- Visit to Clallam. - The Indians at this place are more primitive than those at the head of the Sound. They are less nomadic and have seen little of the whites and crowded with great curiosity about our camp. They have no range, except on the water, for the country behind is quite impenetrable. Their abodes are permanent, for they live in extensive houses, reminding me of the tobacco sheds in the east. They are formed of large posts, supporting beams, some of them so large that it is a source of wonder how they are handled. The sides and roofs are formed o[ut] of huge slabs of cedar fastened together with strong twigs. An elliptical hole through one of these slabs forms the door, and often the entrance consists of a passage-way of rough boards.
- The posts are decorated with carvings and drawings of men, animals and faces, ornamented with black and red paint. On the wall inside hang the mats on which they sleep. A horizontal beam is fastened to the posts, from which the provisions are hung. There is room enough in such a structure for several families. They seem to be great lovers of size, for a saw a canoe this evening at least fifty feet long and six feet wide. It is doubtless used for the migration of the tribe, for it would hold a family or half a tribe. They are evidently poor, for they offer no food for sale, and when I tried to buy fish or game from them they asked high prices.
- Fortunately I had some of the venison from a buck the doctor had killed. The clams are accessible to us as well as to the Indians, besides which among our regular supplies we have bread, coffee and sugar. The Indians themselves live mainly on salmon and clams. They have a few potato patches, and I presume they also kill some game, but although it is quite abundant, it is very difficult to get on account of the timber.
- I noticed a number of fish wiers at the mouth of the small streams. They are made of sticks placed about two inches apart, inclining down stream and forming a complete dam.
- Connected with this dam, similar sticks are placed up stream so as to form little pens. The salmon leaps over the dam, falling into the pen, and is readily caught by the Indian who is on the watch sitting on a mat placed on a slab on the pen. On the sand spits nets have been suspended from tall poles for the purpose of catching wild gadis and geese at the time of their annual flights. They fly against them in the night and kill themselves.
- I was introduced to the Duke of York19 and Lord Jim, both of whom are superior to any Indians I have yet met. An old man named Larkinum was chief of the Clallams, but he abdicated in favor of his son, the Duke. Lord Jim is very intelligent and can speak English quite well. He took a great deal of pride in showing me some papers he had received from different whites, principally sea captains. I was much amused at their contents for most of them abused him without reserve, calling him a liar, a thief, a drunkard and a gambler. Some of them were curious literary productions, abounding in flowers of speech. Lord Jim, of course, imagined these certificates of his rascality to contain nothing but praise, and begged me to add mine to the number, which, I think, will help him as much as any of the others. I procured a Skagit Indian named Goliah to act as guide. I think he will do well.
- S’Klallam and Chemakum Indian tribes on Olympic Peninsula when Jarman settled there in 1848-52 (skagitriverjournal.com)
We spun this story off from the William “Blanket Bill” Jarman biography in order to address the considerable confusion and contradiction in various accounts about the tribes present on the Olympic Peninsula when Jarman settled there temporarily, off and on, in the period 1848-52. The contradictions were present in both the contemporary U.S. Government documents of that time, private writing later in the century and books by various historians between then and now. In our review, we will also explain the genealogy of Alice, Jarman’s wife and companion for the next three decades. She and the Indians that Jarman met in that period helped shape both his life and the legends about him.
- Clallam County — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
Clallam County occupies the northern portion of the Olympic Peninsula, extending nearly 100 miles along the Strait of Juan de Fuca on its north and more than 35 miles along the Pacific Coast on its west. On the east and the south it borders Jefferson County, out of which it was created in 1854. The county is composed of the traditional lands of the Klallam (for whom it is named), Makah, and Quileute peoples, who continue to play significant roles in county history…
- June 8th [of 1853]. The men had to wait five or six hours for the tide in order to make camp. In the meantime I visited two honest, energetic young men named Brown and Peabody, who were engaged in building a large sawmill, with sixteen men in their employ. The stream which is the outlet for Lake Whatcom presents a fine water power for the mill, but the fact that it can only be reached at high water is a serious objection to the townsite as well as the millsite. I met a Capt. Pattle; who impressed me less pleasantly. He is an Indian trader and an old resident of this section, having been here for several years. He is the claimant of the coal bank which crops out at the water’s edge half a mile south of the millsite. He has two neighbors, who have also taken claims with an eye to the coal mine. Their names are Morrison and Thomas, and they are villainous~looking men. In spite of the small number of residents, a bitter animosity exists among them on account of these coal lands. They fight over the claims and destroy each other’s property and accuse one another of illicit trade with the Indians. I strongly suspect Pattle. He told me an effective story of how he had had a boat stolen containing two barrels of whisky. He accuses the Clallams. I told him that in such a case he should apply to the Indian agent, and showed him my papers, at which he looked blank, and, rallying, entered largely on the evils of selling liquor to the Indians. Little seems to have been known about the country surrounding this [Bellingham] bay. The timber is very large and dense, and there is very little prairie land. The Lummi river, which has quite a delta in the northwest corner of the bay, circles around the bay five or six miles back, and has a fine valley which heads in the mountains.