The Great Nooksack Potlatch
Hundreds gather near Lynden for a traditional gift-giving feast and solemn reburial of ancestors.
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.
An Indian potlatch, or gift feast, given by Jim Yellowkanim, the old chief of the Nooksack tribe and the wealthiest Indian in the northwestern part of the state, has just closed at his ranch at Lynden. It was attended by 400 Siwashes of every tribe in the section from Skagit county to the Fraser river in British Columbia, and was marked by the wild, peculiar ceremonies of the aborigines. The Indians disinterred and reburied all the dead of the Nooksack tribe, the weird rite being performed in the cemetery owned by the chief. Yellowkanim distributed gifts to the value of hundreds of dollars, and his lavish entertainment of the tribe cost him thousands.
“Yellowkanim distributed gifts to the value of hundreds of dollars, and his lavish entertainment of the tribe cost him thousands.”
While the contemporary press used terms like 'wild' and 'weird' to describe Indigenous practices, these events were vital acts of community continuity and resistance. The Nooksack people continue to steward their ancestral lands in the Lynden area today, maintaining the same traditions of honoring their forebears that Jim Yellowkanim demonstrated over a century ago.
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