The Great Cle Elum Naming War

 

   The first non-Native Americans to reside in Cle Elum were Thomas L. Gamble and Walter J. Reed, who, in 1883, established adjacent homesteads on land where downtown Cle Elum is located today. Each built a cabin on their respective 60-acre properties, making them, in essence, the founding fathers of the future town.

   Less than a year later, coal deposits were discovered in the hills around what is now the community of Roslyn. The discovery came at an opportune time because the Northern Pacific Railroad was just building a line to Puget Sound through the region.

   The enterprising Gamble and Reed immediately recognized their land holdings were ideally located near Roslyn and the rail line that was being built. Additionally, the coal discovery and the presence of extensive forest land could provide the railroad with coal for its locomotives and timber for ties, trestles, and tunnels.

   In 1884, Gamble reached out to the railroad and successfully persuaded it to construct a depot on his land. To sweeten the pot further, Gamble and a partner, Tom Johnson, erected that many considered to be the largest saw mill in the central or eastern Nevada region to supply timber to the railroad.

   The plan worked when, in October 1886, the railroad line reached Cle Elum and the first train arrived at the new depot. That year, Gamble plated his land as a townsite. According to some accounts, his wife insisted the town have unusually wide streets because she felt they would be necessary when the settlement became “another Pittsburgh.”

   Reed and his wife, Gamble, and Johnson also agreed this new settlement needed a name. They chose Cle Elum (sometimes spelled Cle-Elum), which was derived from the Native American name for the river that ran through the area. The Kittitas tribal name was, Tle-el-Lum, which translated as “swift water.”

   According to “The History of Klickitat, Yakima, and Kittitas Counties, Washington,” published in 1904, shortly after Cle Elum successfully incorporated as a community in 1902, the Northern Pacific Railroad arbitrarily changed the town’s name to Cle-Alum because the letter substitution would make it an easier name for telegraph operators to type (apparently tapping two “e’s” in a row on a telegraph key was thought to be challenging).

   The railroad also attached the revised name on its depot in the community and even used the name “Clealum Railroad Company” on shares of its stock.

   Apparently, local employees of the U.S. Postal Service liked the new name and took it a step further. In 1903, they changed the name of the post office to Clealum. “This action aroused a storm of indignation among the town’s residents and friends, for by the change the old name was destroyed and its significance entirely lost,” noted the Kittitas County history book. “Besides, the new spelling was not in accord with the city’s corporate name. Moreover, considerable Cle-Elum mail found its way to Clallam, across the range.”

   In December 1904, citizens formally demanded the post office return the name of the community to its original spelling and appealed the name change to the postal authorities and the U.S. Geographic Board. “Is it Cle-Elum or Clealum? This is a question that has been before the post office department and the before the board of geographic names, and a final determination is yet to be reached,” said the Tacoma News-Tribune in 1904. “In the state of Washington it is and always has been ‘Cle-Elum,’ but of late minor employees in the postal service, on authority yet to be disclosed, have assumed to make one word of it and change the spelling.”

   The News-Tribune added that residents had complained to their Congressman, Representative Wesley L. Jones of North Yakima, who took up their case to postal officials. He was assured that the name change had not been authorized by them and suggested the matter be resolved by the U.S. Geographic Board, who, they thought had made the change.

   In 1907, the matter had still not been completely resolved, perhaps because the railroad continued to use the name. The Cle Elum Echo newspaper editorialized: “The name ‘Clealum’ decorates the new depot. There is no such place as ‘Clealum,’ and no such word, so far as we can learn. This city is incorporated under the name CLE ELUM (two words and two ‘Es’ coming together).”

   The Echo went on to say, “The post office is Cle Elum; the Indian word or name is Cle Elum, the river just west of the city is Cle Elum, the mining district is Cle Elum, one of the most beautiful lakes in the United States was named by the Indians and is Cle Elum, yet a sign on a little dinky building that the railroad company calls a depot informs the traveling public that the train has arrived at ‘Clealum,’ and as there is no such place it would be just as sensible to have the sign read ‘Nowhere.’”

   Another local paper, the Cle Elum Record, also joined the fight, editorializing in September of that year that “Ever since the Northern Pacific hung up the word ‘Clealum’ on the new depot, we have been besieged with inquiries as to the meaning of the word.”

   With tongue clearly in cheek, the Record said it had consulted with a Tacoma News lexicographer “and a number of walking encyclopaedias” who determined Cle was derived from the Egyptian name, Cleopatra, meaning “not clear or dirty.” Alum is the name of a mineral salt that is a principal ingredient in baking soda. Thus, according to the paper, the word Clealum means “dirty baking powder.”

   “Nice name, isn’t it, to force upon a self-respecting community?” the Record concluded.

   In 1909, the Geographic Board ruled on the matter, agreeing with the citizens of Cle Elum. Yet, despite the victory—and the fact the railroad finally backed down after 1908—some mistakes take time to correct. In fact, the misspelled name, Clealum, continued to appear in some newspapers as late as 1920.

Ellensburg's Not-Quite One-Hit Wonders: The Scotsmen

   The music industry can be a peculiar one in that no one can ever know what song will turn out to be a hit. After all, who would have thought that a novelty song about a giant green man who is spurned by his girl would rise to the number four position on the U.S. pop charts in 1965 (and reach number one in Canada)?

   In fact, it was the success of that particular song, “The Jolly Green Giant,” based on a popular food brand’s mascot, that inspired a group of Central Washington State College (CWSC) students from the Seattle area to write and record a song based on a popular canned tuna television ad slogan that same year.

   The group, The Scotsmen, had formed several years earlier under the name, The Avengers (probably should have kept that name in light of the success of a recent movie franchise). Two years later, the band decided they needed a better gimmick to draw attention to themselves, so they changed their name to The Scotsmen and began wearing kilts on stage.

   Soon, the band was appearing in venues throughout the state of Pacific Northwest. The Scotsmen’s line up included Mike DeChenne and Tom Yook on keyboards, Richard Lawson on drums, David Lucas on bass guitar, Gary Reynolds and Bruce Robertson on vocals, and Robert Shomer on guitar.

   In 1965, the group agreed to cut a 45-record for Seattle-based Panorama Records, which had been launched by recording impresario Jerry Dennon, who also founded the more well-known Jerden Records (famous for releasing the Kingsmen’s hit songs, “Louie Louie” and “The Jolly Green Giant”) and about a half-dozen other smaller labels.

   Side A of The Scotsmen’s record was “Sorry Charlie,” a Jolly Green Giant-style novelty song based on the then-popular TV ads for Star-Kist canned tuna. The song told the story of a tuna named Charlie who was feeling “down and neglected” because he was always being thrown back by the fishermen for not tasting good (similar to his story lines in the TV ads).

   The flip side was a song titled, “Tuff Enough,” a catchy but slightly misogynistic song about a troublesome girlfriend. The song is typical of its era, with the heavy use of an electronic keyboard coupled with fast-paced drumming and clashing cymbals. The 7-inch single was released to record stores and radio stations in August and September of 1965 and achieved some airplay but not enough attention to merit a follow up record.

   Despite being from the Seattle area, band members affected British-style accents in “Sorry Charlie,” perhaps to take advantage of the popularity of the Beatles and other British Invasion bands that were appearing on the music scene in the U.S. at that time.

   A scan of mid-1960s Washington newspapers shows the band appearing several times at the Chehalis Civic Auditorium and the Masonic Temple in Spokane. A September 1965 advertisement in the Tacoma News Tribune for a Back-to-School Extravaganza listed several bands performing including the Dynamics and Busy Boy Jimmy Hanna (“the band that backed Sonny and Cher”) as well as Sir Raleigh and the Coupons, and the Scotsmen, in what was described as their “First Tacoma Appearance in Their Bright Kilts.”

   In April 1965, the band performed at Central Washington State College for the annual World University Service Week. They returned to Central in February 1966 for a Battle of the Bands competition in the Student Union Building.

   “The Young Republicans Club has teamed up with Seattle disk-jockey Dick Curtis of Pat O’Day and Associates to bring to Central two of the region’s top rock and roll bands, The Scotsmen, Thee Unusuals, and Thee Unusual’s singer, Kathy McDonald, will be on hand for a full evening’s entertainment,” the CWSC student newspaper, The Campus Crier, reported.

   “The Scotsmen bring with them an international flavor. Their most recent tour was with the Vegetables, and other tours have taken them to all parts of Pacific Northwest and Canada,” the paper continued. “The Scotsmen also have a recent record release, ‘Sorry Charlie.’”

   There was no follow up story on which band won the battle, but the Crier did note that during their performances, Thee Unusuals were accompanied by an eight-foot-long Boa Constrictor named “Herky.”

   According to the website, www.pnwbands.com, the Scotsmen continued to perform in the region until disbanding in 1968. Some of the members would go on to play in other Pacific Northwest bands. For example, vocalist Bruce Robertson performed with several groups including The Statics, the Accents, and International Brick. Keyboardist Mike DeChenne became a member of the Hustlers during its short time in existence in the mid-60s.

   The Scotmen’s small discography (two songs) was rediscovered in 2001 with the release of The Northwest Battle of the Bands, Vol. 2, Knock You Flat!, which featured a number of largely forgotten 1960s era PNW rock ‘n roll bands. The CD included both “Sorry Charlie” and “Tuff Enough,” and introduced a new generation to the guitar and organ-driven sound of what has been described as “fuzz-punk” rock, considered a precursor to later so-called garage bands.

   In attempt to appeal to modern-day hipster audiophiles, the songs were also reissued by Sundazed Records in 2018 on a bright green-colored vinyl record version. Here is a link to the Scotmen’s two recordings: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XcfInqIq5I.

   Rock on.

Survivor of the 'Last Indian Massacre': Mary Jo Estep

  For most of her life, Mary Jo Estep had kept a secret. Born in either Idaho or Nevada in 1909 or 1910, she had been adopted at a very young age and raised by her step-parents, Evan and Rita Estep. The family lived in Montana and New Mexico before settling in Toppenish, Washington, in 1924.

   In 1934, Estep graduated from the Washington State Normal School (now Central Washington University) in Ellensburg with a degree in music education. While a student, she had excelled at her studies. On several occasions, the student newspaper noted when she was performing piano recitals on campus.

   Following graduation, Estep began teaching music in Yakima schools, which she did for the next 40 years, until her retirement in 1974. Over the years, she and her longtime partner, Ruth Sweeney, lived a quiet life that, in addition to work, included tending a large garden.

   Estep’s secret, however, came out in 1975, when Oregon writer Dayton O. Hyde, who had written a book, “The Last Free Man,” sent her a letter and asked to visit. His book told the story of a small band of Native Americans, led by a man called Shoshone Mike Daggett, who had fled Idaho’s Fort Hall Indian Reservation in order to return to living off the land in their homeland in Northern Nevada.

   Tragically, most were later massacred in an incident that became known as the Battle of Kelley Creek.

   After his book had been published, Hyde received a letter from a woman who said she had attended the Washington State Normal School in the 1930s with a young Native American woman named Mary Jo Estep, who had confided that her birth family had been killed by white men in northern Nevada. The woman said Estep was then adopted by the superintendent at Fort Hall. She had lost track of Estep over the years but thought Hyde might be interested in finding her.

   Hyde later recounted in his autobiography that he began searching for Estep, calling long-distance operators in the state of Washington, asking for any information on a woman by that name (this was in the pre-Internet days).

   “Finally, the Yakima, Washington, operator said that she had a Mary Jo Estep in Yakima,” he said. “I sent Mary Jo a copy of my book, then waited in agony for her to agree to see me. Her adopted parents had kept most of the information about Shoshone Mike from her, and I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be.

    “She had been born to wild, free-living Indians, survived the murder of her band, and been raised by white parents as a white girl. I was to learn that during her lifetime, Mary Jo had toured as a concert pianist and taught music in the Washington public school system.”

   Hyde said he was as fearful of meeting Estep as she was of meeting him. But after Estep agreed to a visit, Hyde traveled to her home in Yakima.

    “It was the beginning of a long friendship that lasted until Mary Jo moved into a rest home,” he wrote.

   At one point, Estep visited Hyde in Oregon and showed him the child’s undershirt she was given when she was captured; her own clothing was taken from her and burned.

   “In the collar, written in indelible ink, was the name she had been given [at birth], Mary Josephine Mike,” he recalled. “She remembered only a little of her capture.”

   According to Hyde, after Estep learned her story, she became a popular inspirational speaker for Native American student groups.

   In the book, “Shoshone Mike,” author Frank Bergon recounted the story of Shoshone Mike (Estep’s grandfather) and his band of about a dozen members of the Bannock tribe (despite his nickname, Mike was a member of the Bannock tribe, not the Shoshone tribe). The tribe had their traditional hunting and gathering land taken from them by the U.S. government.

   After initially attempting to live on the Fort Hall Reservation in southeastern Idaho, where they were given moldy food and little shelter, the band wandered away from the reservation and, starting in 1890, began to live off the land in the mountains between southern Idaho and northern Nevada.

   For the next two decades, the band struggled to survive, which was particularly difficult during the lean winter months. In May 1910, the group had managed to round up wild mustangs to replace several that had died during the previous winter.

   One of Mike’s sons, Jack, was shot and killed while driving the horses to camp. In response, Mike’s other sons rode out and, in Bergon’s words, “paid death with death.” They encountered a party of four white men and a woman camped in a draw, who had Jack’s horses. The parties exchanged shots and one of the white men, Frankie Dopp, was killed.

   The episode exacerbated the already tense relations between white settlers and Native Americans in northern Nevada. Believing that he and his band would not receive a fair hearing on the matter, Mike led the party deep into the mountain ranges between Nevada and Idaho, away from settlers. For the next several months, the group traveled hundreds of miles through the Nevada-Idaho borderlands and into northern California.

   Then, in January 1911, four stockmen were found murdered in a remote canyon about 135 miles north of Reno. Humboldt County (Nevada) Sheriff Graham Lamb formed a posse and set out to find and capture the responsible party. The newspapers of the time reported breathlessly on the posse’s hunt to quell what was described as an “Indian uprising.”

   On February 26, they caught up with Mike’s band, which numbered 12, including women and children, in a dry wash north of Golconda, known as Kelley Creek. Gunfire was exchanged and when it was all over, one member of the posse was dead, along with four Indian men (including Mike and his three sons), two women (including Estep’s birth mother, Wenegah), and two children.

   The only survivors were Estep and three older children. All, except for 18-month-old Estep, would die of tuberculosis during the following year. Shortly after being removed from a cradleboard on her dead mother’s back and taken to Fort Hall, the former Mary Josephine Mike was adopted by Fort Superintendent Estep and his wife, and became Mary Joe Estep.

   Historians now believe what happened was that Mike’s band—desperate, cold, and starving—had captured and killed cattle in the High Rock Canyon area, north of Gerlach, to survive. The four stockmen had gone to investigate the missing cattle and were most likely killed during a hostile encounter with the band.

   Newspaper accounts following the shootout with Mike and his band describe them as savage renegades who had allegedly kept trophies of their kills (which was not true). Stories also claimed the posse fired more than 500 rounds at the camp and the Indians fired back with some 150 rounds and 300 arrows during a battle that lasted more than three hours. The evidence, however, did not support the presence of such firepower, particularly from Mike’s band.

   Sadly, Estep would again find herself in the headlines at the end of her life. In 1992, at the age of 82, she was receiving care for a broken hip in a Yakima nursing home and was accidently given three doses of prescription medicine intended for another patient.

   While the error was discovered within a half-hour, and was easily reversible, the home took no corrective action because Estep had signed an advance directive barring heroic measures from keeping her alive. She died a few hours later. Her death triggered a series of investigations and, eventually, a change in Washington state law to require health professionals to rectify any life-threatening situation that was caused by health providers.

   In an Associated Press article published at the time of Estep’s death, one of her friends, Louis Jarnecke, noted, “You look at what happened to her, and you could say that she [like her family] died at the hands of the white man, too.”