History Matinee: Coast Salish Women and Cross-Cultural Marriages

— from Carol Kulminski for the Orcas Island Historical Museum —

Author Candace will speak on the Salish women whose marriages impacted island history

Candace Wellman, author of the book Peace Weavers, is the presenter at the History Matinee sponsored by the Orcas Island Historical Museums on Sunday, September 24, 3:00 pm at the Eastsound Fire Station.

The following is a book review by archivist, Edrie Vinson, that will give you an idea of this interesting and insightful presentation:

Peace Weavers: Uniting The Salish Coast Through Cross-Cultural Marriages, by Candace Wellman

Reviewed by Edrie Vinson:

What a delight to pick up a book about Coast Salish Women, and find that two of the four women featured were actually on Orcas Island. And that wasn’t the best part!  Candace Wellman has researched many native women and their husbands, all of whom were selected to bring honor and privilege to their families, yet she only had room in this book to write about less than a handful.  Why?  Because her book is so thoroughly researched for both the women she honors, and the men they married.  The work took her not only from coast to coast, but across the ocean, looking into every archive in between.  

From this wonderful book we learn about Clara Tennant, the native wife of John Tennant, who nearly met his maker on top of Mount Baker, and from then on served as a Methodist Minister.  Clara, who adopted the religion, became his assistant and missionary, spreading the religion among many of the Coast Salish people. Here on Orcas the pair arrived in the early 1880s, just as the huge commotion about the rumors of a new saloon ripped the community apart. Charles Shattuck, who planned to build the saloon, ended up donating the plot and the lumber he had bought, to the Methodist for their new church, thus appeasing the irate housewives.  Starting with only 3 members, and having over 100 when the church was finished, John and Clara donated the pastor’s chair and table, to the newly completed sanctuary, and the congregation donated the remained of the accumulated debt. Leaving the new building and its founding fathers, the Tennants moved on to start another church elsewhere in the frontier.

Another woman with Orcas connections was Mary Fitzhugh Lear Phillips, whose husband, George Phillips, worked at the Langdon lime works.  In a drunken stupor, George was eventually going to be a threat to Mary’s existence, and she did him in somewhere along the trail between Langdon and Eastsound. Mary paid the price, though many were sympathetic to her cause. Along with her two young children, she spent 2 years in the Territorial prison, south of Olympia. She returned to Orcas, lived out her life, and was buried at Madrona Point. Two of her eight children are also buried there.

While these are only a small portion of two of the full life stories in the book, Wellman says another book is waiting in the wings. Get your copy now. You won’t be able to put it down!