Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019 Issue 1 - The Mystery of Two Baskets.pdfThis special feature newsletter is a gift to our biggest supporters: Patron, Business, and Life members. Your support makes what we do possible. We hope you enjoy this story from Renton's past. In 1966 Henry Moses and his wife Christina donated to the new Renton Library two Duwamish baskets made by women of the Moses family. With no children, the 66-year- old Moses wanted to preserve these hand-woven baskets for the future, and he gave them to the Library with the understanding that they would be well cared for. “We want to be sure these baskets won’t be thrown away when we are gone,” Christina told a reporter.1 A year later the Renton Historical Society was founded, and the baskets became ours to care for. These baskets came with a tantalizing story, a mystery worth investigating even if the solution remains to be discovered. The Moses’ gift consisted of two baskets: one was made by one of Henry’s great-grandmothers—he was not sure which grandmother—and the larger one was woven by his aunt, Lucy Keokuk. When the baskets came to the Museum, collections volunteers knew only what Henry and Christina had told Library employees. Henry recalled that Lucy’s basket had garnered first prize at the 1915 San Francisco World’s Fair, officially known as the Pacific-Panama International Exposition (PPIE). Later a Moses family friend, Dail Butler Laughery, donated another basket woven by Lucy, About This Issue... RENTON HISTORICALSOCIETY & MUSEUM Special Issue February 2019 Volume 50 Number 1 Continued on page 4 THE MYSTERY OF TWO BASKETS QUARTERLY by Elizabeth P. Stewart 2 | RENTON HISTORY MUSEUM UPCOMING EVENTS HIDDEN FIGURES MOVIE SCREENING March 2 11:00 am-1:30 pm The 2016 film Hidden Figures tells the story of three African American female mathematicians working for NASA during the Space Race. Join us for a special screening of this award-winning film. This film is rated PG. TAKE A STAND AGAINST CYBERBULLYING March 14 6:00-7:00 pm Join Dr. Michelle Bennett for a workshop for parents and educators on the topic of cyberbullying. Participants in the workshop will learn tools to recognize and evaluate instances of cyberbullying. GLOBAL HEAT February 9 1:00-2:00 pm Join us is welcoming back Global Heat for their third performance at RHM. Global Heat’s family- friendly performance will celebrate and explore the Black roots of hip hop through fusion music, break dancing, and educational interludes between pieces. DIAMONDS IN THE ETHER: TUNING IN TO NORTHWEST RADIO HISTORY April 4 6:00-7:00 pm With a mixture of vintage audio, historic images, and expert storytelling, Feliks Banel revisits the power of radio in the Evergreen State, and looks ahead to the unpredictable future of local radio. “Friendly staff, great variety of photos over the years.” WHAT PEOPLE TELL US “Everything was well-explained and visually appealing.” “Good integration of Native & non-White settler history w/ Dominant culture.” “Nice job of categorizing everyday life. More historical museums should follow your lead.” “The museum taught me a about the history of where I live.” “Very informative, interesting.” “Wide variety of thoughtful displays.” “Small museum but full of local history.” “Great to see local history. Heartbreaking to see the misery caused to Native tribes.” “Very enjoyable.” “Well laid out. Easy to understand. Would enjoy add’l artifacts.” “A very well-preserved and great collection of history.” “Each visit I learn many new things.” “I wanna visit here again.” “Very impressive explanation of local history.” “I have always loved this museum.” “Informative & multi-racial representation.” SPECIAL ISSUE QUARTERLY, 2019 | 3 THANK YOU Special Edition January 2019 Elizabeth P. Stewart Director If you’re reading this newsletter, it’s because you have renewed your Renton Historical Society membership at the Patron level or above, for which we are very grateful. To show our appreciation, we are trying a new benefit, which you’re now holding in your hands. Our members have told us in surveys that the newsletter, with its quarterly feature full of original historical research, is their favorite membership benefit, so we are offering those of you who join at a higher level an extra newsletter in the cold and dark days of winter. The feature, “The Mystery of Two Baskets,” gives you just a taste of the behind-the- scenes research we are always working on. We know there are many nonprofits you can support—you probably get a letter or an email every day asking for your money or time or volunteer service. By becoming a member of the Renton Historical Society and the Museum, you are choosing to ensure that future generations have access to historic objects and photos, to new research about our city, and to stories that might otherwise be lost. You are helping to ensure that 8200 visitors (to date) learn the latest scholarship about the Duwamish people in our new People of the Inside exhibit. Thanks to you, we are able to develop lively performances bringing Renton history to life in summertime Renton History Live! plays. We can give student interns and volunteers their first professional experience working in a museum, and we can work closely with our RenTeens teen advisory council on projects of their choosing (hopefully instilling a love of history early on). The Museum’s Coast Salish curriculum is now in every third grade classroom in the Renton School District. And, coming in 2020, thanks in part to your support, we’ll be unveiling an exhibit that explores What Difference Do Renton Women Make? for the national centennial of women’s suffrage. Last year we embarked on an internal campaign to inculcate a culture of gratitude at the Museum. We are working harder to ensure that you know how significant you are to the work that we do preserving and educating about Renton heritage. Our goal is to truly be a community museum, connecting people to their city through history. You are essential to that goal, and we thank you for being an active participant! by Elizabeth P. Stewart, Museum Director Just a few of the many UW Museology interns we've helped to launch their careers! RENTON HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Sarah Samson Graphic Design & Layout Karl Hurst City of Renton Print & Mail Services RENTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY BOARD OF TRUSTEES Laura Clawson, President Colleen Lenahan, Vice President Jessica Kelly, Treasurer Antoin Johnson, Secretary Lynne King, 2019 Betsy Prather, 2021 Elizabeth Stewart, Board Liaison MUSEUM STAFF Elizabeth P. Stewart Museum Director Sarah Samson Curator of Collections & Exhibitions Kate Dugdale Public Engagement Coordinator Nezy Tewolde Office Aide RENTON HISTORY MUSEUM 235 MILL AVENUE S RENTON, WA 98057 P (425) 255-2330 HOURS: Tuesday - Saturday 10:00am - 4:00pm ADMISSION: $5 (Adult) $2 (Child) Our Board of Trustees are stewards of Renton's heritage for future generations. 4 | RENTON HISTORY MUSEUM Continued from page 1 Cover photo: Lucy Keokuk's two prize-winning baskets. The larger basket is made from cedar root. The smaller basket is made from cedar root and bear grass. Christina and Henry Moses with Mayor Don Custer at the opening of the new Renton Library, 1966. They entrusted two of their favorite baskets to the library for preservation. (RHM# 1966.102.0057) this one reportedly the recipient of the second-place prize at the 1915 Exposition.2 The information that these baskets had been entered in an out-of-state World’s Fair and had won awards was very specific and intriguing, and it was repeated by two different donors. How had Lucy Keokuk’s baskets come to the attention of the organizers of the Exposition? And, more importantly, once they had won awards, how were they returned to Lucy and her family? Stories like these are often impossible to verify, more than 100 years later, but collections research is part of what museum professionals do. The search was on! Lucy, or T’sche-shwe-la-do, was the much-younger sister of Henry’s father, “Jimmie” Moses. She was born in 1866 or 1867 near the Black and Cedar Rivers, on land that would become Renton; her mother, Sally or Wish-e-bo-letsa, was Duwamish and Snoqualmie, and her father—Shew-ka-ta, sometimes called William or Chief William or just “Moses”— was Duwamish.3 The first Whites with any sustained interest in the area would have arrived about 15 years before her birth, encountering a community of 300 – 400 Duwamish people who fished, hunted, gathered food, traded, raised their families, and kept their winter villages along the rivers.4 Lucy grew up in the Duwamish district, as it was then known, marrying neighbor Charley Keokuk (or sometimes “Kucker”) in 1890, after his first wife, Mary, died. Lucy and Charley had a son, Jack or Ignatius Kucker, in about 1899, followed by a daughter, Lena, in 1901.5 The arrival of Whites introduced a period of massive change for Coast Salish people all over Washington state, as White settlers used violence, the courts, and the government to gain control over land and resources. Native Americans were forced to choose between moving onto reservations or becoming landless, rootless people in a world where land was suddenly owned. Lucy’s husband Charley was part Suquamish and so their little family relocated to the Port Madison Indian Reservation in about 1900. The Moses family followed Chief William’s riskier lead, resisting being permanently removed from their ancestral lands. Charley Keokuk died in 1907 and Lucy returned to her closest family in Renton, living for a few years with her brother Jimmie and his family. Henry may have remembered this period living with his aunt and little cousins as a seven-year-old.6 Whites’ new power created a period of intense cultural change which shaped every aspect of Native life. Basketry had been an essential skill for Native American women, a way to turn natural materials into containers for transport, storage, and trade. A skilled basketmaker could make vessels wound so tightly they could be used for boiling water; others were loosely woven to gather clams, small SPECIAL ISSUE QUARTERLY, 2019 | 5 Roseberry collection of baskets from Alaska, British Columbia, and the Pacific Northwest at the Panama- Pacific Exposition, 1915. The Klickitat and Quinault are mentioned, but not the Duwamish. Lucy's baskets are not in the photo. fish, or seaweed. Grandmothers had taught the skills to their daughters and granddaughters for hundreds or even thousands of years, from harvesting raw materials to preparing them to weaving and shaping them. Yet Christina Moses, a Lummi born in Bellingham about fifty years after Whites arrived, freely admitted that she never learned basket-making, although she was “certain” that only a sharp knife and pointed awl were used.7 By 1915 Lucy had remarried, to William Peter, and had another son, Mathew, born in 1908, followed by a daughter who did not survive infancy. The family lived mainly at the Suquamish Reservation at Port Madison; after her marriage there is no further record of Lucy’s visits to Renton, but that would not have been unusual.8 At this point, Lucy had probably been practicing her art for about forty years. Native Americans’ traditional artistry captivated many Americans, who had convinced themselves that if American Indians were “vanishing” from history, at least their traditional arts ought to be preserved. This self-fulfilling prophecy about indigenous people’s “disappearance” shaped many exhibits at the 1915 Exposition, a showcase for the best of American industry, agriculture, arts, architecture, and craft.9 Lewis Rodman Wanamaker, wealthy heir to the East Coast department store chain, was the classic example of a White American fascinated by American Indians. Among Rodman Wanamaker’s many preoccupations was an interest in American Indians of the Northern Plains. He funded three photographic expeditions to the Blackfeets, Creek, Cheyenne, Crows, and Dakotas, and financed re-enactments of encounters between Native people and Whites that left no doubt that he believed Native Americans were destined to be on the wrong side of history.10 His collection of artifacts, combined with photographer Joseph K. Dixon’s work, became the core of the “Rodman Wanamaker Exhibit,” displayed at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Former President Theodore Roosevelt attended the exhibit opening, telling fairgoers “the Indian must be preserved…. His art must be preserved and made an integral part of our civilization.”11 Thomas A. and Viola Roseberry’s collection of Native American baskets also had pride of place in the California Building at the PPIE. Thomas Roseberry was a registrar at the land office in Susanville, CA who would have had numerous occasions to mediate disputes between local tribes and White land claimants. His wife reportedly amassed a large collection of baskets by feeding local Native Americans.12 A booklet, Illustrated History of Indian Baskets and Plates, Made by California Indian and Many Other Tribes, documented the exhibition of their collection at the exposition, which included a few examples from Alaska and Washington state, but no Coast Salish baskets.13 The State of Washington appropriated $200,000 for the construction of its own building at the exposition, as well as “exhibits of the resources, products, and advantages” inside, but few records remain of what exactly those exhibits were, aside from “moving pictures to show [the] industrial life of Washington.”14 The State Assembly appropriated funds 6 | RENTON HISTORY MUSEUM for the erection of “an Indian tepee” at the expo.15 Other exhibits included the life cycle of the salmon, a film of Ezra Meeker’s re-enactment of his cross-country trip (and the 84-year-old “Uncle” Meeker himself), and Washington apples and cider. Gov. Ernest Lister was publicly initiated into the Blackfeet Tribe during Washington Week.16 Could Lucy’s baskets have been displayed at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition? Many exhibits fed the public fascination with “the Vanishing Indian,” peoples that Whites had helped extinguish. But who would have been the conduit between Lucy’s work on the Tulalip Reservation and the World’s Fair? And, more mysteriously, who would have taken the time and effort to ensure that her baskets were returned to her when the fair was over? The other basket collections we know were displayed at the Exposition remained in the hands of private collectors who had bartered or bought them; their makers likely never saw them again. One tantalizing clue suggests a different fair altogether. Anthropologist Erna Gunther arrived at the University of Washington in 1921, with a Master’s degree and a scholar husband who had taken the Chair of Anthropology. She arrived with a working knowledge of Puget Sound Native Americans. She had studied at Columbia University with pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas, who had recruited her to publish the late Hermann Haeberlin’s field notes on the Coast Salish from 3000 miles away. After her arrival in Seattle she began conducting fieldwork with the Coast Salish and the Makah in the 1920s; she studied spirit dances and songs on the Tulalip Reservation, where Lucy would have been living and making baskets after 1919. Gunther also collected information on Native Americans’ use of plants, an area where Lucy would have had knowledge related to basket-making.17 In 1930 Erna Gunther took the position of director of the Washington State Museum—later the Burke Museum—where she developed extensive contacts in the museum world, as a researcher, consultant, and occasional donor to collections. She was an enthusiastic spokesperson for the artistry and richness of the culture of Northwest Coast Indians. In 1939, on the strength of her work with Native Americans, Gunther was involved in organizing the Northwest Coast art for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1939.18 Did Erna Gunther borrow Lucy’s baskets for her exhibit at the 1939 exposition, rather than the one in 1915? Gunther’s tireless promotion of an appreciation for Coast Salish artistry suggests that she could have been the one to recognize Lucy’s talent, and her long and close personal relationships with people on the Tulalip Reservation persuade us that if she had borrowed baskets for exhibit, she would have been more likely to return them to their creators. But there is no conclusive evidence. Lucy married her third husband, Wilson George, in Seattle in 1927 at a ceremony witnessed by Henry Moses. By this time her two surviving sons were grown but nearby, and Lucy and Wilson continued to live at the Tulalip Reservation SPECIAL ISSUE QUARTERLY, 2019 | 7 This Rodman Wanamaker exhibit was featured at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, 1915 ENDNOTES 1 Morda C. Slauson, “Chief Moses and Wife Contribute Baskets,” Record- Chronicle, 2 March 1966, p.10. 2 Slauson, “Chief Moses and Wife Contribute Baskets”; accession records for RHM# 1980.999.029 and RHM# 1984.026.001, Renton History Museum. 3 Enrollment and Allotment Applications of Washington Indians, 1911 – 1919, for Lucy Peter (1917). Lucy’s first husband was Charley Keokuk or Kucker their son was known as Jack or Ignatius Kucker and despite the fact that she later remarried twice, to William Peter and then Wilson George, Keokuk is the name by which Henry and Christina referred to her. 4 Enrollment and Allotment Applications of Washington Indians, 1911 – 1919, for Lucy Peter (1917). 5 Enrollment and Allotment Applications of Washington Indians, 1911 – 1919, for Lucy Peter (1917); Territorial Census for Washington Territory (1887). 6 Ibid. Chief William did take his people to the Suquamish reservation briefly, but they returned to their ancestral home when there was not enough food provided. 7 Slauson, “Chief Moses and Wife Contribute Baskets.” 8 Enrollment and Allotment Applications of Washington Indians, 1911 – 1919, for Lucy Peter (1917); U.S. Federal Census for Elliott Precinct, King County, WA, 1910—Indian Population; U.S. Indian Census Rolls, 1911, 1912, 1914, 1919, 1923, 1927, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1937. William and Lucy lived with the Snoqualmie in Tolt from 1913 to 1919; after 1919 they were at the Tulalip Reservation. Lucy’s daughter Lena Kucker died in 1916 at the age of fifteen. 9 Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Norman; University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. 10 The result of these expeditions was a Joseph K. Dixon book of photographs titled The Vanishing Race (1913). 11 “Roosevelt Makes Plea for Red Man,” Seattle Times, 24 July 1915, p.13. 12 Cheryl McCormack, Susanville (Images of America) (N.p.: Acadia Publishing, 2008), 30-31. 13 Viola M. Roseberry, Illustrated History of Indian Baskets and Plates, Made by California Indians and Many Other Tribes (N.p.: Viola M. Roseberry, 1915). 14 Washington State Legislature, Senate Journal of the Legislature of the State of Washington (Olympia, WA: Washington State Legislature, 1913), 1052, 1317. 15 Senate Journal of the Legislature of the State of Washington, 1352. 16 “State Building dedicated Today,” Seattle Times, 4 March 1915, p.9; “Graves Praises State’s Exhibit,” Seattle Times, 30 March 1915, p.12; “$100 in it for Sumner If He’s Rapid Counter,” Seattle Times, 30 May 1915, p.5; “Washington Week at Big Fair Ends,” Seattle Times, 2 October 1915, p.11. 17 Viola E. Garfield and Pamela T. Amoss, “Erna Gunther (1896 – 1982),” American Anthropologist 86 (June 1984), 394-396. Gunther’s work resulted in Hermann Haeberlin and Erna Gunther, The Indians of Puget Sound (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1930, 1952). 18 Garfield and Amoss, “Erna Gunther,” 396-397. The success of her 1939 exhibit and another she organized in 1952 led her to assemble an unprecedented collection of Northwest Coast art for the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, one that is documented in a published catalog. Erna Gunther, Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Exhibit at the Seattle World’s Fair Fine Arts Pavilion (Seattle, Century 21 Exposition, 1962). Unfortunately, it includes no examples of basketry. until her death in 1942, at the age of 76. She is buried at the Fall City Cemetery. Perhaps new sources will emerge with new insights, but until then we cannot know whether her baskets were featured in San Francisco in 1915 or 1939. What we do know is that Lucy Keokuk preserved traditional ways of basket-making into the middle of the twentieth century, allowing others to carry on the art. It is a gift she shared with all of us, through her family and through museums in Washington state and beyond. We can all be grateful for that. 8 | RENTON HISTORY MUSEUM IN HINDSIGHT... RENTON HISTORY MUSEUM 235 Mill Ave. S Renton, WA 98057 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, 1939. Were Lucy Keokuk's Duwamish baskets exhibited here?