As a Native writer, my writing is not only for myself but also for my tribes. The Sauk-Suiattle Tribe, where I am enrolled, wasn’t even counted by the U.S. Census until about forty years after the surrounding tribes. When the local newspaper published wrong information about not only my tribe but my ancestors in April 2024, I decided to respond. The wrong information was that my great grandmother was sold into slavery. As a journalist for two decades I had a gut sense that this assertion didn’t hold water. I embarked on two simple internet search, the first was about the tribe’s treaty from 1855 and what it said about slavery. It banned it. The second was when slavery was banned in then Washington territory: the answer 1887, two years after the treaty. While the slavery ban in Washington Territory was later helpful to enslaved African American people, it was originally directed at historic practices of slavery and akin to slavery among the Northwest tribes. These were historic by the time my great grandmother was born in 1880 and by the time she married my great grandfather was the Yakama Nation in 1899. The most important thing I did was named the key people, my Sauk great grandmother Ellen, my Yakama great grandfather James Goudy, and Ellen’s father the hereditary Sauk Chief Jim Brown.
These were not anonymous nameless ancestors. These were known people who died in the early 20th Century. Chief Jim Brown was a public figure as a hereditary leader at a time when Washington Territory didn’t have many white people. when the leadership of the territory would travel to Chief Jim Brown home to consult with him.
In my poetry, in the book Rivers in My Veins, I tried to follow this same method of fact checking information that tied to historic contextual information. Some of this fact checking is evident in my notes about the poems in the back of the book.
Context is the key word. In the cast above, I knew there was a claim about tribal slavery. And I used my Internet searches to assess what was happening at the point when Ellen Brown Goudy was born in about 1880. What became clear was slavery had been banned for more 20 years by the time she was born.
What further become clear after consulting with contemporary historians for my tribe is that hereditary Chief Jim Brown would not have sold his daughter into slavery To do so would be a great embarrassment, it would say the chief couldn’t provide for his family. No, hereditary chief families of our Northwest Tribes sought strategic alliances with other hereditary chief families across the region. This was a marriage of equals, of descendants of chiefs.
Ellen’s probate papers tell me that she died with an allotment on the Yakama Nation that was distributed among her heirs, meaning her children with James Goudy. What a letter that I have from the Indian agents told me is that after her death, James Goudy was trying to connect their children land on the nearby Colville Reservation, working Chief Brown because that was where Ellen’s aunts and uncles lived. What I know from oral history is James Goudy mourned for Ellen, burying her deep in the Cascade Mountain in a secret place that we don’t even know today. I know James Goudy never married again, even though he was in his 40s and could have done so.
What matters to the literary writer is that true story is far more interesting and complex than the false and stereotypical sound bite. The sound bite may meet people’s stereotypes where they are, but it doesn’t show them a new way to look at history, it doesn’t tell them an intergenerational story. It is nowhere near as compelling.
Here’s is link to my column. You may have to copy and paste it into your browser. The Herald at Everett, Wa., was recently sold and its website is being revamped by its new hedge fund owner.
5/4/2024 – https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/forum-setting-record-straight-on-sauk-suiattle-chiefs-daughter/
