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