Copyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle
CHIEF KITSAP, FINANCIER
BY
JOSEPH BLETHEN
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
When young Johnny Kitsap, having made up his mind that his clerkship in the reservation agency did not offer the chance of advancement to which the son of a Puyallup chief and a graduate of Carlisle was entitled, applied for work to the President of the Elliott Bay National Bank, it was not an act of such presumption as some might suppose. No one, to be sure, when he saw the high cheek-bones, wiry black hair brushed pompadour, dull brown eyes, and copper complexion, could possibly have been deceived by Johnny's well-cut clothes, clean linen, and good English. Nor did Johnny affect these things as a disguise or as signifying that, in adopting the apparel and speech of the white man, he had renounced his nationality—had, to all intents and purposes, become a dead Indian. Quite to the contrary, what secured Johnny his position in the bank was precisely that, besides having a pleasant manner and civilized ways, he was so manifestly an exceptionally live Indian.
The Elliott Bay National's famous line of "red paper" had paid from the start. When, some years before, the proposition to loan old Peter Coultee, a full blood of the Puyallup reservation, was laid before the directors, they had laughed, but, like true Western men, they wanted to know the details. What they learned was that old Peter Coultee owned one hundred and sixty acres of fine reservation land, well stocked and highly cultivated; that his crop of hops was fast ripening; that he needed money to pay the hop-pickers of his own tribe; and that hop-house receipts in the White River Valley were as good as wheat receipts in the Palouse. This put the matter in other, at least, than a sneering light, and one of the laughing directors offered to visit the reservation and make a full report. The result was that old Peter Coultee got his loan, and that this turned out to be the first of many others, both to himself and to his tribesmen, and all of much mutual profit alike to white man and red.