Gilbert En-sal-sun Towner
En-sal-sun, also known as Gilbert Towner, was a Korean War veteran, pow-wow Whipman, and language teacher with Tututni ancestry. Gilbert lived for many years in Portland, Oregon and Lapwei, Idaho, where he was active in pow-wows and other intertribal community events. He stopped speaking Nuu-wee-ya’ in his childhood, but in his elder years he began to study and remember his family’s language. In the 2000s when he was in his 70s, he worked extensively to revitalize Tututni, the northern dialect of Nuu-wee-ya’.
Family Origins
Gilbert carried the name “En-sal-sun,” in honor of one of his great-grandfathers, who was a headman of the Mii-k’wvn-nu (Mikwanu) band and a signer of the Oregon Coast Treaty of 1855. The Mii-k’wvn-nu historically lived along the Lower Rogue River about 18 miles inland from the Oregon coast; they were forcibly removed to the Coast (Siletz) Reservation in 1856. Gilbert also had ancestry from the Joshua, Euchre, and Sixes bands.
Gilbert was born on December 28, 1929. His parents were Leslie Gilbert “Buster” Towner and Louise Brown of Siletz. Gilbert’s mother, Louise, was a granddaughter of Charles and Minnie Depoe.
His paternal grandfather was William Towner, Sr. (1872-1959), a school teacher and farmer of Lower Rogue Tututni descent. Gilbert’s paternal grandmother was Clara Beckwith (1880-1904), a Hoopa woman from northern California. After Clara passed away at age 24, William remarried several times. One of his later marriages was to Verna Creta Collins, who was the daughter of Ada and Peter Collins and a cousin of Miller Collins.
Gilbert was close to Vernie’s son Eddie Collins, who was his uncle by marriage although they were just a few years apart in age. Eddie’s grandmother, Ada Collins, acted as a Grandma to both boys. Gilbert and Eddie remembered Ada with respect, because in their childhoods she had resisted the social pressure to speak only English in public and continued to speak Nuu-wee-ya’ without caring what other people thought of her.
Early Life and Military Service
Gilbert spoke Nuu-wee-ya’ in his childhood home in Siletz until around age 5 or 6, when he was sent to Chemawa Indian School in Salem. In the 1930s, speaking Indian languages in schools was still strongly discouraged. Towner recalled, “Whenever they heard you speak your language, they would whip you with a leather strap.” [1] Although Gilbert continued to hear Nuu-weey-ya’ spoken in Siletz on breaks from school and had a partial understanding of what he heard, he stopped speaking it and didn’t use it again until he was approaching his retirement and elder years.
Gilbert enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1946 when he was 17. He was deployed overseas first to China and Guam and then to North Korea during the Korean War. He worked as a radio operator in the brutal Battle of Chosin Reservoir, where his division experienced heavy casualties from combat, hunger, and exposure to subzero temperatures. The survivors who managed to fight their way out earned the nickname, “The Chosin Few.” Gilbert had several serious injuries afterward and spent ten months in the hospital. He received a Purple Heart medal in honor of his service.
Although Gilbert was proud of his military service, he struggled to cope with what he had experienced in North Korea and to adjust to life back at home. His injuries prevented him from being deployed again, which was a disappointment to him. Instead, he was sent to Camp Pendleton in San Diego to train new Marine recruits–a job that he hated. In 1958, he was discharged because he could not meet the physical fitness standards. He returned to Oregon, working in Springfield for a time as a logger and choke-setter, but he could not keep up with the physical demands of the work. In a 2000 interview he recalled, “I just went home and tried to pick up my life where I left off, but I couldn’t do it…Because of the things I went through, I used to have some real bad dreams. I was in real bad shape.” [2]
Connecting with culture was one of Gilbert’s lifelines through the hard times. It resonated with him that his great-grandfather En-sal-sun had fought in the Rogue River Wars, and that Gilbert came from a line of warriors and survivors. He spent time in the sweathouse, and he became involved with cultural and ceremonial events in the community that gradually helped him find healing. Pow-wows, especially veterans pow-wows, became spaces where Gilbert received recognition and found community.
He was a member of the Bow and Arrow Club of Portland, an intertribal organization which formed in 1968 to provide activities like potlucks, dancing, and storytelling for Native people in the Portland metro area. Gilbert also joined people with coastal Indian ancestry at many Oregon Coast events like the Salmon Festival at Sunset Bay State Park and the Tseriadun Honor Ceremony and Salmon Bake in the Port Orford area.
Gilbert served as the Siletz Tribe’s first and only pow-wow Whipman between the tribe’s 1977 restoration and his retirement from the role in 1996. (At that time he passed his title and ceremonial whip to Craig Whitehead.) He also served for many years as the master of ceremonies and the president of the Chief Joseph and Warriors Memorial Pow-Wow Committee within the Nez Perce community in Lapwei, Idaho. He remained culturally active across multiple tribal communities until his passing in 2009.
Language Revitalization Work
When Gilbert was approaching his retirement years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he began to feel the loss of Nuu-wee-ya’ more heavily. Gilbert was moved after listening to recordings of Ida Bensell, whose laughter as she spoke her ancestral language made the words come alive for him in a fresh way. His discovery of an audiotape of his relative, Miller Collins, was another turning point for him. During a visit with Eddie Collins in Siletz, the two men listened to the recordings of Miller together. They recalled, “We were sitting and crying, because we could hear the voices of our grandmother and auntie [Ada Collins and Daisy Collins Fuller] in the background.” [3]
Gilbert was enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, which had adopted Nuu-wee-ya’ as its heritage language. However, their early programs focused mainly on Tolowa, a form of the southern dialect. Because of this, Gilbert sought out people in the broader community who wanted to study Tututni, the form of Nuu-wee-ya’ that was spoken along the Lower Rogue River and its tributaries where his ancestors had lived.
By 2001, he had connected with a group of language students and teachers at the Northwest Indian Languages Institute (NILI) in Eugene, as well as with Tututni descendants organized under the nonprofit group Confederated Tribes of the Lower Rogue. He also formed relationships with people from the Coquille Indian Tribe, supporting language and cultural revitalization work in the Coos Bay area from 2003 to 2008.
Language Immersion Camps
One of Gilbert’s special legacies is his development of a series of Tututni language immersion camps in the early 2000s. The grant-funded workshops were organized in partnership with John Medicine Horse Kelly and Wendy Campbell of the Intensive Language Project at Carleton College in Ottawa, along with Jerry Hall, a Lane Community College professor of Tututni descent. From 2002 to 2006, the workshops were held near Agness and the confluence of the Rogue and Illinois Rivers. Gilbert drove 600 miles from Lapwei, Idaho to attend each year and to share what he remembered with young people who wanted to learn the language. He met with his uncle Eddie (who also spoke Nuu-wee-ya’ in his youth) before the first session to attempt a practice conversation in Nuu-wee-ya’ to jog his memory.
The first workshop began emotionally, with Gilbert losing his confidence and telling his students he couldn’t teach them anything–too much time had passed, and the language was lost. The students tried to encourage him, begging him to share anything he could with them. Gradually Gilbert and his students found a way forward, listening to recordings of elder speakers together to help Gilbert recall the sounds and rhythms of Nuu-wee-ya’.
By the end of the intensive two-week workshop, the 15 participants were practicing words, short sentences, and even songs just a few miles upriver from where Gilbert’s great-grandfather’s village, Mii-k’wvn-nuu-dvn, had once stood. It was burned by U.S. troops on March 26, 1856, and it was a powerful and symbolic experience for Gilbert to return to this ancestral place to pass down language and knowledge to younger generations.
The annual language camps continued for 5 years. Gilbert worked with a 1953 interview of Miller Collins (recorded by Morris Swedesh) to develop Tututni course materials that eventually included 400 words and sentences for students to practice. He also created laminated wordlists that he encouraged his students to carry with them, and he developed a DVD that students could consult at home. Gilbert’s work supported a new generation of language learners and speakers of Nuu-wee-ya’ within our present-day community.
Legacy
Gilbert is the only elder-speaker in this collection of biographies who lived to see the revitalization of Nuu-wee-ya’ among the modern-day tribes. Although he began formally studying Nuu-wee-ya’ relatively late in life and felt doubt at times that he knew enough, his persistence in learning whatever he could and in sharing what he knew in the final eight years of his life have helped revive studies of the northern dialect of Nuu-wee-ya’ across multiple tribal communities. He passed away in 2009 at age 79 and is buried in the Paul Washington Cemetery in Siletz, near several of his Collins and Towner relatives.
[1] McCowen, Karen. “Finding the Words.” Oct 06, 2002. Eugene Register-Guard. Eugene, Oregon.
[2] Cooper, Richard T. “Vets Still Conflicted Over Korea.” Jan 19, 2000. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA.
[3] McCowen, Karen. “Finding the Words.” Oct 06, 2002. Eugene Register-Guard. Eugene, Oregon.
Works Cited and Consulted
Cooper, Richard T. “Vets Still Conflicted Over Korea.” Jan 19, 2000. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA.
Corvallis-Gazette Times. “Oregon Men Among Returning Korea Vets.” Aug 25, 1951. Corvallis, Oregon.
Find a Grave database and images. (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/194040548/gilbert-towner: accessed January 3, 2025), memorial page for Gilbert “Enselsun” Towner (28 Dec 1929–21 Feb 2009), Find a Grave Memorial ID 194040548, citing Paul Washington Indian Cemetery, Siletz, Lincoln County, Oregon, USA; Maintained by Rick Cook (contributor 47889456).
Hall, Jaeci. “Indigenous Methodologies in Linguistics: A Case Study in Nuu-wee-ya’ Revitalization” Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon, 2021. Eugene, Oregon.
Hege, Beth. “Whipman committed to monitoring powwow protocol.” Sept 29, 1996. Register Guard. Eugene, Oregon.
Indian Census of the United States, 1885-1940. Reel 506 - Indians of North America - Census; Native American Census - Siletz. National Archives and Records Services.
Karten, Ron. “Veterans Gather in Grand Ronde for Annual Pow-wow.” Aug 01, 2006. Smoke Signals. Grand Ronde, Oregon.
Lee, Sandra.“One of the Chosin Few.” Dec 25, 1998. Lewiston Morning Tribune. Lewiston, Idaho.
Lewiston Morning Tribune. “Forgotten language resurrected.” Oct 28, 2002. Lewiston, Idaho.
Lewiston Morning Tribune. “Oregon Indian shares a language that was almost lost.” Sept 02, 2002. Lewiston, Idaho.
McCowen, Karen. “Finding the Words.” Oct 06, 2002. Eugene Register-Guard. Eugene, Oregon.
“Mii-k'wvn-nu.” J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive.
ILDA Accessed Dec 30, 2024.
“Mii-k'wvn-nuu-dvn.” J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive.
ILDA Accessed Dec 30, 2024.
Oregon Coast Tribes Treaty of 1855 (unratified). Provided by the Coquille Indian Tribe in “Resources for Research, Southwest Oregon History.”
https://www.coquilletribe.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1855-Treaty.pdf
Owen, Wendy. “Elder helps save tribal language years after it was lost.” Sept 01, 2002. The Sunday Oregonian. Portland, Oregon.
Pettit, Diane. “Pow wow: It’s more than just a dance.” June 12, 1992. Lewiston Morning Tribune. Lewiston, Idaho.
Tom, Susan. “Siletz Indians honor their war veterans.” May 29, 2001. Statesman Journal. Salem, Oregon.
Towner, Gilbert. “No Siletz tribe.” April 2, 1998. Lewiston Morning Tribune. Lewiston, Idaho.
The World. “Indian Salmon Feast.” Aug 5, 1974. Coos Bay, Oregon.
United States Federal Census, 1900-1950. Census Place: Siletz, Lincoln, Oregon. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed Aug 03, 2024 through ancestry.com
Wilkinson, Charles. The People Are Dancing Again. University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 2010.
