COOKING CRABS ON THE BEACH~~1961

Native Americans enjoying a clam bake
on the beach at Neah Bay, Washington
The early 1900s.
Click image to enlarge.
Scan of a photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

"Crab-cooking is almost a traditional occupation at the small Clallam County community of Jamestown, on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a few miles northeast of Sequim.

        Jamestown's four crab fishermen are Natives, descended from the founders of the village. Their catch is cooked in drums on the beach and sold in Port Angeles and Port Townsend. From October through June, the men put their nets down in the water just outside the sand bar at Dungeness Spit, a mile away.

Cooking Pacific Ocean Dungeness crabs.
Scan of an original, undated photograph from the archives
of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

           Jacob Hall watched his grandson Harvey Adams Jr., at work tending the fire under the oil drum in front of the family home and spoke of the time when Natives had no outboards and modern crab nets. He fished for crabs himself until three years ago.

         Hall was born 5 May 1886 and has resided in Jamestown since 1910. He is one of the last few Clallams who can speak the tribal tongue. When he first saw Jamestown, its beach was lined with canoes.
        

Painting of Point Hudson, Jefferson County, WA, 
by Adeline Willoughby McCormack ca. 1890
Please click the image to enlarge.
Scan courtesy of a supportive member.

          The community, Hall said, was founded in 1875 by Clallams who had lived on the McAlmond property at Dungeness.

         'Old man McAlmond,' Hall related, 'homesteaded the land and asked the Natives to leave. They moved across to Dungeness Spit and stayed two years, but it was too hard a life. They had to carry all their water by canoe.
         A logger, Bill Delanta, owned this place. He spoke to our chief, Lord Jim Balch, and said he would sell him this tract of 222 acres for $500. Balch asked his people if this was agreeable and they said they would like to have it. The money was raised by them, some putting in $10,$15, $25, $50 until they had enough.

        The land was turned over to Lord James Balch in his name. Someone told folks they had better cut it in strips in order to keep the title straight. Everyone wanted waterfront, so that is why each piece is a few rods wide and a mile long. Our family bought our piece in 1905 but did not move here for several years.

*Adeline Willoughby McCormack
Painting ca. 1890.
Please click the image to enlarge.
Scan from a supportive society member.

        My father, Fred Hall worked around the mill at Port Discovery, doing everything except being sawyer and engineer. He met my mother when he was a fireman on a tugboat. He came home from a run to Nanaimo and the boat stopped at Washington Harbor. My grandfather was there and he said, 'Well, son, you'd better come ashore, we've got a wife for you.' That's how my father got married.'

      Hall said that the first Native homes in Jamestown were built largely from lumber salvaged from a capsized scow that had loaded at the Port Discovery mill.
      The oldest building in the community is a part of the late David Prince's white cottage.
      Jamestown had a Shaker Church which burned ten years ago. Its government school and large house which was the teachers' residence still stand, their windows missing Near them once was a longhouse; no trace of it is left.
        I'm the only Shaker here,' said Hall. 'It is a religion very little understood by the whites. The interpretation of all the movements (in the church rites) is something you have to study to comprehend.'

        Thirteen Native families remain in Jamestown. Last December, Dan Woods, the oldest citizen and son of one of the community founders, died. This left Hall the village patriarch.

        'When I go,' Hall said, 'that's the end of those in Jamestown who know the Clallam Language.'"

Text from The Seattle Times, February 1961.

Since the above 1961 newspaper article was published the people of the Jamestown Native Tribe prefer the name of "S'Klallam," a Salish term for the "Strong People."

*Artist Adeline Willoughby McCormack (1871-1954)

She was the daughter of sea captain and Indian Affairs agent Charles Willoughby who moved his family to the coastal area for his employment at Neah Bay.

        Adeline first studied with Harriet Foster Beecher, an influential artist and teacher who came over from the U of WA, Seattle, to Port Townsend, where she taught painting. Adeline then opened her own studio in 1898.

        Some of her work was featured in a show "Women Outdoors, Field, Forest, and Shore," at the Jefferson Museum of Art and History in Nov./Dec. 2021.

        Adeline wrote an account of her family's 1883 wagon trip to the Quinault reservation, describing travel and living conditions on the Olympic Peninsula in the mid-1880s. Towards the end of the 14-page transcribed document, she offers a lengthy description of the local Native Americans relating to their hunting of otters and the institution of slavery among the Quinault.

The family papers are archived under her father's name at the University of Washington, Special Collections, Collect No. 4972.