Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Ella Higginson, Pacific Northwest Indigeneity, and National Identity

2024; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 56; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/19405103.56.3.02

1940-5103

Laura Laffrado,

Latin American and Latino Studies

In her celebrated novel Mariella, of Out-West (1902) as well as in other writings, Ella Higginson describes Pacific Northwest White supremacist treatment of regional indigenous groups.1 For decades, colonizing Whites had ruthlessly laid claim to vast, unceded lands inhabited by indigenous Salish from time immemorial. This land seizure was accompanied by settler appropriation of key aspects of Salish cultures that Whites touted as authentic to the region's and, by extension, the nation's identity. Sadly and perversely, the settlers' admiration of Salish culture existed concomitantly with their oppression of these Pacific Northwest indigenous groups. Indeed, the romanticization of indigeneity functioned as an important tool in the settler colonial project even as it celebrated the traditions of the Salish peoples.Settlers took paternalistic pride in Salish men who were said to be "the best of the Northwest war canoe speed kings." Eager to present these impressive skills beyond the Northwest, settlers arranged to "send three of the Lummi racing canoes to the Chicago World's exposition in 1893, with forty expert Lummi paddlers to give a series of racing exhibitions on Lake Michigan." Though "the financial depression killed the project," this planned event underscores the proprietary sense of settlers in the region regarding the expert Salish canoe racers.2 Settlers had witnessed such canoe races and then imagined them—so representative of the Pacific Northwest—on Lake Michigan. They took preliminary steps—arranging for canoes to be sent to Chicago, determining which Salish men would travel to Illinois, and dealing with the exposition's Chicago organizers—to make those exhibitions a reality. These Pacific Northwest Whites wished to showcase this regional indigeneity to a world audience. The exhibitions they planned would, on a national stage, promote the remote Pacific Northwest region as a distinct part of the nation; and would foreground Salish qualities that settlers valued and implicitly viewed as ideally White American characteristics. The effectively subjugated Salish would be presented as curiosities engaged in accomplished performances arranged by patronizingly proud Pacific Northwest Whites.Though settlers oppressed and made plain their raced bias against the Salish, at the same time, they valued the canoe racers and claimed regional kinship with them. In Chicago, the canoe racers would have exhibited talents honed through practice on Puget Sound, waters that Whites and indigenous peoples alike used and traveled on. Settlers sought an international audience for regional indigenous men and their impressive athleticism in order to position them as a vital part of the nation. Their strength, ability, and collaboration were admired by Whites, who, despite that admiration, often failed successfully to enact such qualities themselves. These qualities were part of the ideal, if not always part of the reality, of the settler nation's identity.As they observed these Salish characteristics in competitive intertribal games and war canoe races held on Puget Sound, Whites recognized the value such strength and proficiency brought to serious concerns of survival in the remote Pacific Northwest wilderness. They also respected the individual efforts as well as collaborative teamwork of indigenous men who competed in these events. The confident embodiment of these qualities by athletic, young indigenous men implicitly spoke to White desires regarding masculine ideals that had been part of shifting definitions of national identity since the early Republic.3It is within this context that Higginson confirms her participation in the American regionalist literary project by critically depicting this nexus of region and national identity. Though not an early settler-colonialist, Higginson, as a young child with her family, followed the Oregon Trail from Kansas in 1864 (late in the trail's usage), grew up in Oregon, and lived her adult life in Washington. As such, she occupied the position of a settler colonialist. Nonetheless, in her examination of White supremacist oppression of indigenous peoples and paternalistic liberal attitudes toward them, she resists racist representation and provides accurate descriptions of Salish practices. Though she sometimes fails in efforts to present a White progressive view of indigenous peoples and indigeneity, I argue here that she steadfastly strives to reject subjugation of and bias toward the Salish.This essay contains four sections: background of the arrival of the first settler colonialists in Whatcom—located on what Whites called Bellingham Bay, in the far northwestern corner of the mainland United States—and a recounting of the breakdown of initially friendly relations between settlers and indigenous peoples; discussion of Mariella, of Out-West's depiction of indigenous game contests; descriptions of July the Fourth celebrations and a scene from Higginson's story, "The Cuttin'-Out of Bart Winn," both portraying White anticipation of and delight in canoe race rivalries among indigenous men; and a concluding consideration regarding uses of languages to forward or interrupt settler colonialist efforts to (re)define the region.Mariella, of Out-West is one of the earliest published novels written by a White woman born west of the Mississippi. It was popular and critically acclaimed nationally and internationally. Reviews compared Mariella to novels by Austen, Tolstoy, and Zola, among others. A compelling drama of family struggle, romance, and cultural change, the novel features White Mariella Palmer, who grows to adulthood in the book. Mariella lives with her parents on "an isolated ranch in Puget Sound." This is "the land of forest and plain and desert; deep-flowing, majestic rivers and vast spaces swimming from snow-mountain to snow-mountain."4This land on which the Palmers live and which settler colonialists are vigorously clearing and feverishly building on is ancestral territory of Salish groups including the Lhaq'temish, the Lummi People, and the Nuxwsá7aq, the Nooksack Tribe. Though surviving accounts by Whites regarding indigenous peoples are often markedly biased against indigenous peoples, multiple White accounts concerning the Salish agree that "when the white folk first appeared on Bellingham Bay, the Lummi Indians bade them welcome and did all in their power to help them in their efforts to exist in a wild but bountiful region."5When settlers first arrived, the Salish population greatly surpassed that of the newcomers. For example, in 1858, the White population of what would become Whatcom County was estimated to be between one hundred and two hundred people. The Salish population "outnumbered the whites by at least twenty to one."6 Despite this significant difference in estimated numbers, in these early days, little conflict occurred between settlers and the Salish peoples whose lands they occupied. The Salish shared their rich hunting and fishing grounds; they often helped settlers who needed to travel by conveying them in canoes, the most effective means of transportation in the wilderness of dense trees. Whites recognized the Salish as expert "canoeists whose ability was of inestimable value to the early settlers" and who provided "valuable assistance at critical periods."7 Late in life, an early settler related crucial aid and protection provided by the Lummi, writing, "This easily explains why the old timers have a friendly feeling for the brave and friendly Lummi."8Yet that indispensable, often life-saving help was soon discounted in the region's White historical record. Lummi leader and master carver Joe Hillaire, whose grandfather had reluctantly signed the 1855 Treaty with the Duwamish, Suquamish, and Allied Tribes (also known as the Point Elliott Treaty), would later earnestly ask, "How could it be that Native people helped and supported newcomers to their land but that this fact had been overlooked? There were many stories of heroism and generosity, but they were not in the public record. In return, his own people had been treated criminally."9One primary reason for this shift in treatment was that as the nineteenth century had progressed, the number of caravans headed west greatly increased. Across the West, indigenous groups found that their lands and livelihoods were increasingly disrupted by caravans passing through their territories. Raids on wagon trains intensified, conducted by frustrated Natives attempting to protect their lands and ways of life. Michael L. Tate writes of this period that, for example, the Pawnee and Oceti Sakowin "were more interested in taking livestock from nonvigilant caravans than they were in killing white travelers. They . . . regarded these purloined horses and oxen as partial payment for the resources—grass, water, wild game—that these travelers were rapidly destroying."10The majority of these settlers were motivated by the first Homestead Act (1862), which offered what was characterized as free land, typically 160 acres, to those moving West and settling under certain conditions. However, this vast acreage awarded by the government was largely composed of traditional or treaty lands that had been and continued to be arbitrarily seized from indigenous groups through forced removal, establishment of Native reservations, war, and other forms of violence.11 Settlers who were on the move believed, with some validity, they were acting for reasons of economic security, land ownership, or patriotism. However, beyond any individual's understanding of their motivations, their actions were determined and overseen by distant, powerful White men with strong beliefs about U.S. land policies and who, from afar, were setting mass groups of people in motion as part of their ambitious efforts to shape the growing nation according to their dreams, fears, and raced prejudices.Unlike their earlier settler counterparts who reached Salish lands individually or in small groups, Whites arriving en masse on Salish lands in the later nineteenth century were often biased against the Salish.12 When they arrived, most had had little or no direct, extended experience with indigenous peoples of any group or region. Those who traveled the Oregon Trail had heard rumors about violence or had been engaged in unfriendly encounters with Apache, Crow, or other indigenous peoples on whose lands they were trespassing. By the time many of these Whites arrived on Salish lands, they were traumatized by their dangerous journey. In their trepidation and ignorance, they viewed Salish peoples through White supremacist lenses as inferior and untrustworthy. Settlers who arrived by rail after the 1869 completion of the first transcontinental railroad—which largely led to rail travel replacing journeys on the Oregon Trail—were likewise unable to comprehend that they were invading territory rightfully and long-occupied by the Salish.In their desires for land and a more secure economic life, Whites were unable to recognize themselves as what they were primarily: settler colonialists. As Alex Trimble Young and Lorenzo Veracini plainly state, "Settlers are colonists who come to stay. Their primary aim is to dispossess, displace, and destroy indigenous peoples."13 Whites viewed Salish resistance as unwelcome and interfering, obstacles to a stable life in the Pacific Northwest. The result, with few exceptions, was hostility toward indigenous groups. As Harriette Shelton Dover, a revered Snohomish tribal elder, later related, As the pioneers came along, they shot their guns at anything they saw, whether it was rabbits or any kind of bird. They shot them. If they saw Indians, they shot them, too. It was common when they saw one to shoot him. By the time they got out here to the coast, it was almost as though the waves and waves of pioneers had to stop to take a breath. . . . By the time they got out here, all they did was kill some Indians.Dover recalled her father's account of the rapid increase in settlement: "My father said the white people were 'just boiling in'; they came in waves of people across the continent. They 'boiled over' into this part of western Washington. They were all over. It was quite an astonishing time."14Dover's grandfather and other relatives were part of contentious discussions among indigenous peoples regarding the decision to sign the 1855 Treaty with the Duwamish, Suquamish, and Allied Tribes. They traveled to witness the treaty signing, which was legally binding for indigenous groups throughout Washington territory to the Canadian border. As Timothy Egan writes, "The bands who had lived by the rivers that drained the Cascade Mountains gave up two million acres for a small cash settlement, one blanket and four and a half yards of cloth per person."15Dover recounted her family's memories of disastrous results for Salish peoples in the years after the treaty was signed. One man complained bitterly to an elder who had signed the treaty that "There are more and more white people running all over, going crazy, picking up all of the land" and that "We have drunken white men going by here in row boats. They shoot at the Indians. There is no peace. There is nothing here anymore, and it is all your fault. It is what you did." The older man's reply echoed the stark concessions forced on indigenous groups who signed treaties with the United States government: "We did the best we could. We had no choice. We had to sign it and hope the white man would live up to it."16In the decades following the signing of the treaty with the Duwamish, Suquamish, and Allied tribes, hordes of arriving "white people brought diseases such as measles, tuberculosis, smallpox, and trachoma" which spread quickly. Dover reported, "So many Indian children . . . died of measles, and if they caught a cold, it turned into pneumonia and that turned to tuberculosis. When the pioneers came . . . the Indians caught colds and other illnesses they never had before."17In addition to being exposed to highly contagious diseases, Salish groups suffered from malnutrition and starvation after the 1858 implementation of Native American reservations in the region. As Dover recounted, before the reservations, Natives "didn't plant anything. We just harvested. Indians knew where to go for certain roots, berries, and all of the native foods. But when they moved to the reservations, then their hunting grounds were within the boundaries of the reservation and so starvation was a very great problem."18 Gregory Fields has written that "The Lummi Tribe was a large tribe whose ancestral territory covered an expansive area of coastal northern Washington extending into southwestern British Columbia."19 However, by 1885, an estimated census by Whites counted only two hundred seventy-five people on the Lhaq'temish (Lummi) Reservation. Taken together, the treatyi with the Duwamish, Suquamish, and Allied tribes, invasion of large numbers of settlers, and severe restrictions of the reservation system, led to violence, disease, and starvation for Salish groups: they were subjugated and colonized, their populations decimated.20Although Higginson's Mariella, of Out-West is set in the indigenous Salish region, all major characters in the novel are of Anglo-European descent. The novel's attention to social and economic struggles of the Palmer family maintains ethnocentrism and reinforces settler colonialism. Though the Palmers occupy Salish land, indigenous groups appear only in smaller portions of the text. However, Higginson's accurate references to Salish groups, precise descriptions of Lummi and Nooksack practices, and, as discussed below, use of the indigenous trade language Chinuk Wawa confirm her familiarity with these cultures. The exclusion of Salish material from Mariella is not due to Higginson's lack of knowledge.While Mariella does not center on indigenous subjects, it does infrequently provide a detailed, factually correct focus on indigenous practices. Higginson's observations of indigenous practices stand in contrast to what Anna E. Beaudry describes as typical "narrow representations of Indigenous tribes in early American works."21 Higginson's writing in sections of Mariella shows that despite Pacific Northwest White supremacist oppression of Salish groups, significant aspects of Salish cultures were nevertheless favored by Whites and advertised by them as fundamental parts of the region and nation.For example, chapter 31 of Mariella is devoted to a gambling event held by indigenous groups. Throughout the chapter, Mariella provides detailed knowledge and descriptions of regional indigenous peoples and practices. She offers an account of the games to her suitor, Mr. Leaming, who is unfamiliar with the event: "The Lummis and the Nooksacks are camped down on the beach; they are going to have a big sing-gamble game. It begins at nine o'clock and lasts all night. I've always wished to see one, but there has never been one near enough for me to go."Though Mariella has not witnessed sing-gamble games, she has amassed much knowledge about such indigenous gatherings. "They'll be having canoe races now. The Alaskas may come down. Their canoes are beautifully carven," she recounts as she and Leaming move through "the excited crowd" (299).Higginson's extensive familiarity with regional indigenous practices forms the center of this scene. Detailed descriptions of indigenous game players, types of sticks, chanting, and game rules are focal points of the chapter. The Whiteness that otherwise dominates the novel recedes almost completely. White people in the crowd are mentioned only briefly, while Mariella and Leaming appear almost solely so that Higginson may use their presence to describe this indigenous event to readers. Once Mariella and Leaming reach "the open space wherein the Indians sat," they, too, become almost invisible to readers (300). Though racialized language such as "barbaric," "weird music with its fierce perfect rhythm," and "beating, chanting, and wild gesticulations" are used in this scene, Higginson otherwise spurns stereotypical descriptions of indigenous subjects found in most earlier American literature (302, 304).22 She instead shares her sharply engaged observations of what for her are singular pastimes of indigenous peoples on whose land she has lived for years: A great fire was burning redly, and on each side of it a long board was laid. Behind the board the opposing players half knelt, half squatted, seven on each side. Sharpened cedar sticks, to serve as counters, were set in the ground between the boards and the fire. The game was played with alder-wood sticks, three inches long and an inch in diameter. Some of these were peeled entirely; around the middle of others remained rings of the silvery bark. (300)Indigenous men become the focus here. They are proficient, smart, and talented. They strategically bet on "canoes, ponies, watches, clothing" that indicate material goods they value (300, 301). Higginson's descriptions remain precise once the games begin: Two players on one side picked up the alder sticks. Each took two sticks, one smooth, the other belted with bark. Holding these in his hands, each man passed them rapidly from one hand to the other under a coat lying across his knees; then, above the coat, in full view of the guessers. The other Indians on that side began a loud beating on the boards with sticks, and a guttural, monotonous chant—in which "hi-ah, hi-ah" seemed to be uttered incessantly, the voice rising on the first syllable and falling on the last. (301)We see the men, witness their skilled actions, and hear drumming and voices of indigenous men who are not playing the games. Indigenous men in this chapter have nothing to do with Whites, who are almost entirely unseen and unheard.Likewise, though indigenous women depicted here are not as centralized as indigenous men, they also occupy a fundamental position. Indigenous women are multiply distinguished from indigenous men. The men are in front, the women seated behind them. The men are "naked to the waist," the women "scarlet-blanketed." The men chant, laugh, and yell, while the women are "stolidly watching the game, their faces revealing neither triumph nor disappointment" (302). Indigenous men play and shout; indigenous women in their stillness, enveloping clothing, and impassive faces convey authoritative dignity.While settlers who flock to the games are strictly on the margins of the event and the chapter, their avid attendance at and relishing of the games from the sidelines is key to tracking White embracing of certain aspects of regional indigeneity as authentically American. That is, the sing-gamble games are not merely generic entertainment for diversion-starved settlers leading hard lives in a remote area of the nation. Rather, every aspect of the games dramatically provides them with the unusual opportunity to watch indigenous peoples employ their significant talents in a community setting as though Whites are not present—as though they do not exist. After all, sing-gamble games had occurred long before settlers arrived in the region. Because of their marginalized status, because these are games that Whites have not played and do not play, settlers are able to observe indigenous peoples demonstrating expert physical prowess, keen competition, and strategic wagering. This regional opportunity to witness these remarkable qualities enacted by the Salish draws settlers to the games, excites them, and keeps them present throughout the night. In these scenes, Higginson dramatizes local indigeneities and White response to them. Higginson's depiction of settler admiration of these qualities implicitly gestures toward White desire to integrate them as part of American character and experience.These indigenous performances in front of largely White crowds make plain the relatively peaceful relations between settlers and the Salish at this point in the late-nineteenth century. A variety of factors enabled this co-existence. Most notably, decades earlier, Pacific Northwest indigenous peoples had been confined to reservations, which allowed settlers to monitor their locations and behaviors. Some Salish who lived off reservations were employed by settlers who "welcomed [their labor], as it could be secured at a very low price." Other Salish living off the reservations were condemned by Whites who complained that these Salish had "no fences but keep horses and stock running at large which is a great annoyance to settlers who are anxious for their removal." As a local historian later wrote, "Thus while some settlers were eager that all Indians should be confined to the reservation and spoke bitterly of them, others were glad to give them employment and lived on good terms with them."23 It is this mixed, co-existing community of indigenous peoples and settlers who attend the sing-gamble games for shared entertainment, gambling, whiskey, and other diversions.While Mariella as a whole is not about indigenous peoples and practices, this chapter is. Here, Higginson does not depict indigenous peoples in service of the novel's Whiteness. Instead, she details these indigenous peoples and their actions because she recognizes that they are, indisputably, foundational elements of the Pacific Northwest region and thus that they belong in her novel. In so doing, Higginson achieves three things. She advances early-twentieth-century White understandings regarding the continued presence and existing cultures of indigenous groups. She valuably inscribes this vital indigenous diversity into the body of American literature as part of a national literary identity. And, central to my argument in this essay, she dramatizes qualities of regional indigenous peoples that settlers view as admirable, depicting these qualities in action in front of a White audience. In this way, Higginson presents approval of certain characteristics of regional indigeneity that correspond with White imaginings of an ideal national identity.Along with portrayals of Salish sing-gamble games and White responses to them, Higginson concentrated her literary attention on popular canoe races among Pacific Northwest indigenous men. Each year, hundreds of Salish arrived in town with racing canoes to participate in July Fourth celebrations, particularly the culminating canoe race between Lummi and Tulalip peoples on Puget Sound. As one local historian wrote, from 1890 to 1900 Whites from across the region gathered to watch "Indian war canoe races, between trained teams of rival tribes; such an event combined all the elements of speed, skill, fierce competition, tumult, shouting and a certain indefinable wild novelty to excite observers and partisans to a high pitch of enthusiasm."24 Like sing-gamble games, the canoe races drew crowds that did not participate, but rather admired and were excited by the striking talents of competing indigenous men. As with the plan to showcase such expertise of indigenous men at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, these Fourth of July celebrations also mixed nationhood with the masculine vigor of sport to indigenize Pacific Northwest regional identity.Before the canoe races, attendees could experience merry-go-round rides, games of chance, speeches, and honoring of prominent citizens. Programs "included a thirteen-gun salute to our first thirteen colonies, a grand parade with a Goddess of Liberty float, a fife and drum corps and bands, contests with hoses, greased poles, and heavy hammers," followed by fireworks.25 For the 1890 celebration, Higginson was named Poet of the Day and held an honored place on stage as her poem "The Sea and the Voice" was read aloud.26Despite these other civil, patriotic, and competitive diversions, the major events of the widely anticipated, three-day celebrations were Salish sports, especially canoe races. As one White observer wrote: The Indians, with their baseball team, foot racers, fast ponies and racing canoes, always furnished the bulk of the programs. Early in the week they would begin to arrive in their canoes, with their entire families . . . and camp out on the beach in tents. Some years their beach camp would cover the whole waterfront around Whatcom Creek and must have contained a population of four or five hundred total. . . . [T]hey furnished the final, culminating event in the canoe race between the different reservation entrants. . . . This race was always a thriller, fought gamely to the last inch.27Each year, the races drew large crowds of Whites. During the Fourth of July celebration in 1886, "the chief feature was a canoe race between crews of ten from the Lummi and Tulalip Indian tribes. Tulalip won the exciting race." The following year "the canoe race in the evening, again won by Tulalip, was said to be the most exciting event of the celebration."28That enthralled throng consisted almost exclusively of settler colonialists, whose efforts regarding and attitudes toward the Salish were, under most other circumstances, oppressive and superior.Higginson attended and attended to these popular canoe races. Her close observation of races appears in frequent references to and detailed descriptions of them in her writings. In her story "The Cuttin'-Out of Bart Winn" (1896), the main female character tells a newcomer, "The Alaska Indians are just comin' back from hop-pickin' down around Puyallup an' Yakima an' Seattle, an' they alwus stop here an' have races with the Lummies [sic] and the Nooksacks."30 Higginson then describes the race's beginning: The long, narrow, richly-painted and carven canoe slid down gracefully into the water. Eleven tall, supple Alaskan Indians, bare to the waist, leaped lightly to their places. They sat erect, close to the side of the boat, holding their short paddles perpendicularly. At a signal the paddles shot straight down into the water, and with a swift, magnificent straining and swelling of muscles in the powerful bronze arms and bodies, were pushed backward and withdrawn in lightning strokes. The canoe flashed under the viaduct and appeared on the other side, and a great shout belched from thousands of throats. (150–51)Descriptions here are sharply precise: the canoe is long, narrow, painted, carved, and slides gracefully; the paddles are short and held perpendicularly. But it is the portrayals of bodies of indigenous men that reveal received notions of White supremacy. Though Higginson describes the men with characteristic detail—"tall," "supple," "erect," "leaping lightly," with "swift, magnificent straining and swelling of muscles in the powerful bronze arms and bodies"—they are strikingly faceless, silent, and nameless. In these descriptions, the men make no sounds. Their faces are undescribed. Each man is interchangeable with the others. Higginson, with her close observational abilities and gift for exact language, nonetheless fails to identify these men as more than their generic physicalities. She is unable to withstand the White cultural compulsion to exoticize the men's "bronze bodies."This failure is an exception to Higginson's frequent public condemnations of oppression of indigenous peoples and her sharp disagreement with increasing White supremacist views across the region and nation. For example, in her 29 May 1904, column "Clover Leaves," a weekly feature in the Seattle Daily Times newspaper at the turn into the twentieth century, she referenced a recent Oregon land sale, resolutely denouncing it and the United States government's reprehensible treatment of Pacific Northwest indigenous groups: "Another Indian reservation, the Grand Ronde, is to be taken away from the Indians and sold. . . . The poor Indians can be persuaded to consent to almost anything that is asked of them . . . and the way we have treated them is a national disgrace." Although the language she uses here reflects