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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1915)
24 THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN TULALIP GETS NOTICE NEW GENERATION LIVING IN WHITE MAN'S ENVIRONMENT N article in the Detroit Free Press having to do with Tulalip Indians and conditions has just come to our attention and we are pleased to reprint the following excerpt: At the general office we found Dr. Charles M. Buchanan, superintendent of the agency, which in cludes the reservations of Tulalip, L,ummi, Swino- mish and Port Madison. Dr. Buchanan is a big man in Indian affairs, a man of broad capacity, splendid executive ability and a sympathetic understanding of the Indian nature gained through twenty-one con tinuous years of work on the Tulalip reservations. The term "super intendent" in his case embraces a wide range of usefulness. Not only Ho the vast general duties of that office devolve upon Dr. Buchanan but he is the big medicine man of the agency and officiates as the supreme court in legal affairs. Each reservation is under the necessity of hav ing its own court and its own police, but at Tulalip Dr. Buchanan acts as judge and he is the last court of appeal for litigants in the other reservations. "The Indian of Puget Sound stands unique in Indian history," said the doctor. "Never has he been supported or subsisted, either by the federal government or by the state government. The Indians of the Tulalip agency have always been the friends and allies of the whites. During the Indian war they maintained, under Chief Pat Kanim, a band of eighty scouts who co-operated with the United States government. ' 'The treaty of Point Elliott, made by Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens, at Mulkilteo, or Point Elliott, Washington, January 22, 1855, provided for the Tulalip agency and its reservations, and the cession to the white man of the very choicest and most valuable part of the state of Washington, including the cities of Seattle (named after one of our famous chiefs, who is buried at Port Madison), Everett and Belling ham. In short, the Indians of Tulalip agency donated to the white man all of the great town sites of Puget Sound, Tacoma and Olympia alone excepted. No Indian has given more to the white man no Indian has received less. "The Indians of Puget Sound were a self-supporting people because they were, and are, a fisher folk, subsisting on the bounty of both sea and shore. When the white men first came they made no attempt to dis possess the Indian from his natural resources. On the contrary, they
