The Printer and the Preacher: A Life Between Worlds
Rev. Peter C. Stanup, a Puyallup tribal member, reflects on his journey from the reservation school to the pulpit and the printing press.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Among those who have been at the meeting of the Presbytery of Puget Sound in this city during the past week is Rev. Peter C. Stanup, a young Indian of the Puyallup tribe, who has been a licensed minister in the Presbyterian faith for several years. Mr. Stanup is a full-blooded Indian, but one would never detect it from his conversation, as his grammar is almost perfect, and his flow of language easy and graceful. He is about 6 feet 10 inches in height, with a black, piercing eye, and smooth face. He attended school on the Puyallup reservation when a child, and afterward at Forest Grove. He is very conscientious in his Christian work, which he carries on among the Indians on the reservation. In conversation with a reporter of the Post-Intelligencer, in reply to questions put to him, Mr. Stanup said: 'I was born on the Puyallup reservation on July 17, 1858. When a boy I made up my mind to follow the printing business. I found out how to set the type by visiting the office of the Daily Tribune, then published in Olympia by Thomas W. Prosch. In the spring of 1876, I went to Olympia and apprenticed myself to Frances H. Cook who was publishing a little evening paper called the Echo. The present city editor of the Post-Intelligencer was city editor, foreman, compositor, proof-reader and pressman on that paper, and he played many practical printer’s jokes on me. One day he sent me to the transcript office to borrow his 'imposing stone,' which I afterward learned was the large marble slab on which the forms are made up, and which it would take four men to carry. Mr. Gunn said he was using his stone, and advised me to go to the Standard office... but I took it all in good part. I worked in the office three months and got so I could set type tolerably well. I found office work too confining, and as I was threatened with consumption, I thought best to give up any hope of becoming a printer. I quit for a time, but assisted in moving the Echo office to New Tacoma, and helped set out the first number of the New Tacoma Herald, the first paper ever published in New Tacoma. After I gave up the printing business I farmed for a while, and then went to school at Forest Grove, Oregon, where I graduated in the English branches. When I came back I continued my studies, and the Presbytery of Puget Sound took me as a theological student. Five years ago they ordained me to preach among the Indians.'
“One day he sent me to the transcript office to borrow his 'imposing stone,' which I afterward learned was the large marble slab on which the forms are made up, and which it would take four men to carry.”
Peter Stanup's narrative highlights the often-erased history of Indigenous intellectuals navigating the settler colonial apparatus of the late 19th century. Today, his work as a bridge-builder between the Puyallup community and the broader region finds resonance in contemporary efforts to reclaim tribal agency and language in the Pacific Northwest.
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