Index Historical Society Vol. 14 – Issue 06

This item is reproduced from the Index Eagle under the Index Historical Society section, June 1997 with permission.

Copyright © Dr. David A. Cameron. Reproduction prohibited without express written permission from the author.
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In poking through the census records for Snohomish County for the year 1870, I was struck by the number of women in the list. Actually, it was the number of Indian woman! White man couples and the total lack of single, adult White women in the county.

Total population was around a thousand, but half those were living on the Tulalip Reservation and therefore excluded. I counted 24 adult White females listed as “keeping house”. The number of Indian women was 53! There also were another four women who were classified as half Indian.

Among the leading families, over half were of mixed race. These included Jacob and Mary Fowler of Mukilteo. He was listed as a merchant and was the co-founder of the town. in Lowell the oldest settler was Reuben Lowe, whose wife was Kitty. Listed as “saloon keeper”, his actual talent lay in running the county’s only bordello — stocked with Indian women.

George Preston and his wife Peggy ran the store at the mouth of the Snohomish River where Everett later would develop. John and Susan Elwell pioneered between Monroe and Sultan. Salem Woods and Adelaide are founders of the Woods Creek and prairie area. James Hatt and Susan gave their name to the slough where the Stillaguamish River now enters the Sound, while Gardiner and Polly Goodrich dominated the Warm Beach to Stanwood area. Polly drove off a group of her fellow tribesfolk and defended her husband after he logged and burned the Indians’ cemetery on his land claim. Goodrich later set her aside and married a White woman, as did some others.

Women definitely were scarce on this frontier, as travel was extremely difficult until the coming of the railroads to Tacoma in the middle of the next decade. Eldridge Morse wrote in his 1876 centennial history of the county that only three White women ever had died in the county: Mrs. A. Peden accidentally drowning at the head of Ebey Slough, Mrs. M. W. Packard the previous December, and his own wife, who passed away in March.

Overwhelmingly, the population of the county off the reservation was White, male, and single. Most were farmers, loggers, and laborers, with another 14 working in the Sultan area as gold miners. Three men were Chinese, all cooks. The Hudson’s Bay Company had employed Iroquois Indians, Hawaiians, and French Canadians, but there never had been a post here, and the only veteran of the company to claim land had been Peter Goutre. That was at Tulalip before the treaty in 1855, so he moved over to Hat Island. There he was murdered in a crime never solved.
It was the Indian custom to marry outside one’s home village, with prestige gained for the family by finding wealthy and powerful mates. So, the number of interracial couples perhaps is not all that surprising. Yet it also points out the fact that very many people of native ancestry did not live on the reservation, even among the tribal groups which signed the Treaty of Point Elliott.

When more women came from the East and the Indians became totally overwhelmed economically by the growth of cities and industry in the county, then the separation and minimalization of Indian folks became common and accepted. Perhaps awareness of their existence is growing only due to the resurgence in economic power brought on by Tulalip gambling and cigarettes. If so, that leaves a lot more for people to learn about our original neighbors.