The English fur trader John Meares may have been the first European to visit the Quileute. In 1788 Meares described James Island at the mouth of the river as a natural fortress with a walled village on top. Also known as Akalat (Top of the Rock) James Island has been inhabited for the last 8000-9000 years. According to their creation story the Quileute were descended from wolves. Their only known relations were the Chimakum tribe who had been washed away in a flood to what is now Port Townsend Bay and later massacred by Chief Seattle’s Suquamish tribe in the 1860′s. The Quileute maintained prairies inland for hunting and gathering and fished and hunted whales in the ocean. Quileute whaling canoes were over fifty feet long and were known to have travelled north to Alaska and south to California.
James Island at the mouth of Quileute River
On November 1, 1809 the Russian brig Sv. Nikolai broke its anchor chains and wrecked on the beach the Quileute just north of the mouth. The survivors were forced to head south to the Hoh after a confrontation with The Quileute at La Push had their own claim to the land that they maintained a constant state of vigilance against raids by the Haida, Tlingit and Makah from the North, the Clallam from the east and the Columbia River tribes from the south. The Quileute once launched a flotilla of a hundred canoes against the Nittinats of Vancouver Island. So when a ship load of strangers washed up on shore in November of 1808 the Quileute are ready to defend their lands.
The Russian brig Sv. Nikolai had broken its anchor chains and wrecked on the beach just north of Lapush. 23 survivors managed to make it to shore. Eighteen of them were wounded in a confrontation with the Quileute who lost three killed. The Russians waited till dark and walked south looking for another ship and eventually abandoned their idea of establishing a colony in the area.
In 1855 the Quileute signed a treaty with Isaac Stevens where they gave up their lands and agreed to move to Quinault.
In August of 1861 James G. Swan sailed into LaPush on the schooner Sarah Newton and found the Quileute were still there. Swan took the ships boat up the “The Quillehuyt” and described it as varying from fifty to two hundred feet across and eight to twelve feet deep with crystal clear water with no mud or weeds. Swan described the Native American sockeye fishery that was about to commence. He mentioned these fish were the same that ran up the Quinault, “in spring and fall, short, thick and very fat.” Weirs were built across the river. The fish were speared or dip netted until enough were caught to keep the women busy cleaning and processing for a day. Then the weir was opened to let the fish run upstream to spawn. Swan was traveling with two Quileute Chiefs, Howealatl and Wackumus who were able to get passage upstream through the weirs. He said they never would have let a white man through otherwise.
In 1889 the Quileute were given the legal right to live on a small Reservation in LaPush. That was the same year a settler burned their village while they away in Puyallup picking hops. Just upstream and across the Quileute River from LaPush at Rialto Beach, you can still find a few remains of “The Castle”.
Back in the early 1900′s it was the lavish summer home of “The Great Alexander,” a Vaudeville performer who had started in the entertainment industry during the Klondike gold rush up in Skagway as a lieutenant for Soapy Smith, managing prostitutes.
Also known as “The One Who Knows,” The Great Alexander kept audiences spellbound with bogus investment scandals and séances held just upstream at the Mora Hotel, owned coincidentally by his longtime stampeder associate J.E.L. James. Even during Prohibition the Mora Hotel was a nonstop party for an endless parade of women, investors and Hollywood types. Whose drunken antics burned up the local phone lines with rumors of whiskey, opium and human cargo smuggled in and out of LaPush.
Quileute Coho
Things were pretty boring after the Great One left. That was until William O. Douglas showed up.
Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt, Justice William O. Douglas served our nation’s highest court through one of the most tumultuous periods of American history.
As a conservationist, Justice William O. Douglas had a burning passion to preserve and protect the wilderness. It was this love of wild places that attracted Justice William O. Douglas to the Olympic Peninsula.
I think Justice William O. Douglas came here to get away from it all. Instead Justice William O. Douglas moved next door to the Neal Family. We were loggers. William O. Douglas was a Supreme Court Justice and conservationist with a reputation for being soft on the commies and fast with the women. Conflicts were inevitable.
Things came to a head one day in the summer of 1958. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas dropped by and mentioned he was going on a hike to protest a new road the Park Service wanted to build out on the Pacific Coast.
At the time I was a road builder. I had a dump truck, a road grader and an army tank. Heck, I had my own army with flamethrowers, mortars and machine guns all jammed in a plastic Davy Crocket fort stuck on top of a dirt pile. Every once in a while I’d bomb my own fort with dirt clods just for fun but what did you expect? I was four years old at the time.
I had my dreams of a dump truck army building roads across my dirt pile and beyond. And here was this big shot, city slicker Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, trying to shut down my job before I even got one. I may have said things he regrets.
I wanted to go on that beach hike to protest the protest. I had my blanket and my pet stuffed monkey all ready. All I needed was a sack of jam sandwiches and I could have hit the road. Instead I got some static from the war department. Mom said I couldn’t go off on a beach hike with that “pinko” judge and his floozies.”
I wondered if there wasn’t something funny going on, with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas dropping by, to invite us on a hike when Pa was gone logging and all. It didn’t matter. The road down the west end of the Olympic Peninsula didn’t get built. Justice Douglas left the country.
The Quileute has changed over time. The river is shallow with mud and weeds but the salmon are still running.