| Summary: | Swan Diary No. 33. Covers the period of May 1, 1883 to September 26, 1883. Includes an account of his trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia (from the region about Dixon entrance to Queen Charlotte Sound), on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution to obtain specimens of "Indian manufactures, and of Natural History for the Bureau of Ethnology, the United State Fish commission and National Museum under the direction of Professor Spencer F. Baird, Secretary and Chief Executive Officer of the Smithsonian Institution" (page 19). Swan sailed on the Hudson's Bay Company's steamer Otter for a four month expedition accompanied by Johnny Kit Elswa, a Haida artist. In the Smithsonian report of 1883, Spencer F. Baird, Secretary, wrote as follows: "The most important research prosecuted under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution was that by Mr. James G. Swan in the Queen Charlotte Islands. For more than a quarter of a century his contributions have been most noteworthy. To him we owe very extensive collections illustrating the life and work of the Indians on Puget Sound, as also everything relating to the fisheries of that region, whether prosecuted by the savage or white man." This journal also includes a section entitled "Memoranda of seal fishing at Neah Bay, Clallam County, Washington territory, 1880 (Page 7). James Gilchrist Swan, anthropologist, judge, political advisor, artist, schoolteacher, and promoter of Port Townsend, was one of the most colorful personalities of Washington State's territorial period (1853-1889). Swan was born in Massachusetts in 1818. In 1852 Swan departed for Shoalwater Bay (now called Grays Harbor). He learned the Chinook jargon, and this knowledge led Washington Governor Isaac Stevens to pick Swan as one of several translators for treaty negotiations with the Indians of Western Washington during 1854 and 1855. In 1859 he moved to Port Townsend and spent the next three years shuttling back and forth between Port Townsend and the Makah Indian Reservation at Neah Bay, supporting himself by writing for a variety of newspapers. In 1862 the local U.S. Indian agent appointed Swan the first schoolteacher at the Makah Reservation. Under criticism for failing to teach Christianity to the Makah, Swan resigned in 1866 and moved to Port Townsend. Swan was admitted to the bar in 1867 and began practicing admiralty law. The following year he was appointed to the Pilotage Commission of Puget Sound, the agency which examined sea pilots and issued licenses. In 1882 he became a U.S. commissioner (district court judge). He also took the position of Hawaiian consul to the United States at Port Townsend in 1882. The Smithsonian Institution hired Swan to collect Indian artifacts for the 1876 world's fair in Philadelphia, the 1884 fair in London, and the 1893 exposition in Chicago. The Smithsonian thus funded Swan's collecting trips to British Columbia and Southeast Alaska in 1875 and 1883. Swan published two articles on the Haida Indians from the notes he took on these trips. An appointment as deputy customs collector for Neah Bay allowed Swan to live at the Makah reservation from 1878 to 1881. The U.S. Fish Commission asked Swan to write a series of reports on the fish and fisheries of the northern Pacific, permitting him to visit Neah Bay intermittently between 1882 and 1891. Swan spent the rest of his life in Port Townsend, dying there in 1900.
|
|---|