1892, Ballast Island, Seattle: Another Chinook-speaking intertribal waterfront?

The action here takes place at the Duwamish Tribe’s temporary place of exile, Seattle’s Ballast Island.

“Indian Camp on Ballast Island” (image credit: Duwamish Tribe)

(Ballast Island is not to be confused with Ballard.)

If we take the report at face value, this part of Seattle must have been an intertribal gathering place, where (as also famously in Victoria, BC) Chinuk Wawa was commonly spoken among Native people.

That’s a new idea to me — and of course an incredibly fascinating one.

Were the people of Ballast Island also creating a new Chinook Jargon culture, with its own songs and stories, as happened in Victoria in the same era?

J. W. Johnson, a logger, who owns a
saw mill and logging camp down the
Sound [i.e. to the North], came to this city in a row boat
Thursday evening. He tied his boat up at
Ballast island and while there overhead a
lot of Indians, who make their home on
the island, talking about the smallpox in
British Columbia. Mr. Johnson speaks
Chinook fluently, and he heard a dozen or
more bucks, with their squaws, who had
just arrived in canoes from New West-
minster, say that several of their “tilli-
cums” in British Columbia had died of the
disease and many more were sick. Many
frightened boat loads of Indians left for
Seattle, Whatcom and Anacortes. John-
son soon after met Officer Sam Corbett and
related to him what he had heard. The
policeman immediately ordered all of the
Indians from the island, and will not
allow them to land or occupy the place
again until the quarantine is raised.

— from “The Quarantine Continued”, in the Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer of July 23, 1892, page 2, column 2

In a quick newspaper search, the earliest mention I find of Ballast Island is from 1883, noting that “a camp of Indians have settled themselves quite comfortably” there. By 1890 it’s referred to disapprovingly as “the Siwash camp“. Knowledge of English was not a given there. When the inhabitants were forced out, “an aged klootchman” was found left behind.

Bonus fact:

Ballast Island Indigenous people’s camp, colorized (image credit: History Link)

There’s now a historical marker on the west side of Alaskan Way at South Washington Street in Seattle, showing you the former location of Ballast Island.

Ballast Island, by the way, was a visible reminder of Seattle’s intimate connection with San Francisco during frontier times. The ballast stones dumped there by visiting ships were often sandstone that was quarried from SF’s Telegraph Hill!

I’ll be writing some more about Ballast Island soon.

ikta mayka chaku-kəmtəks?
What have you learned?