James Gilchrist Swan diaries, 1859-1866

• Main Author: Swan, James Gilchrist
• Other Authors: University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Swan; James Gilchrist > Diaries; Frontier and pioneer life > Washington (State); Pioneers > Washington (State); Indians of North America > Washington (State); Makah Indian Tribe of the Makah Reservation; Washington; Makah Indian Reservation (Wash.); Indian; Pacific; Saunders; Shoalwater Bay; haida; Alaska
• Online Access: http://cdm16786.contentdm.oclc.org:80/cdm/ref/collection/pioneerlife/id/4808

Selected daily diaries (nos, 1-6, 8-10) of James Gilchrist Swan. The diaries presented here are digitizations of typed transcripts prepared by Lucile Saunders McDonald in the course of research for her book 'Swan Among the Indians.' 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.