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Arum, John B. (1961-2010)

John Arum was an environmental attorney and outdoorsman who gained prominence in his adopted state of Washington as an advocate for wilderness preservation and Native American tribal rights. He worked to protect wetlands, forests, and other wild areas from development, often donating his time on such cases. He was a longtime board member of the Washington Environmental Council. He negotiated what was hailed as a landmark settlement of a dispute between Central Washington farmers and environmentalists over irrigation and improving stream flow for fish. He also represented the Makah Indian Tribe during its prolonged and controversial attempt to hunt gray whales. Aside from environmental law, mountain climbing was his passion. He had scaled more than 80 of the state’s highest peaks when he apparently fell to his death on a solo climb in North Cascades National Park. The five-day search that led to his body received wide-spread media coverage, in part because his father was a world renowned boxing promoter. But environmentalists and tribes around the country knew him not as Bob Arum’s son, but as a champion in his own right, a skilled and determined lawyer who made a difference.
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Averill, Howard Earl (1902-1983), Baseball Player

Earl Averill -- he went by his middle name -- was a relatively small player from a small town who made it big in major league baseball. Born, raised, and retired in Snohomish, he didn't begin his big-league career until 1929 when he was nearly 27, but quickly made up for the late start. In an era when many of the game's legendary players were in their prime, Averill was an immediate and perennial star for the Cleveland Indians. He was selected to baseball's first six All-Star Games and batted .318 over a 13-year career. His Cleveland team record for home runs in a career lasted 57 years; his runs-batted-in record still stands. Fans loved him and opponents respected him, but baseball writers choosing candidates for enshrinement in the sport's hall of fame were not as impressed. They passed over him for more than three decades. Finally, a special selection committee made him a unanimous choice. In 1975, he became the first Washington state native to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. By then he had long been his hometown's most famous citizen. In fact, his nickname put the town in baseball's lexicon. He was called and is remembered as The Earl of Snohomish.
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Battle Ground -- Thumbnail History

The city of Battle Ground lies near the geographical center of Clark County, 16 miles northeast of Vancouver. The city is sheltered by the Cascades to the east and the Coast Range to the west, and the climate is generally mild. At the time of first contact by Euro-Americans the area was occupied mainly by Chinook and Western Klickitat Indians. The name Battle Ground, which commemorates an 1855 "battle" that never actually happened, originally referred to a site northeast of the current city, near what is today called Battle Ground Lake. The first permanent white settler put down roots on the eastern edge of today's Battle Ground in 1862, and the earliest homesteaders tended to congregate to the north and east of today's city. It wasn't until the railroad came through in 1902 that the name Battle Ground became associated exclusively with the town, and the first town plat was recorded the following year. Formal incorporation did not come until 1951, making Battle Ground the most recent city in Clark County to take that step. The town's economy was dominated by timber, agriculture, and dairy, but population growth was extremely slow until the last decades of the twentieth century. In recent years, as its legacy industries have declined in importance, Battle Ground's proximity to both Portland and Vancouver has drawn a flood of new residents. The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen it become one of the fastest-growing cities in the state, and it remains the commercial, cultural, and educational hub of central Clark County.
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Borst, Kate (1855-1938)

Kate Kanim Borst was a Native American woman who was the third wife of Snoqualmie Valley settler Jeremiah Borst. During her lifetime, she witnessed the transformation of the valley from prairies and Indian encampments to the beginnings of suburbia.
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Burke Museum (Seattle)

The Burke Museum, founded in 1885 by a group of teenage boys, is Washington's oldest museum. Since its inception, the museum has been part of the University of Washington, and has had various homes on campus. The museum is responsible for Washington state collections of natural history and cultural heritage.
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Cashmere -- Thumbnail History

The town of Cashmere in Chelan County has to be one of the most picturesque in the state of Washington. It is situated on the southern bank of the Wenatchee River about midway between its turbulent upper reaches at Leavenworth and its more placid confluence with the Columbia at Wenatchee. The 8,500-foot Mt. Cashmere, called Po-Kum by the Wenatchi Indians, and neighboring peaks of the Cascades are clearly visible to the west. The narrow benches of land surrounding the town are covered with fruit orchards. The area was once the domain of the Sinpesquensi (or Sinkaensi or Sinpeskuensi) band of the Wenatchi, who found a bountiful supply of food in the salmon, camas roots, berries, and game animals of the region. The first white settlers called the tiny village Mission, or Old Mission, after the Catholic work established among the Indians along Mission Creek, which flows into the Wenatchee at present Cashmere. The first white settler was Alexander Brender (b. 1851), an immigrant from Germany. William Bourgwardt and D. S. Farrar soon followed. The settlemen's growth was assured with the coming of the Great Northern Railway in 1892 and the town was platted the same year. A post office was established in 1889 with John Frank Woodring as postmaster. In 1904 Mission was incorporated and the name changed to Cashmere. The introduction of irrigation in much of the Wenatchee Valley greatly enhanced agriculture, particularly the growing of apples and other fruit, for which Cashmere has become renowned. Today Cashmere thrives on a combination of fruit production, tourism, and a small industry for which it is famous, the candymakers Aplets & Cotlets. In 2007 the population was 2,820.
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Cayuse Indians

The Cayuse Indians were once masters of a vast homeland of more than six million acres in what is now Washington and Oregon. The first of the Northwest tribes to acquire horses, they were relatively few in number but outsized in influence, noted for their shrewd bargaining ability and much feared as warriors. Fur trader Alexander Ross (1783-1856) described them as "by far the most powerful and warlike" of the tribes on the Columbia Plateau in 1818. They were at the peak of their power in 1836, when they invited Marcus (1802-1847) and Narcissa (1808-1847) Whitman to establish a mission on Cayuse land near Walla Walla. What began as accommodation ended in disillusionment and resentment. A group of Cayuse attacked the mission in November 1847, killing the Whitmans and 11 others -- a brief flurry of violence that led to the first Indian war in the Northwest, the creation of Oregon Territory as a federal entity, and, eventually, a treaty that stripped the tribe of most of its land. But that was not the end of the story. As historian Clifford Trafzer has pointed out, "Their lives did not end in the last century, and their cultures did not fade away" (Trafzer, 7). The Cayuse survive as part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, with a 172,000-acre reservation near Pendleton, Oregon; an annual operating budget of nearly $230 million; and businesses ranging from a casino to a wind farm. In the words of a tribal brochure, "We are still here. We will continue to be here."
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Century 21 World's Fair: Northwest Coast Indian Art Exhibit

The Fine Arts Pavilion on the grounds of Century 21, the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, was the site of a half-dozen distinct art exhibits during the fair's six-month run between April 21 and October 21. Those exhibits were Masterpieces of Art; The Paintings of Mark Tobey; Art Since 1950: American; Art Since 1950: International; Art of the Ancient East; and Northwest Coast Indian Art. The latter exhibit -- curated by University of Washington anthropologist (and director of the Washington State Museum) Dr. Erna Gunther (1896-1982) -- offered attendees unprecedented exposure to the wondrous beauty of various Northwest Coast native people's unique artwork. Its very inclusion, and its adjacency to the other exhibits, was quite purposeful: A guidebook produced to accompany the exhibit explained that "The artwork of the Indians of the Northwest Coast is presented here with examples of the great arts of the world, both historic and contemporary" -- a remarkable premise insisting that this provincial art was worth knowing about and that it had artistic merit and cultural value akin to far-better-known pieces produced in other places and times (Gunther, exhibit guide).
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Chewelah -- Thumbnail History

Few Washington towns can claim a more idyllic setting than Chewelah, located some 45 miles north of Spokane in the southern Colville River valley in Stevens County. To the east, the dark bulk of Quartzite Mountain, part of the Selkirks, broods over the town. To the west, across the valley, rise the Huckleberry Mountains. This region was once the home of Indians, particularly Colvilles and a few Spokanes and Kalispels. Then fur traders and missionaries passed through. Beginning in the 1840s, French-Canadian, Scottish, and mixed-race former employees of the old Hudson's Bay Company Fort Colvile (HBC spelling) began farming in the Chewelah area. Pioneer settlement from elsewhere began in the 1850s, drawn to opportunities for mining, logging, and ranching. Conveniently for settlers as well as miners on their way to points farther north, the future town site lay near the Colville Road, the main route between military forts Walla Walla and Colville. Chewelah's greatest economic boosts came in 1889 with the arrival of railroad service and in 1916 with a decades-long magnesite boom. The town's recovery from the loss in 1968 of this industry is a study in community self-help that continues today and bodes well for the future.
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Chief Joseph (1840-1904)

Chief Joseph (1840-1904) was a leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce Tribe, who became famous in 1877 for leading his people on an epic flight across the Rocky Mountains. He was born in 1840 and he was called Joseph by Reverend Henry H. Spalding (1803-1874), who had established a mission amongst the Nez Perce in 1836. Young Joseph and his father soon returned to their traditional ways in their Wallowa homeland in Oregon. When Joseph grew up and assumed the chieftanship, he was under increasing governmental pressure to abandon his Wallowa land and join the rest of the Nez Perce on their reservation near Lapwai, Idaho. Joseph refused, saying that he had promised his father he would never leave. In 1877, these disputes erupted into violence and Joseph's band, along with other Nez Perce bands, fled across the Bitterroot Mountains into Montana, with federal troops in pursuit. Joseph was by no means the military leader of the group, yet his standing in the tribe made him the camp chief and the group's political leader. It was Joseph who finally surrendered the decimated band to federal troops near the Canadian border in Montana. Joseph and the tribe were taken to a reservation in Indian Territory in present day Oklahoma, where they remained until 1885 when they were sent to the Colville Reservation in North Central Washington. Joseph made several visits to Washington, D.C., to plead for a return to the Wallowa country, but his pleas were in vain. Joseph died in 1904 in Nespelem, Washington, of what his doctor called "a broken heart." His tomb remains in Nespelem today.
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Chief Kamiakin (ca. 1800-1877)

Kamiakin was an influential chief of the Yakama Tribe, a reluctant signer of the 1855 Walla Walla Treaty creating the Yakama Reservation, and one of the key war leaders during the Northwest's Indian Wars of 1855-1858. When he grew into adulthood, his imposing stature and natural authority made him a leader of his band, "every inch a king," according to one early white visitor (Scheuerman and Finley, p. 18). Kamiakin had vast herds of horses and cattle and dug the first irrigation ditch in the Yakima Valley. Kamiakin represented his tribe at the 1855 treaty council and eventually signed the treaty under great emotional stress. He later maintained he had been deceived. He immediately set out to create a confederation of tribes to resist white encroachment, earning comparisons to Tecumseh. He led warriors in a number of battles, yet despite some victories, American military force finally prevailed in 1858 during a battle in which Kamiakin was severely injured. He fled to Montana and lived as an outcast, eventually returning to camps on the Palouse River and Rock Lake in Eastern Washington. He refused to return to the Yakama Reservation, saying he did not recognize the treaty that created it. He died at Rock Lake in 1877. White grave robbers dug up his corpse the next year and stole his head. His skull was never found. Yet his name lives on in several schools throughout Washington.
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Chief Moses (1829-1899)

Chief Moses was the leader of the Columbia band of Indians, who gave his name to both Moses Lake and Moses Coulee. He was born in 1829, the son of a chief of this Central Washington tribe. His father sent him off at age 10 to Rev. Henry Spalding's Christian mission at Lapwai, Idaho, to learn Christianity and the white man's ways. Moses received his Christian name there, but was never baptized. He soon returned to his own people and as a young man came to be known as a brave warrior, a fierce opponent of white intrusion, and an influential leader. During the Indian wars and subsequent reservation negotiations, he emerged as one of the most influential tribal leaders in the entire Inland Northwest. Many white settlers distrusted Chief Moses -- he was accused of murder several times -- yet for decades he maintained a careful balance between friendliness and resistance, always stopping short of outright hostility. He went to Washington D.C. twice, where he signed two treaties and shook the hand of a U.S. president. However, his dream of a permanent reservation encompassing his mid-Columbia River homeland was thwarted on several occasions. He and his tribe eventually moved on to the Colville Reservation, north of the Columbia. He was an influential leader on the reservation and helped the defeated Chief Joseph (1840-1904) and his Nez Perce band to settle there. He died at the age of 70, recognized -- grudgingly, in some cases -- as a powerful, stalwart diplomat for his people.
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Chief Seattle (Seattle, Chief Noah [born si?al, 178?-1866])

Chief Seattle, or si?al in his native Lushootseed language, led the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes as the first Euro-American settlers arrived in the greater Seattle area in the 1850s. Baptized Noah by Catholic missionaries, Seattle was regarded as a "firm friend of the Whites," who named the region's future central city in his honor. He was a respected leader among Salish tribes, signing the Point Elliott (Mukilteo) Treaty of 1855, which relinquished tribal claims to most of the area, and opposing Native American attempts to dislodge settlers during the "Indian Wars" of 1855-1856. Chief Seattle retired to the Suquamish Reservation at Port Madison, and died there on June 7, 1866. This essay includes a sound recording of the correct pronunciation of Chief Seattle's name, provided by Skagit elder Vi Hilbert (1918-2008).
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Chief Seattle -- his Lushootseed name and other important words pronounced in Lushootseed by Vi Hilbert

In this sound recording, renowned Skagit elder Vi Hilbert (1918-2008) correctly pronounces Chief Seattle's name and other common names in Lushootseed, the language of the several Coast Salish peoples. The recording was done on December 7, 2006, by Janet Yoder, a longtime student of Hilbert's and who has written on her life and work in preserving the Lushootseed language. The file also contains a transcription of the tape.
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Chief Seattle's Speech

In addition to his namesake city, Chief Seattle (178?-1866) is best remembered for a speech given, according to pioneer Dr. Henry Smith, on the occasion of an 1854 visit to Seattle of Isaac Stevens (1818-1862). Stevens was governor and Commissioner of Indian Affairs of Washington Territory. He visited in January and again in March 1854. Chief Seattle's speech went unnoted in the written record until October 29, 1887, when the Seattle Sunday Star published a text reconstructed from admittedly incomplete notes by Dr. Smith.
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Chief Spokane Garry (ca. 1811-1892)

Chief Spokane Garry was a chief of the Spokane Tribe whose long, and ultimately tragic life spanned the fur-trading, missionary, and white settlement eras of the region. His father, also a Spokane chief, sent Garry off with fur traders at age 14 to be educated at the Red River Settlement's missionary school in Canada. Garry returned after five years, fluent in English and French, to become an influential leader and spokesman for his tribe. He opened a rough school to teach reading and writing and also taught his fellow tribesmen agricultural techniques. He participated in many peace councils, including those of 1855 and 1858, and was known as a steadfast advocate of peace and an equally steadfast advocate of a fair land settlement for his tribe. He never wavered on his insistence that the Spokane people should have the rights to their native lands along the Spokane River, a goal which proved unattainable. His own farm in what is now the Hillyard area of Spokane was stolen from him late in life and he and his sadly diminished band were forced to camp in Hangman Valley, where boys from the growing city of Spokane would throw rocks onto their tepees. A kindly landowner allowed Garry and his family to camp in Indian Canyon, where he lived out the rest of his life in poverty. He died there in 1892 and was buried in a pauper's grave. Decades later, a Spokane city park was named after him and a statue erected in his honor.
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Chirouse, Father Eugene Casimir (1821-1892)

Catholic missionary Eugene Casimir Chirouse, Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.), traveled from his native France to Oregon Territory with four Missionary Oblates and, after an arduous trip, arrived at Fort Walla Walla on October 5, 1847 -- only a month before the Whitman Massacre. Chirouse was ordained with Charles M. Pandosy (1824-1891) at Fort Walla Walla on January 2, 1848, the first Catholic ordination in what would become the state of Washington. Father Chirouse lived and worked among the Yakamas from 1848-1856 and for a short time was missionary to the Cayuse tribe. The Oblates attempted peacemaking during the tensions that culminated in the Yakama Indian War, but in 1857 were transferred to Olympia for their safety. Chirouse was assigned to oversee Puget Sound tribes and lived on the Tulalip reservation from 1857 to 1878. Here he established a school and church, the Mission of St. Anne, and helped to build missions on the Lummi and Port Madison reservations. Father Chirouse was a master of Salish dialects, translating the scriptures, authoring a grammar and a catechism, and creating an English-Salish/Salish-English dictionary. In his advancing years, the well-loved priest was transferred to a post in British Columbia, despite protests from his Tulalip parishioners. He returned to Tulalip many times to visit friends and to perform weddings and baptisms. Father Chirouse died in British Columbia in 1892.
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Comcomly (1760s?-1830)

Comcomly was a leading figure among the Chinook Indian bands who lived along the lower Columbia River during the period of contact between Native American tribes and Euro-American fur traders. Comcomly's career spanned the beginnings of the maritime fur trade on the Northwest Coast, the advent of guns and other manufactured goods, and the establishment of trade houses along the lower Columbia. An intelligent diplomat and shrewd businessman, he was credited by many contemporary observers with helping maintain peaceful relations between the Chinook people and European and American traders and explorers during the early 1800s. He died in 1830, one of the many victims of an intermittent fever epidemic that swept the region.
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Comeford, James Purcell (1833-1909)

James Purcell Comeford first arrived in Snohomish County in 1872 and ran a trading post on the Tulalip Reservation for six years. He founded Marysville in 1878, naming it after his wife Maria. He built the first store and hotel in town, organized its first school district, and established Marysville's first post office. He platted the town of Marysville, and dedicated the filing of the plat in February 1885. Later in life he was active in real estate and was also known as a gentleman farmer. Comeford died in 1909, and is known as the "father of Marysville."
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Curtis, Edward S. (1868-1952), Photographer

Edward Curtis was one of the most prominent figures in the cultural history of Washington state. He is acknowledged as one of the leading American photographers of his time and has produced iconic portraits of many important historical figures such as Chief Joseph, J. P. Morgan, and President Theodore Roosevelt, who was among his most ardent supporters. Best known today for his epic 20-volume book, The North American Indian, Curtis also served as Seattle's finest commercial and portrait photographer in the early twentieth century. His studio became a nexus for important figures when anyone of prominence visiting Seattle made it a point to be photographed by the famed master. His studio was also the starting ground for several regional photographers who would go on to establish international reputations in their own right. These included Imogen Cunningham, Ella McBride, and Frank Asakichi Kunishige. Asahel Curtis, Edward's brother also became a noted photographer who concentrated on commercial landscape and documentary photography as well as poetic studies of Mt. Rainier.
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