Lawrence Webster was a retired logger, like thousands of men in northwest Washington. However, Webb, as he was known, was a member of a small and special group. He was an Elder of the Suquamish Tribe and a speaker of the Puget Sound Salish language. Born in 1899, Webb was a former Tribal Chairman and lived in Indianola, near where he was raised. The sidebar quotes from him and other Suquamish Elders are taken from interviews given on the Port Madison Indian Reservation as part of the Suquamish Tribal Oral History Project.
Marilyn Jones is Director of the Suquamish Museum and an Oral Historian for the Suquamish Tribe. She was born and raised on the Port Madison Indian Reservation, and as a young girl began a lifelong quest to learn about the traditional ways of her tribe. At age seven she would lead tours of area students through the reservation, showing them important sites of her people and telling them stories she heard from the Elders about the “old days.” She was eventually hired as an Oral Historian for the Suquamish Tribal Cultural Center’s Oral History Project. The sidebar quotes from her are taken from an informal interview by the author on the Port Madison Indian Reservation on April 22, 1999.
I want to give a special thanks to Marilyn Jones for making available to me Suquamish Tribal archives and for her help in editing this book for accuracy according to Suquamish Tribal history.
Warren Jefferson