History Events to Outline Early Settlement

News articles and published books on local history don't always tell the entire story.

A deeper appreciation comes from discussions, displays and presentations. Two upcoming events aim to accomplish all three.

Fort Steilacoom Day — scheduled from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday at the museum complex at Western State Hospital — is a turn back the clock open house through a partnership with the Historic Fort Steilacoom Museum Association. Area schools will provide children a hands-on approach to local history.

The event runs through the weekend, and the four remaining fort buildings will host tours as reenactors live the life as it was in early settlement days.

The time before white settlers will also be discussed the week after.

Millenniums passed between the Native Americans' arrival and the falsified European and American discovery of the area. Salish tribes called the Steilacoom area home long before.

Chairman of the Steilacoom Tribe, master storyteller and cultural anthropologist Danny K. Marshall, will trace his peoples’ past, present and future in a free public talk dubbed “A Special Place in Time: Steilacoom Now…and Then” from 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 5 at the Steilacoom Town Hall, located at 1717 Lafayette St.

The Steilacoom tribe is fighting for Federal recognition. The tribe’s current challenge is preserving its crumbling cultural center museum housed in a century-old historic building in Steilacoom’s downtown.

“Members of the tribe are united by a common bond," Marshall said. The quest to hold onto our Steilacoom Indian heritage, to preserve and protect our identity as a distinct and viable Indian tribe, and to regain rights and privileges guaranteed by the Medicine Creek Treaty (of 1854).

Unlike most other treaty-signing tribes, we have had to maintain our identity without the benefit of a land base and Federal resources.”

The number of people declaring Steilacoom tribal membership hasn't change, holding at about 665. More than 90 percent of them have families ancestry that trace directly back to members of the tribe when the Medicine Creek Treaty was signed in 1854.

The tribe's balance came from an effort in the early 1950s to adopt Native Americans from neighboring tribes.

Marshall’s presentation is co-sponsored by the Town of Steilacoom and Steilacoom’s Historic Preservation and Review Board. The talk is free but donations for the ongoing Tribal Cultural Center capital campaign are welcome.

Interested?

Fort Steilacoom Day

• When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday through Sunday.
• Where: Western State Hospital museum complex.
• Cost: Free.

Presentation by Chairman of the Steilacoom Tribe Danny K. Marshall

• When: 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 5.
• Where: Steilacoom Town Hall, located at 1717 Lafayette St.
• How much: Free but donations are welcome.