1909, WA: “Taxes paid by prophetess”
Another portrayal of Native people as weather forecasters.
Coming well after the frontier era, this article translates the Chinuk Wawa that it quotes, into its readers’ English.
Pilchuck Julia Jack circa 1910 (image credit: Snohomish Women’s Legacy)
Pil[-]chuck, the name of a river, is incidentally ‘Red Water’ in Chinook Jargon.
TAXES PAID
BY PROPHETESSPilchuck Julia, widow of the former
chief of the Pilchuck tribe of Indians
which has made Snohomish its head-
quarters from time immemorial, was in
Everett today paying taxes on her lit-
tle homestead near the Morgan mill.
Julia gained a world-wide reputation as
a prophetess lass [last] winter by predicting
the unusually severe cold snap.“Potlatch tenas chickamon; nica hias
clahowyah,” was her stereotyped salu-
tation to all her old white “tillicums‘
she met, the interpretation of which is:
“Give me a little money; I am very
poor.”
from the Everett (WA) Weekly Herald of June 1, 1909, page 2, column 4
