The Lummi Chief Chow-its-hoot allows Henry Roeder and Russell Peabody to build a lumber mill.

***

Roeder and Peabody arrived in the bay by canoe with two Lummi guides. They negotiated an agreement with the Lummi Chief to establish a lumber mill at the base of Whatcom Creek, where Maritime Heritage Park is now located.

The Whatcom Mill was powered by the waterfall at the base of the creeek. “What-Coom” was the Lummi name for the waterfall, meaning “noisy, rumbling waters”. The mill was built to process timber from forests in the area.

In the decades that immediately followed, an increasing flow of Euro-American settlers arrived to claim indigenous land and to quell dissent. One of the strategies pursued to advance these aims was inter-marriage with Native women.

Historian Candace Wellman* estimates that in these early decades of Euro-American settlement, 90% of the marriages were between male settlers and native women.*

Though many of these marriages were coerced, abusive, and traumatic, they created a bridge between cultures that arguably reduced the overall level of violence experienced in this region, in contrast to the violence experienced by many other indigenous communities during the settler-colonial project. In this context, Wellman examines the lives, agency, and resilience of native women who entered into these marriages.

 

* Further reading:

Candace Wellman, (2017) Peace Weavers: Uniting the Salish Coast through Cross-Cultural Marriages. Washington State University Press

Candace Wellman, (2019) Interwoven Lives: Indigenous Mothers of Salish Coast Communities. Washington State University Press