The Puyallup Post VOLUME 22 ISSUE 8 |MAY 16, 2017 | PUYALLUPPOST.COM
SERVING THE STUDENTS OF
PIERCE COLLEGE
PUYALLUP SINCE 1994
Walking on stolen lands
Pierce College Puyallup Office of Student Life organizes event to explore historical Native American sites and early European settlements in the region
Chase Charaba Editor-in-Chief
O
n the tilted wooden front porch of Factor’s House at Fort Nisqually, Pierce College Puyallup students sat on benches or sat criss-crossed on the floor as former professor Chuck Larsen explained the impact and history of the treaties that placed Native Americans in Washington into reservations. Smoke from the fort’s wood stoves drifted over the grassy fields surrounding the house and every now and then, a rooster called out with it’s song. Fort Nisqually was the final stop on an all-day adventure from the Office of Student Life on May 13 that took students across Pierce County to see historical Native American sites and to learn the history of the region. Diversity and Equity Coordinator Nhan Ta organized the event because he wanted students to know more about Native American culture. “We live in Puyallup and Tacoma and I took Pacific Northwest history, (which is) when I first started to know about Native American cultures,” Ta said. “We should learn more instead of ignoring the cultures of the stolen lands.” Ta said because of his background coming from Vietnam, he had a different perspective on Native Americans. “I came from Vietnam, so in my country the media perceives Native Americans in a very bad way,” Ta said. “Before coming here, I thought Native Americans were bad people. I watched a TV show, and this TV show basically said that Native Americans do a lot of bad things to the white men, like the white men are the good people. But in reality, the white man forced them, the Native Americans, out of their lands and stole their lands and everything.” Students met in the Connection Cafe of the College Center at 9:30 a.m. on May 13 to check-in and socialize with others before embarking on the event. Event speakers Larsen and professor Marcia Halstead explained the purpose of the event and gave a brief overview of what to take notes on and where students would be heading. By 10 a.m. everyone was loaded into either the green or red college van, driven by professor Rob Stevens and Student Engagement
Specialist Kelsie Nabass. After the five minute drive to Sumner, the vans parked near the Old Cannery and students stood between the two vans looking over the Stuck River, which connects the White River to the Puyallup River in Sumner. Here Larsen spoke on the history of valley and some of the villages located there. He also explained two of the major geological events that impacted the region: the major eruption of Mount Rainier about 5,000 years ago that filled in the valley, and the changing course of the White River. Larsen said a log jam in the 1870s in Auburn forced the White River to change course from emptying into the Green River to flow into the Stuck Creek and the Puyallup River. Larsen also discussed the history of the Stuck River’s name, which came from mispronunciation of a village located there named Staxabush. The village was abandoned in 1856 during the Puget Sound Indian War. “The white settlers had an absolutely atrociously difficult time with anything the Salish said,” Larsen said to the group. “If you’re not (using) an Indo-European language, you don’t use the same little collection of sounds and Salish has about seven or eight significant sounds that don’t exist in English.” Larsen said that other Salish words in the area were changed by the settlers, such as Tacoma, Tukwila and Snohomish. This difficulty with pronunciation and mistranslation stemmed from the settlers’ use of Chinook in speaking with the natives. Larsen said that Chinook was easily pronounceable by an English speaker, but since it was a third language and neither the settlers nor the Puget Sound area natives spoke it fluently, it was nowhere near the full language. “Not only did the settlers avoid the problem of trying to wrap their head around Salish words, that also meant they ignored grammar,” Larsen said. “They never really got to understand any of the structure of the language.” Continued on page 12
Photos by Chase Charaba
The entrance to Fort Nisqually, one of the first European settlements in the area (top). A tower at Fort Nisqually (middle). Students sit on the front porch of Factor’s House at Fort Nisqually and listen to Chuck Larsen speak about the treaties Native Americans signed (left). Students gather along the Thea Foss Waterway in Tacoma (right).