Tulalip, From My Heart by Dover Harriette Shelton

Author:Dover, Harriette Shelton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2015-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

Treaty Day

In this period from 1908 to 1910, 1912, my father was trying to get permission to build a hall or a longhouse for the Indians so that they could gather. First, he asked the agent if he could have a building where the Indians could gather and have Indian dancing and singing so that the young Indians could hear things they had never heard. It was quite a radical thing for my father to be asking because it was absolutely forbidden for drums to be beaten, and Indian singing was against the agent’s rules. However, there were places on Whidbey Island, Hat Island, and Camano Island where Indians could gather, where they could have their own drums beating and remember the old times.

My father and a lot of the older Indians said they felt lost. I think the people who came from across the Atlantic Ocean or even the Pacific—even today or twenty years ago or sixty years ago—no matter where they came from: Germany, Norway, France, Spain—they still remember their own language. If you are alone with people who are speaking one language, you will learn it faster than if you are sitting in a classroom learning it out of a book and not speaking it. Many Indians no longer speak their own language, because those of us who were in school had to speak English. I mentioned before what an awful thrashing I got for speaking Indian.

I used to hear my father saying, “It’s too bad, because the Indian songs and the drumbeats are going to be forgotten.” Once in a while, my father would beat the drum in the evening and sing some of the chants, but not very often because if someone heard us they would report it.

He talked to a lot of the Indians first, then he went to the agent. There is a picture of a number of the Indians and my father; they were the group my father talked with; they were men from here. Of course, their wives were always there at their little meetings, and the women talked too. Men listened politely because there were some tribes where women were not allowed to even be in council meeting, but out here I always thought maybe it was because the weather was milder; it doesn’t get that hot in the summer or that cold in the winter. In the Middle West and other places like it, the weather is bitterly cold. They have deep, deep snow and blistering hot summers.

My father went to the agent and said, “We would like to begin again. We would like to have a day where we could all gather together—the older Indians—and have them sing the old songs and beat the drum. Could we do that?” Dr. Buchanan, who was the superintendent of the agency and also the boarding school, told my father, “No, you can’t. That is against the Department of Interior regulations, which say no drum beating and no Indian dancing.” Indians on other reservations were sent to jail for doing any of the Indian ceremonies.

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