Pioneer descendants help Duwamish tribe

After lurching hundreds of miles west in a covered wagon to Oregon, then boarding a schooner north, you arrive in a damp place of towering trees, rivers and drizzle that one day will be known as Seattle.

It is November 1851, and the new cabin has no roof. The baby is sick. Bear and cougars lurk in the forests and hills. You feel afraid, overwhelmed. What will you eat? How will you survive? Should you have even come?

Amy Johnson's great-great-grandfather, David Denny, faced grim odds when his family and others in the Denny Party reached Puget Sound after a half-year journey from Illinois.

The group, which later founded Seattle, likely would have perished had it not been for the generosity of Duwamish tribal members, who offered clam broth to revive the ailing babe, shelter and protection from hostile tribes.

Yet unlike the legendary assistance New England tribes offered the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock so long ago, the friendship between the Duwamish and early white settlers remains a little-known, yet vital, element of area history.

Johnson, a Bellevue resident, wants that to change. While watching her own family grow, she felt an urge last year to thank and honor the tribe that enabled her and other settler descendants to exist, generations later.

She organized Coming Full Circle, an opportunity for descendants to recognize the Duwamish and to help raise money for the tribe's future $1.5 million longhouse and cultural center, as a means of setting right what they consider many years of wrongs.

"If it hadn't been for the Duwamish when the first pioneers came, they either wouldn't have survived or they wouldn't have stayed," Johnson said. "If it hadn't been for the Duwamish I might not be here today."

She was one of dozens who gathered at Seattle's Museum of History and Industry yesterday to mark Coming Full Circle II, with traditional drumming and dancing, storytelling and the chance for an ever-growing circle of descendants to get to know one another.

A glance about the auditorium captured an abundance of living history. Ned Palmer, a descendant of the once deathly ill baby, Rolland Palmer, thanked the tribe for saving that baby's life and making his own possible. Bob Maple Norman, a descendant of settler Jacob Maple, recalled how 700 tribal members showed up out of the blue to celebrate a Maple family wedding.

Young tribal dancers and the youngest of the settler descendants hopped and bounded in a challenge dance, recalling generations before when the kids ran and played together.

Later waves of settlers burned Duwamish longhouses and drove the tribe from its lands, which once stretched from Burien to near Everett, and east to Lake Sammamish.

The Duwamish, who count more than 500 members, still lack federal recognition and the aid for education and health care that comes with it.

So far, the tribe has bought land along West Marginal Way and has raised more than $250,000 from grants and donations from the descendants group, said tribal Chair Cecile Hansen, a descendant of Seattle's namesake.

"I am so heartfelt to these pioneer descendants," Hansen said after the ceremony. "It's beautiful. I didn't expect anything."

Fellow tribal member James Rasmussen encouraged the crowd to support the preservation of Duwamish heritage and the tribe's future.

"You now are the ones that write the history for this area. You are the ones now who decide what happens in this area," said Rasmussen.

"It's up to you to remember the history of the land goes beyond the founding of the city."

Karen Gaudette: 206-515-5618 or kgaudette@seattletimes.com