved.