The Toledo mascot is seen during an SWW 1A League Trico Division football game against Ilwaco in Toledo on Friday, Sept. 21, 2012.
After Toledo officials banned the high school mascot costume and “Tomahawk Chop” fight song and cheer last month, perhaps it’s a good time to reevaluate the district’s logo entirely.
A large Cowlitz Indian village once sat where the town of Toledo is today, so I always figured the Toledo Indians moniker honored that historic connection. I love the high school’s portrait of David Ike, known as the tribe’s last full-blooded member, and I appreciated his son, Gary, who helped coach our sports teams for three decades until his death in 2010.
Honoring the tribe means respecting the wishes of its leaders who described the Tomahawk Chop and mascot costume as “offensive and stereotypical,” according to a Feb. 5 letter signed by Cowlitz Indian Tribe Chairman William Iyall and Tribal Council Chairwoman Patty Kinswa-Gaiser.
In 2006, the tribe endorsed the Indians name and use of the Tomahawk Chop and helped acquire the uncomfortable-to-wear mascot costume. But that was then.
After complaints lodged by Chief Leschi supporters, district officials began working with the Cowlitz tribe to decide what constitutes “cultural misappropriation.” The tribe did not give an opinion on the Indians name, in use by Toledo schools since 1922 and the Dreamcatcher T logo, use of Chief Wahoo, and the totem pole commissioned by the class of 1988.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, at some point, complaints arise over use of the word “Indians.” Some might consider it offensive; others may say it refers to people from India. Perhaps, with construction of the new high school, the district should consider alternatives.
We could follow Kalama’s example and honor the tribe by name, but Toledo Cowlitz doesn’t flow quite as well as Kalama Chinooks. In 2016, cartoonist Charles Funk, a Chinook Indian, helped Kalama revamp its offensive Charlie Chinook mascot with a buck-toothed, big-nosed Native American in loin cloth and feather, wielding a tomahawk and a diploma.
Or we could avoid offending Native Americans by picking a mascot such as the Toledo Cheeseheads or Toledo Steamboaters, tapping into a long-ago history when a local factory churned out cheese and the steamboat “Toledo” plied the Cowlitz River.
I’d prefer the Toledo Pioneers, since the community was home to Simon Plamondon, the first white man to settle north of the Columbia River. The tall, lanky French-Canadian fur trapper arrived in 1821, married Cowlitz women, and raised a large family in the region. The first American to settle north of the Columbia River was John R. Jackson, an Englishman naturalized in New York who arrived in 1844 and settled near Mary’s Corner the following spring. Toledo marks the head of the Cowlitz Trail used by pioneers heading north to settle the Puget Sound.
I loved the idea of honoring our deepest roots, the Cowlitz tribe, but to avoid controversy ahead, it might be wise to look elsewhere for a mascot and logo.
Armistice Day Tragedy Centennial
An informal committee is meeting once a month at the Centralia Timberland Library to discuss events commemorating the centennial of the Armistice Day Tragedy of 1919.
On Nov. 11, 1919, four World War I veterans in an American Legion parade died from gunshots. That night, a mob pulled Wesley Everest, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World involved in the shootings, from the city jail and hung him from the Mellen Street bridge.
For decades, shrouded in shame over the lynching, Centralia citizens refused to discuss what happened.
The commemoration should go beyond sides in the century-old controversy, Max Vogt, Centralia’s mayor pro tem and a local business owner, said at a meeting last week. He suggested a ceremony, perhaps marked by handshakes between veterans and union officials, acknowledge what we’ve learned from the past (that violence never resolves anything) and proclaim peace and understanding in the future.
“Nobody here was a winner,” Vogt said. “Armistice literally means stop the fight.”
The next meeting begins at 5 p.m. March 25.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
