The Trial of a Puyallup Medicine Man
A traditional healer is fined by tribal authorities for practicing the 'tomanamus' rite, highlighting the collision between Indigenous traditions and colonial governance.
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.
At the January sitting of the court of Indian offenses on the reservation here, the Indian judges found George Bird, a wealthy Indian formerly of the Puyallup reservation, guilty of practicing the Tomanamus rite on John Kettle. The fame of George's mystic passes and supernatural powers was well established among the old Indians, and according to the testimony, a number of them watched his efforts to show that the medicine man's tomanamus is stronger than the white doctor's medicine. As one witness explained, it was a case of consumption and too far advanced for magic art to heal. George, possessed of property purchased from the sale of his allotment at Puyallup, charged a fee of $10 for his services. The court fined the medicine man $2.50 for violating the Indian department regulation against these weird incantations and required him to pay the $10 back to John Kettle's widow, Thue. The defendant claimed the Indians are now slaves of the government and not free agents as they were in the good old days.
“The defendant made a speech... in which he claimed that the Indians are slaves of the government and not free agents as they were in the good old days.”
This story captures a specific, painful era of federal intrusion into Indigenous internal affairs, where the U.S. government enforced policies to eradicate traditional healing. Today, the Puyallup Tribe exercises sovereignty over its own health and cultural practices, a direct contrast to the state-imposed 'court' described here.
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