intermixing of cultures

[Lisa Peppan]

On Mon, 21 Jun 1999 Jeffrey Kopp <jeffkopp at TELEPORT.COM> writes:

>It's not an issue to me, but a matter of genuine historical interest and
social curiosity.  I'm >sure the frontier was as friendly as it was
dangerous.  But things shifted quickly with the >arrival of families,
however, and the appearance of conventional propriety became >paramount.
Cross-cultural relations certainly continued, but--at least
hereabouts--I'm sure >people carefully avoided calling attention to it.
Mixed marriages didn't always garner >epithets, but still raised eyebrows
during my youth.  I was somewhat acquainted with a >couple Native-white
families, and I remember being quizzed about my opinion of it by
>trolling gossips.

<wry chuckle>  I'm a webfooted Seattlite.  I was born here in 1958.  My
dad, in Ballard -- north and west just a tad from downtown Seattle --
1928.  His dad was born on San Juan Island in 1895.  My great grandfather
was born in Langley, BC, in 1853 or thereabouts.

In the early 70s I remember there was shift in Public Opinion regarding
Indians; in the early 70s I found out that my father had Indian
ancestors.

When my dad was growing up, in a rural community north of Seattle, he and
his brother and sister would tell any askers that they were Italian,
because a little boy "in the area" was beat to death for being a "dirty
little Indian" and not one person thought to question it.

>From the few family stories, my Grandfather Don didn't have much trouble,
but then again he was also a part-(-full?) time bootlegger . . . and the
youngest of 7, so he knew about getting along.

The folks on that side of the family are pretty nonchalant about their
Native ancestry compared to the altitude of my Dad's maternal line.

That side of the family got to the Northwest from the southeastern US via
the Dakota Territory and from England, in the 1890s, settling in Tacoma.
My great aunts are *SO*-- tight-lipped, scrunch-shouldered, arm-crossed,
dead-set against even the thought of Native ancestry.  A
handful-of-greats-Grandfather was a Creek Indian; another one a
generation closer may have had ties to the Lakota Nation in the Dakota
Territory.  Despite the great aunts claims that there is no Indian blood
in *their* family, there is, and probably back as far as Robert
Hildebrand, Creek war chief, they've been hiding it.

An uncle (married Dad's sister) as recently as two years ago, looks to
see who's listening when he starts talking, in hushed tones, about his
French-Canadian parents, and how they "didn't talk about That" when they
were little and growing up in Montana.

My mother's mother was *horrified* when she found out that Daddy was "an
Indian"; mom couldn't see what the big deal was *she* thought is was
kinda neat.  My maternal grandmother grew up in Ferndale, just a wee tad
south of the Washington/BC border; her family came from Iowa via Idaho.

Now, I could be wrong -- it wouldn't be a first -- but by and large I
think that the balance of tolerance and intolerance in the Pacific
Northwest is more . . . kahkwah . . . than elsewhere in the United
States.  There *are* some right scary pockets of the latter at least that
was my spin on it -- I don't remember where they were more than "east of
the Cascades" but there were places Dad wouldn't stop when we went
camping over there.  Gas stops were spaced so stopping There wasn't
necessary.

It's a real mixed bag, depending on who you are as well as where you are.

Just my two cents worth.

But the thing I REALLY want to know is where the klaw-HAW-kus bear came
from?  (According to Daddy, it was the First Word in mean, and who
wouldn't be with two heads and no way to go to the bathroom.)

Lisa Peppan
A Child of the Northwest
lisapeppan at juno.com
Genealogy Research at http://members.tripod.com/~LisaPeppan/index.html





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