Call number
NWC 979.7 DED
Collection
Publication
Bison Books (2019), Edition: Illustrated, 336 pages
Description
A gravestone, a mention in local archives, stories still handed down around Oyster Bay: the outline of a woman begins to emerge and with her the world she inhabited, so rich in tradition and shaken by violent change. Katie Kettle Gale was born into a Salish community in Puget Sound in the 1850s, just as settlers were migrating into what would become Washington State. With her people forced out of their traditional hunting and fishing grounds into ill-provisioned island camps and reservations, Katie Gale sought her fortune in Oyster Bay. In that early outpost of multiculturalism--where Native Americans and immigrants from the eastern United States, Europe, and Asia vied for economic, social, political, and legal power--a woman like Gale could make her way. As LLyn De Danaan mines the historical record, we begin to see Gale, a strong-willed Native woman who cofounded a successful oyster business, then won the legal rights from her Euro-American husband, a man with whom she had raised children but who ultimately made her life unbearable. Steeped in sadness--with a lost home and a broken marriage, children dying in their teens, and tuberculosis claiming her at forty-three--Katie Gale's story is also one of remarkable pluck, a tale of hard work and ingenuity, gritty initiative and bad luck that is, ultimately, essentially American. … (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member arelenriel
This book provides an excellent historical exploration of the life of a Native American woman on the West Coast of the United States in the late 19th century. The author pays particular attention to how the disenfranchisement of the Northwestern tribes affected Katie Gale's life and that of her
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descendants. Overall this was an excellent book. Show Less
LibraryThing member gbelik
This book tells the story of Katie Gale, an enterprising Native American woman married to a white settler in the Puget Sound area in the second half of the 19th century. It combines geography, cultural anthropology, history and the author's personal reflections about the area. I found many of the
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historical incidents interesting, but felt that the narrative rambled too much. I would have preferred less authorial speculation, even though that would condense the story. The book was clearly a labor of love for the author, and I admired the research that went into it. It clearly added to my knowledge of the area, but I couldn't say I loved the process of reading this book. Show Less
LibraryThing member thornton37814
This is a look at the story of a Native American woman, Katie Gale, who married a white man and lived a very hard life in the Puget Sound (which has recently been renamed the Salish Sea by the USGS Board on Geographic Names according to the author). It takes a look at her family history and adds
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some social history to make the narrative come to life. I found the organization of this work to be a bit awkward at times. I felt that the author tried to personalize the book too much by placing too much of the current landscape into the narrative when a straightforward historical narrative would have served better. As a genealogist, I felt the author did not document every statement or remark that should have been. When I look at the bibliography, many of the items are there in terms of a general group of records, but the specific details of the record used to support the statement are not in the end notes, making it difficult for persons to locate the specific item. I do, however, believe this is an important work on Native American life for women in that region and time period. The book, however, does not live up to the qualitative standard of other recently published microhistories such as The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle. Show Less
LibraryThing member book58lover
It must be very difficult to write a book about someone that leaves very little information; no diaries, no letters, only legal documents. The author does an admirable job describing the life of a native woman living on Puget Sound, working the oyster beds. The description is over long about the
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daily life of those living and working there; Katie doesn't come into full play until chapter eleven. I felt sympathy for her legal problems, but I never felt that I knew Katie, the woman and mother. And that is too bad. Show Less
LibraryThing member meldridge
This book is full of a lot of information and detail. It is a highly recommended read for those interested in American Indian history as a whole and Pacific Northwest Indians specifically. I did not enjoy the book as to me it read more like a history book with Katie Gale's story woven throughout,
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but not he primary focus. This was a distraction and disappointment to me. However, it is a phenomenal book if you are interested in history. Show Less
LibraryThing member mdbrady
A FAVORITE BOOK
A wonderful, innovatively conceived history of a Native American woman who lived in a community of Indians and whites on the southern edge of Puget Sound in the northwestern United States in the late nineteenth century.
Llyn De Dannon is an Emeritus Professor at Evergreen College in
Katie Gale was born near Puget Sound in 1856, just as violence ended between those who had long lived in the area and the European American intruders who were entering it. Because her mother became sick and died, Katie spend much of her childhood with relatives who lived on Oyster Bay, learning the traditional craft of minding the oyster beds and collecting oysters. James Gale was an ambitious white newcomer, aware of the value of oysters and eager to make his fortune. He and Katie lived together, had children, and married, all the while working the oysters together and gaining possession of more beds. In 1893, a national economic crisis reached Oyster Bay. At the same time, Katie’s marriages become abusive. Because she was defined as a U.S. citizen and had married legally, she was able to go to court to sue for divorce. James defended himself by accusing her of being an unfit mother and only a crude and lazy Indian, claims that were easy proven to be false. Before the court ruled, he and Katie worked out an economic agreement which gave her full possession of some of their oyster beds. They remained formally married but he spent most of his time in Seattle with his white mistress and his rapidly growing oyster business. Katie and her two children remained on the bay where she established her own successful oyster business. She died of tuberculosis in 1899. Her ex-husband went on to become an important figure economically and politically in the state.
Because Katie Gale could neither read nor write, her own thoughts and emotions can seldom be known. The only words we can trace to her are from the accounts others wrote. Court documents include her description of the violent abuse that James inflicted on her. The descendants of those who were her friends add a few choice stories, such as the time she tied James, probably drunk, to a tree with his beard. De Dannon uses her broad knowledge of the region to suggest what Katie might have been doing and saying. At first De Dannon’s images of the inside of Katie’s house and the trail behind it seemed to me to be sheer fabrications, but on reading her discussions at the end of the book, I learned at she had talked with those who had lived there and known the house and trail. De Dannon is careful to indicate when she has evidence for her account and when she moves beyond it. Using her imagination allows her to make figures from the past more real and human. But she never tries to tell an intimate story that only a novelist could write.
As Thomas King observes in his fine recent Native American history, most of us tend to assume that Indians were either fighting or invisible to white people. Katie Gale’s story makes real a transitional community when people of different racial groups lived alongside each other. They were not equal, but for a time they lived together, worked and played together with an openness that would later disappear. If we are to understand the full scope of our racial histories, we need to learn more about communities like these in which Katie Gale lived.
In an unusually long acknowledgement section at the end of the book, De Dannon writes about the people from whom she learned about nineteenth-century life on Oyster Bay. Many of these were the descendants of people who had known Katie Gale. She also credits her colleagues at Evergreen College for the shape which the book took. She notes the questions which both students and teachers were regularly asked when they finished a project. “What did you do? How did you do it? What did you learn? Why does it matter?” In writing this book, these were the underlying questions she sought to answer.
I strongly recommend this book to a wide variety of readers. It certainly should be read by anyone interested in Native American and Indigenous peoples, but also by those who simply enjoy well-researched biography or history and unconventional approaches to learning the “truth” of the past.
Thanks to Library Thing and to Bison Books at University of Nebraska Press for sending me a copy of this book to review.
A wonderful, innovatively conceived history of a Native American woman who lived in a community of Indians and whites on the southern edge of Puget Sound in the northwestern United States in the late nineteenth century.
Llyn De Dannon is an Emeritus Professor at Evergreen College in
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Olympia, Washington. She herself lives just down Oyster Bay from where Katie Gale once lived. She has extensively researched and documented all she can find about Gale and those who touched her life. Her findings are well documented with footnotes, bibliography, and comments about her sources, especially the oral histories she conducted, but this book is not meant for other academicians. In the innovative tradition of the college where she taught, she has written an interdisciplinary history which takes in to account economic, political, and environmental changes that affected life on Oyster Bay. Even more unconventionally, she has woven into her account her own extensive speculations about her subject and her own memoir of living on the bay as she wrote about Gale.Katie Gale was born near Puget Sound in 1856, just as violence ended between those who had long lived in the area and the European American intruders who were entering it. Because her mother became sick and died, Katie spend much of her childhood with relatives who lived on Oyster Bay, learning the traditional craft of minding the oyster beds and collecting oysters. James Gale was an ambitious white newcomer, aware of the value of oysters and eager to make his fortune. He and Katie lived together, had children, and married, all the while working the oysters together and gaining possession of more beds. In 1893, a national economic crisis reached Oyster Bay. At the same time, Katie’s marriages become abusive. Because she was defined as a U.S. citizen and had married legally, she was able to go to court to sue for divorce. James defended himself by accusing her of being an unfit mother and only a crude and lazy Indian, claims that were easy proven to be false. Before the court ruled, he and Katie worked out an economic agreement which gave her full possession of some of their oyster beds. They remained formally married but he spent most of his time in Seattle with his white mistress and his rapidly growing oyster business. Katie and her two children remained on the bay where she established her own successful oyster business. She died of tuberculosis in 1899. Her ex-husband went on to become an important figure economically and politically in the state.
Because Katie Gale could neither read nor write, her own thoughts and emotions can seldom be known. The only words we can trace to her are from the accounts others wrote. Court documents include her description of the violent abuse that James inflicted on her. The descendants of those who were her friends add a few choice stories, such as the time she tied James, probably drunk, to a tree with his beard. De Dannon uses her broad knowledge of the region to suggest what Katie might have been doing and saying. At first De Dannon’s images of the inside of Katie’s house and the trail behind it seemed to me to be sheer fabrications, but on reading her discussions at the end of the book, I learned at she had talked with those who had lived there and known the house and trail. De Dannon is careful to indicate when she has evidence for her account and when she moves beyond it. Using her imagination allows her to make figures from the past more real and human. But she never tries to tell an intimate story that only a novelist could write.
As Thomas King observes in his fine recent Native American history, most of us tend to assume that Indians were either fighting or invisible to white people. Katie Gale’s story makes real a transitional community when people of different racial groups lived alongside each other. They were not equal, but for a time they lived together, worked and played together with an openness that would later disappear. If we are to understand the full scope of our racial histories, we need to learn more about communities like these in which Katie Gale lived.
In an unusually long acknowledgement section at the end of the book, De Dannon writes about the people from whom she learned about nineteenth-century life on Oyster Bay. Many of these were the descendants of people who had known Katie Gale. She also credits her colleagues at Evergreen College for the shape which the book took. She notes the questions which both students and teachers were regularly asked when they finished a project. “What did you do? How did you do it? What did you learn? Why does it matter?” In writing this book, these were the underlying questions she sought to answer.
I strongly recommend this book to a wide variety of readers. It certainly should be read by anyone interested in Native American and Indigenous peoples, but also by those who simply enjoy well-researched biography or history and unconventional approaches to learning the “truth” of the past.
Thanks to Library Thing and to Bison Books at University of Nebraska Press for sending me a copy of this book to review.
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LibraryThing member cransell
I don't think I've ever read a history book by an anthropologist before, and I have to say that I liked it. De Danaan has definitely meticulously researched her subject matter, but she also takes some well-reasoned leaps of faith as she describes the life of Katie Gale, an Indian Woman, who married
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a European-American settler, on Oyster Bay, not too far from Olympia in the late 1800s. As an East Coast gal, I'm not as familiar with the history of the Pacific Northwest, so this was an interesting, leisurely read for me. Show Less
LibraryThing member Helenoel
[Katie Gale]is history written by an anthropologist about a personal interest in the area where she lives. This has both good and bad points. De Danaan's personal interest in the character of Katie Gale is evident, but there is only a bit of real historical data about her, so much of the book is
De Danaan wants to make the point that Katie Gale got a raw deal both as a Native American in the time of European-American settlement and establishment of reservations (mostly late 1800s) and as a woman in the same Eurocentric culture and times. She nonetheless manages to be successful in business if not in her personal life, and was a respected member of her community. De Danaan makes this point repeatedly, and with excellent documentation.
The author's teaching style extends to a need to explain almost everything, but I wonder of most readers really need to be told that kerosene lamps and wood stoves are a lot of work and sometimes dangerous, with the same detail provided for oyster farming techniques which are much less universal.
For someone interested in general history of the Southern Puget Sound area (Now known as the Salish Sea, we are told) this book is a trove of detail and sources. For many general readers, the lists of products sold at the general store with prices may be more than we need to set the stage for the personal story.
None of the detail is inappropriate, but good editing might have trimmed it to make the points without hammering them.
However the story of Katie Gale is one that deserves telling and gives a fresh perspective to our understanding of the time and place - a good addition to the historic record.
I received this book through the Library Thing Early Reviewers Program in exchange for the promise of a review.
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historical detail about other people and places who Gale "would have", or "must have" or probably knew and interacted with. For the first half of the book, this gets tedious, especially for the reader who does not know the territory or the anthropological conventions of linguistic forms of Native American names. De Danaan wants to make the point that Katie Gale got a raw deal both as a Native American in the time of European-American settlement and establishment of reservations (mostly late 1800s) and as a woman in the same Eurocentric culture and times. She nonetheless manages to be successful in business if not in her personal life, and was a respected member of her community. De Danaan makes this point repeatedly, and with excellent documentation.
The author's teaching style extends to a need to explain almost everything, but I wonder of most readers really need to be told that kerosene lamps and wood stoves are a lot of work and sometimes dangerous, with the same detail provided for oyster farming techniques which are much less universal.
For someone interested in general history of the Southern Puget Sound area (Now known as the Salish Sea, we are told) this book is a trove of detail and sources. For many general readers, the lists of products sold at the general store with prices may be more than we need to set the stage for the personal story.
None of the detail is inappropriate, but good editing might have trimmed it to make the points without hammering them.
However the story of Katie Gale is one that deserves telling and gives a fresh perspective to our understanding of the time and place - a good addition to the historic record.
I received this book through the Library Thing Early Reviewers Program in exchange for the promise of a review.
Show Less
ISBN
1496215117 / 9781496215116
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