Thomas Taylor, 1862

From the Desks of the Central Library Staff

Although no oath of office record exists today, Taylor was apparently Librarian in 1862. The March 29, 1862 issue of the Washington Standard includes this Library Notice: “All persons having books belonging to the Territorial Library will please return at once, or the by-laws will be put in force. Thos. Taylor, Ter. Librarian.” He quite probably was the same aged Thomas Taylor who was born Oct. 17, 1793 (some sources say 1791) in Frederick County, Va. and came out to Oregon in the early 1850s from Morgan County, Illinois. In 1861 he served as a member of the House in the 9th Session. For a while he lived in the Grand Mound area and then in Elma. He was a long-time and active preacher, remaining in amazingly good health during his senior years. Taylor died in Elma, Wash., May 14, 1886.

John Paul Judson, 1864

John Paul Judson

Born May 6, 1840 in Cologne, Prussia, J.P. Judson’s family came to Illinois in 1845. In Oct. 1853 they made their way to Pierce County. According to Bancroft, “He earned the money in mining on the Fraser River with which he paid for two years’ schooling in Vancouver.” The young Judson was appointed Territorial Librarian while still a law student and literally lived in the Library “to have more ready access to the law books then at his command,” so wrote John Miller Murphy. He also worked as Chief Clerk in the House in 1864. For a brief time he was a school teacher until he earned his law degree in 1867 and went into private practice.

After living in Port Townsend, he returned to Olympia in order to assume the office of Territorial Superintendent of Public Instruction, a post he held from 1873 to 1880. His legacy was overhauling Washington’s educational system. As Dryden explains:

The School Law of 1877 was an important milestone because it marked the end of the pioneer period in education. Responsibility for it can be attributed to John P. Judson, Washington Territory’s … superintendent of public instruction. This law created a Territorial Board of Education with specified duties, and it also provided for county boards of education. One section dealt with certification of teachers, qualifications, and examinations.

Writer Angie Burt Bowden echoes, “His term was one of the most important in territorial history, because of its length– he served six years– because of the growth in professional spirit and usefulness through the county and territorial institutes; and because of the initiation of the Board of Education.” In 1876 he was the Democratic candidate for Territorial Delegate to Congress and lost by a mere 73 votes. In 1877 he also held the office of Olympia Mayor. After his Superintendent term was completed, Judson moved to Tacoma and became a Regent for the University of Washington. His final years were spent in Spokane and then Colville, where he died in April, 1910.

[The Territorial Librarian profiles were compiled by Sean Lanksbury, Mary Schaff, Kim Smeenk, and Steve Willis]

Not long ago when I visited Judith Moses, the tribal librarian for the Colville Confederated tribes, she shared with me, a great way that she had come up with to promote foods which were the staples of the tribes before the white man arrived.  Judith produces a calendar which contains pictures of the food and recipes as to how to prepare them.

This calendar wasn’t cheap to produce so Judith reached out to the WSU extension service.  They were happy to partner with her tribe to promote healthy eating.  Judith not only found the 12 recipes, she staged and shot the mouth watering photos of each month’s food.  It doesn’t hurt that Judith has a background in art.  Kudos to Judith for a great idea and its superb execution.

Washington State Library continues to celebrate Native American Heritage month by focusing on the history of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce.

The Nimi’ipuu (meaning “The Real People”) founded their villages in a 17 million acre swath of land that extended from the Bitteroot to the Blue mountains, especially along the banks of the Clearwater, Salmon, and Snake River drainages.  Their language is a part of the Sahaptian sub division of the Penutian linguistic family found  in the Western Plateau of North America. They had a wealth of resources in their mountainous home region but often migrated outside of ancestral lands to gather and hunt during certain seasonal cycles.

The Nimi’ipuu were dubbed Nez Perce (“pierced nose”) by French Candaian Fur Traders in the late 18th Century.  The Nez Perce witnessed the explosion of European settlement that occurred in the very brief half century since their interactions with traders and explorers such as Lewis and Clark.  With the Nez Perce Treaty of June 11, 1855, a portion of the Nez Perce leadership gathered at the Walla Walla Council signed away roughly 9.5 million acres of traditional lands (the treaty was ratified by the federal government March 8th and proclaimed on April 29th 1959), that relegated the tribes to the remaining 7.5 million acre reservation that spanned portions of the Idaho, Oregon and Washington Territories.

When gold was discovered in the region now known as Lewiston, ID, in 1860, the United States failed to maintain the terms of the treaty, leading to an influx of white settlers into Nez Perce Treaty lands.  Three years later, a splinter group of the Nez Perce leadership signed away all but 75,000 acres of their ancestral lands.  A large portion of the Nez Perce did not accept the validity of the treaty and refused to relocate to the acreage, located in Idaho, that was set aside.  These non-treaty Indians included Chief Joseph, who stayed near his ancestral lands in Oregon’s Wallowa Valley.  Tensions and violence between non-treaty Nez Perce and European settlers arose from the refusal of treaty demands for relocation.  In June of 1877 Chief Joseph and other non-treaty leaders agreed to relocate to Fort Lapwai, ID, but a group of tribal members, outraged at past wrongs, attacked Idaho settlers in the Camas Prairie region.  When Joseph arrived to the encampment and saw the devestation, he understood it as a declaration of war, realized an appeal for peace was futile, and began a fighting retreat across Idaho, Wyoming and Montana that ultimately deposited the fighting Nez Perce in Bear’s Paw Mountains of Montana, a short distance from the Canadian border.

On September 30, 1877, the United States Army’s Seventh Calvary, led by Gen, Nelson A. Miles, intercepted Joseph and the Nez Perce at Snake Creek in a surprise attack.  The two forces fiercely fought throughout the three day stand-off until General Oliver Howard and his soldiers arrived, throwing the balance of forces off.  On October 5, 1877 Chief Joseph surrendered, and in doing so, delivered a speech that, through interpretation by C.E.S. Wood, immortalized him.  Instead of being sent to the Idaho reservation as promised by Gen. Miles, the non-treaty Nez Perce were sent to Fort Buford, KS under orders from commanding Army General William Tecumseh Sherman.  Later they were transferred to live in a swampy section of Fort Leavenworth, KS and many tribe members contracted and perished from malaria.  In 1879 Chief Joseph petitioned the President Rutherford B. Hayes and the Congress for relocation to Idaho or Indian Territory in present day Oklahoma.  Due to rejection by Idahoans the band moved to Tonkawa, OK, where they remained until 1885 when they finally returned to the Pacific Northwest to join the Colville Reservation in Washington Territory.  It is in the Collville lands that Chief Joseph passed away September 21, 1904.

The story of Chief Joseph : from where the sun now stands / by Bruce A. Wilson. Okanogan, WA : Okanogan County Historical Society, [2006], c1960. R OVERSIZ 979.5004 WILSON 2006. In Library use only.

From the desk of Steve Willis, Central Library Services Program Manager of the Washington State Library:

This rather biting review of a circus appeared in the Stevens County Reveille, June 28, 1900, page 3:

That Circus, Saturday

“The circus came, conquered, and ‘went,’ as circuses usually do; the richer, perhaps, by a few dollars from Colville and surrounding country, but not sufficiently so to give the proprietors any large attack of ‘fat pocketbook.’ There was quite a crowd in town last Saturday, but there have been larger ones here on eventful occasions. The tent was at no time seriously crowded, the afternoon attendance being of course the largest. In the evening there were not more than 250 persons present. As for the show itself– well, there was a large amount of tent for a very small amount of performance. The institution had some very nice horses, poorly trained; there was no plowed ring, as is usual with a circus; a small plat of ground was inclosed in a circle, and within this was given one of the snidest attempts at a show we have yet seen. There were the usual side shows, including the naughty Hootchie dancers, but we heard of no efforts of the skin game to ply their trade. Our city officers wouldn’t allow it. Altogether, those who missed seeing the ‘Great English-American Syndicate’ are one dollar ahead and those who did attend are that much poorer and wiser.”

The critic was newspaperman Rufus Wood. No, not Rufus Woods, that other newspaperman, the one in Wenatchee who was famous as the “Father of the Grand Coulee Dam.” Although both of the Rufuses had brothers named Ralph and both had a preoccupation with the circus, they were different people.

The Washington State Library recently contributed another 23,000 historic newspaper pages from seven newspapers to Chronicling America, making Washington State’s contribution to the program a total of 23 titles and over 115,000 pages. Read and research issues from these and other newspapers around the U.S. for free at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov. 

100 years ago. Seattle Star, September 24, 2010

There are now 23 newspapers from Washington State currently included in Chronicling America:  

• Cayton’s Monthly, 1921
• Cayton’s Weekly, 1917-1921
• Colfax Gazette, 1900-1912  
• Colville Examiner, 1907-1922
• Commonwealth (Everett), 1911-1914
• Co-operative News, 1917-1921
• Daily Republican (Seattle), 1896
• Industrial Freedom, 1898-1901
• Islander, 1891-1898
• Leavenworth Echo, 1904-1922
• Northwest Worker, 1915-1917
• Pullman Herald, 1888-1922
• The Ranch (Yakima), 1894
• The Ranch (Seattle), 1902-1914
• Ranche and Range (Yakima), 1897-1902
• The Republican (Seattle), 1896-1898
• San Juan Islander, 1899-1914
• Seattle Republican, 1900-1913
• Seattle Star, 1899-1910
• Tacoma Times, 1903-1918
• Washington Farmer (Spokane), 1914
• Washington Socialist, 1914-1915 
• Yakima Herald, 1893-1912

Chronicling America provides free and open access to nearly 2.7 million full-text searchable pages from 348 titles published between 1860 and 1922 in 22 states and the District of Columbia. The Washington State Library’s National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) grant was renewed through June 2012, allowing more pages from other newspapers around Washington State to be uploaded over the next two years. 

For more information about Chronicling America, contact Laura Robinson, project manager for Washington’s National Digital Newspaper Program, at [email protected] or (360) 570-5568.

The Washington State Library recently contributed another 50,000 historic newspaper pages from nine newspapers to Chronicling America, making Washington State’s contribution to the program a total of 16 titles and 92,000 pages. People can read and research issues from these and other newspapers around the U.S. for free at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.

100 Years Ago. Tacoma Times, June 24, 1910

There are now 16 newspapers from Washington State currently included in Chronicling America:

• Cayton’s Weekly, 1917-1921
• Colfax Gazette, 1900-1912
• Colville Examiner, 1907-1922
• Commonwealth (Everett), 1911-1914
• Daily Republican (Seattle), 1896
• Leavenworth Echo, 1904-1922
• Pullman Herald, 1888-1922
• The Ranch (Yakima), 1894
• The Ranch (Seattle), 1902-1914
• Ranche and Range (Yakima), 1897-1902
• The Republican (Seattle), 1896-1898
• San Juan Islander, 1899-1914
• Seattle Republican, 1900-1913
• Tacoma Times, 1903-1918
• Washington Farmer (Spokane), June 15, 1914
  
• Yakima Herald, 1893-1912

Chronicling America provides free and open access to more than 2.3 million full-text searchable pages from 295 titles published between 1860 and 1922 in 19 states and the District of Columbia. The Washington State Library’s National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) grant was recently renewed through June of 2012, allowing more pages from other newspapers around Washington State to be uploaded over the next two years.

For more information about Chronicling America, contact Laura Robinson, project manager for Washington’s National Digital Newspaper Program, at [email protected] or (360) 570-5568.