Lucy Smith

Lucy Smith was a fluent speaker of Nuu-wee-ya' with ancestry from the Che’-mee-dv-ne (Joshua) and  Yuu-k’wi (Euchre Creek) bands. She grew up in the Gold Beach area after she and her mother escaped from the Coast (Siletz) Reservation. The personal accounts that Lucy shared about her life give us insight into the hardships our people experienced on the reservations, along with the sometimes-overlooked perspective of the people who left the reservations and returned to their ancestral lands.

Family Origins

Lucy Smith was born on the Coast (Siletz) Reservation around 1862. Her parents had been forcibly removed to the reservation from their homelands along the southern Oregon coast in 1856. Lucy’s father was Jim Tom, also called Joshua Jim, from the Yaa-shuu-we people who lived on the south bank of the mouth of the Rogue River. The people from this village, along with the village along the north bank of the river, are remembered as the Che'-mee-dv-ne or Joshua people. Lucy’s mother was En-quetch-et-sa (also known as Ch'elh-ch'aa-lhk'i, Tal-an-cha, Nancy Tom, and Euchre Creek Nancy) from the Yuu-k’wi (Euchre Creek) band. 

Lucy’s father became ill and passed away on the Coast Reservation about one month before Lucy was born. Her mother was one of many of our people who did not want to stay on the reservation and longed to return home. 

Escape and New Beginnings

Lucy was born during a time of severe hardship for our people. Starvation, sickness, and a lack of housing and basic supplies were everyday realities for people on the reservation, and many of our people grieved the loss of their homelands and life before removal. In this period, it was illegal for our people to be off the reservations without permission from an Indian agent. Anyone caught trying to leave the Coast Reservation without permission would get 40 lashes. Many people attempted to leave in spite of the risks, including Lucy’s mother. 

One night, En-quetch-et-sa made her escape with the intent to return to southern Oregon. She carried six-week-old Lucy on her back in a basket, traveling barefoot as she made her way down the coast. This was a dangerous voyage for a mother with an infant to make alone, and she was likely desperate to attempt it. Indian agents, military officers, and bounty hunters patrolled the region to capture Indians and return them to reservations.

After about one year, agents Simpson and Copeland recaptured Lucy and her mother in southern Oregon and brought them back to the Coast (Siletz) Reservation. As punishment for escaping, En-quetch-et-sa was publicly whipped and had her hair cropped and tar and feathers applied to her scalp–a painful act intended to humiliate her.

Undeterred, En-quetch-et-sa escaped with Lucy a second time when Lucy was still a toddler. Mother and daughter traveled about 25 miles from Siletz to Seal Rock, avoiding detection. From there, they stole a canoe and traveled by sea about 110 miles to Bandon. Lucy shared the story of their escape with John Marr, who recorded and archived it in the National Anthropological Archives. Her telling is one of the few recordings of early reservation life told in Nuu-wee-ya’. 

Lucy told John Harrington that she and her mother were once recaptured by a patrol in southern Oregon, but this time, they escaped: “The last time they came after [Indians] to Chetco it was I who ran away. I was 3 years old. The officers already had me [and] my mother, and we were being led away when she suddenly said: I have forgotten my sewing materials. As she said this I dove into the brush [and] my mother after me. They never got us. We remained at Gold Beach. And that was the last time that officials ever attempted to carry [Indians] back to Siletz–they never came again. [1] 

Early Life and Adulthood

En-quetch-et-sa’s escape made it possible for Lucy to grow up in the Gold Beach area, in the ancestral lands of the Che'-mee-dv-ne and other Lower Rogue River people. However, as “off-reservation” Indians, Lucy and her mother lived at the margins of the white settler community with few rights or legal protections. 

As a child, Lucy swam in the Rogue River, gathered berries and other local foods, and learned language and community history from her mother. She was raised near See-'elh-dvn or Big Bend (where the last major battle of the Rogue River Wars had occurred on May 27-28, 1856). Lucy spoke Nuu-wee-ya’ as her primary language until about age ten, when she began learning English to attend a local school. En-quetch-et-sa washed laundry in the river to pay for Lucy’s school expenses. 

At age 19, Lucy married Daniel Smith (or C. Smith), a white man who had moved to Oregon from New York. She was employed in the home of the Gauntletts, a white settler family in Curry County, for 30 years, likely as a domestic worker. In 1892, Lucy and her mother filed for allotments near Gold Beach. They were among many Native people who strategically used the allotment act to avoid the reservations and solidify their claims to remain in their ancestral lands.

Lucy remarried to Ben Smith, a Tolowa Indian from Smith River, California. She lived with him for periods in Smith River, Pistol River, North Bend, and upon her Gold Beach allotment while he traveled and worked along the coast as a logger, fisherman, and cannery worker. 

Lucy described the area around the mouth of the Rogue River, where present-day Gold Beach stands, as “Che’-me.” The Tolowa women in Smith River called Lucy, “Che'-mee-tr'e,” which translates literally as “Mouth-of-the-River-Woman,” but is in reference to her ancestry as a Gold Beach person. Coquelle Thompson of Siletz also called her this way

Return to Siletz and Elder Years

Lucy eventually returned to Siletz, where her uncle Joshua Tom and her cousins lived. She earned money as a laundress when she could, and she also cared for her mother and other family members in need. She took in a young relative, Mabel Fairchild (Mabel was her uncle Joshua Tom’s granddaughter). Mabel’s sister, Mary (Fairchild) Hostler Wallace, remembered that her family always referred to Lucy as Lucy Dan. Lucy helped raise several boys who later attended Salem Indian School (Chemawa), according to a 1936 correspondence between the Siletz agency and the school–the letter asks if Lucy could visit the boys for a few days at Christmas. 

Around age 50, Lucy began to suffer from health issues that made it difficult for her to work and provide for her needs. By the 1930s when she was in her 70s, she was living in Siletz in a designated section of housing on Government Hill for elderly, impoverished Indians. A 1938 Indian housing survey shares a glimpse into Lucy’s daily life–she lived alone in a two-room 18x24’ house with no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and a bed in poor condition. In spite of her poverty, Lucy had made efforts toward “home beautification” and was growing a few vegetables in her yard. She crocheted as a small income source.

Visiting her in 1942, the linguist John Harrington wrote that Lucy owned a black cat that she would speak to in Nuu-wee-ya’, as a way to keep using her language in her daily routines. She must have liked animals, because several surviving photographs of Lucy show her holding or posing with dogs. She was good friends with Lottie (Jackson) Evanoff, a Hanis Coos speaker who also worked as a language consultant. 

Lucy Smith passed away in 1946 at age 84. She is buried in the Paul Washington Cemetery in Siletz. Although she left no direct descendants, she is survived by members of the Fairchild and Hostler families (descendants of her uncle Joshua Tom), and Dave Martin (grandson of her uncle Bill Martin), who were Lucy’s nearest surviving relatives at the time of her passing. 

Language Expertise and Legacy

Having lived at varying times in Gold Beach, North Bend, Pistol River, Smith River, and Siletz, Lucy was knowledgeable about several dialects of Nuu-wee-ya’. She could provide insight into “Gold Beach,” Euchre, and Chasta Costa forms of the northern dialect, as well as Chetco and “Smith River” (Tolowa) forms of the southern dialect. She was among a handful of elders who could explain how subtle changes in pronunciation or tone could add nuance to what a speaker is saying and identify a speaker’s origins. 

The knowledge that Lucy shared with our community and with non-Native researchers has helped with the survival of our language to the present-day. She shared many hours of grammar and vocabulary, along with community history and many stories that were passed down to her from her mother and other elders. 

Lucy knew the histories of local places along the Rogue River and the Oregon Coast, and she could give their names in Nuu-wee-ya’. She knew the place where sea otters came to shore at Gold Beach in the old days, and she could describe where people gathered and processed smelt, clams, mussels, and seaweed along the beaches. She knew the geography of the coast and the locations of historic villages, cultural materials, plants, and animals. Her knowledge has helped shape our present-day understanding of ancestral Dv-ne/Dee-ni’ village sites, history, stories, and ecology.

Additionally, Lucy is a source of information about the hardships our people faced during the Rogue River Wars and in the early reservation years. The accounts of her life, shared in her own words, remind us how much character and resilience the older generations of our people had to have to survive. 

[1] Papers of John Peabody Harrington. Native American History, Language, and Culture of Alaska/Northwest Coast, Box 59-65, Reel 027. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Works Cited and Consulted

“Ch'elh-ch'aa-lhk'i.” J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive. ILDA Accessed Dec 16, 2024.

“Che'-me.” J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive.  ILDA Accessed Dec 16, 2024. ILDA

“Che'-mee-tr'e.”  J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive.  ILDA Accessed Dec 16, 2024.

“Che'-me'-tr'e'.”  J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive. ILDA Accessed Dec 16, 2024.

Indian Census of the United States, 1885-1940. Reel 506 - Indians of North America - Census; Native American Census - Siletz. National Archives and Records Services. Archive.org

Maxwell, Ben. “Coquelle Thompson of Old Siletz ‘Remembers When.’” The Oregon Sunday Journal. Nov 28, 1937. Portland, Oregon.

Papers of John Peabody Harrington. Native American History, Language, and Culture of Alaska/Northwest Coast, Box 59-65, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

“See-'elh-dvn.” J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive. ILDA Accessed Dec 16, 2024.

Sunday Oregonian. “Rogue River Native.” March 3, 1940. Portland, Oregon.

United States Federal Census, 1900-1940. Census Place: Siletz, Lincoln, Oregon. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed May 15, 2024 through ancestry.com

United States Federal Census, 1920. Census Place: Smith River, Del Norte, California. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed May 15, 2024 through ancestry.com

Wilkinson, Charles. The People Are Dancing Again. University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 2010.

“Yaa-shuu-we.” J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive.  ILDA Accessed Dec 16, 2024.