The Rise And Decline Of The Ol^mpia Oyster 



pia Jim, Mary Olympia Jim, Dick Jackson, Sandy 

 Wohaut, James H. Tobin, H. R. Weatherhill (whose wife 

 was an Indian), J. A. Gale, Jack Slocum, Jim Simmons, 

 and C. William Krise. Many of these Indians were per- 

 sonally known to me. So far as I can learn all of them 

 have passed on. They were then people of the older 

 generation and knew little or nothing of the industrial 

 methods of the whites, and were not able to cope with 

 them. Most of them soon sold their oyster beds and mov- 

 ed to their Indian Reservations; some to Squaxin 

 Reservation, others to the Yakima Reservation, or else- 

 where. 



A few Indians were employed as oyster workers. For 

 the most part they performed their work in a satisfact- 

 ory manner when supervised. They were good boatmen, 

 and very skilled in handling oyster floats with a pole. 

 But in hunting or fishing season they would lose interest 

 in their work; their eyes would turn toward the woods or 

 down the Bay toward the fishing grounds. They would 

 yield to the impulse to follow the life of their ancestors 

 and no matter how important the work you were doing 

 they would slip away without notice. 



The Indians kept leaving gradually, and it was only 

 a few years until they were practically gone. Charley 

 Johns and his wife Mary, their son, Delbert, and his 

 children and Jamison Peters, son of Joe and Molly Peters, 

 are, I believe the only Oyster Bay Indians who have con- 

 tinued to work in the oyster industry to the present time. 

 They were replaced mostly by the Japanese, who took 

 readily to this work and were very satisfactory. 



Dick Jackson was an interesting old Indian. For years 



(102) 



