The Makah Sealers’ Schooner Controversy
A bureaucratic fight over whether tribal sealers can legally use schooners as refuge during dangerous Bering Sea storms.
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.
The question of whether the Makah Indians of Washington can legally use schooners in the Bering Sea while sealing has been brought to the attention of the Treasury Department. Secretary Hoke Smith, acting on the recommendation of Acting Commissioner Armstrong, asks to be advised whether the Indians, under their treaty with Great Britain and the act governing seal fishing, may be permitted to use their schooners as a place of refuge in storms and for security at night while engaged in fishing for fur seals in canoes as heretofore practiced. The Indian Agent at Neah Bay complained that under his interpretation, he notified the Indian sealers that they could not go out in schooners and then drop their canoes, as they have heretofore done. He noted the great risk to the Indians if they are forced to remain in their canoes in stormy weather without the safety of the schooners.
“He noted the great risk to the Indians if they are forced to remain in their canoes in stormy weather without the safety of the schooners.”
This reflects the ongoing, long-standing struggle for treaty rights and tribal sovereignty in Washington State, where federal regulations have historically sought to impose rigid constraints on traditional practices like sealing and fishing. Today, the Makah continue to assert their treaty-guaranteed right to hunt whales and fish, often clashing with modern administrative interpretations of those same 19th-century agreements.
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