Last week, after I wrote about the $2.5 million sale of the Hamilton Uncle Sam sign to the Chehalis Tribe, I received a call from Penny (Hamilton) Mauel of Chehalis, a member of the Hamilton family.
She was unhappy about my column, especially when I said the tribe bought back land it ceded 150 years ago.
“The Hamilton family did indeed homestead that land,” she said. “We did not steal it in any way.”
William A. Hamilton from Wise County, Virginia, traveled west by train in 1903 with his ailing wife, Margaret, and nine sons and a daughter to establish a new home and life in the Newaukum Valley. Nearly eight years ago, I wrote several columns about the rich legacy of the Hamilton family in Lewis County, which includes its ownership of the Uncle Sam sign erected beside the freeway in the early 1960s.
But the fact remains that at one time, before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, before the British, French and Spanish explorers ventured into North America, Native Americans claimed this land as their own. Sometimes they fought, but the battles were between Native American tribes.
Then European settlers moved west, the Spanish ventured north, and the Native Americans fought back. Sometimes, they lost battles along with land. Sometimes, they sold or traded the land to the whites. But at one time, the Upper Chehalis and Cowlitz, the Yakama and Nisqually, roamed the area where we live.
Today, more government and nonprofit organizations make a point of clarifying the land’s original ownership by issuing a statement before launching into meetings.
At a recent Humanities Washington presentation on how we became the apple state, Stone Addington, deputy executive director and program director stated, “First, we’d like to acknowledge that we present this program from the traditional and occupied lands of the Coast Salish people. We ask for those participating in this event to reflect on the lands they inhabit and to acknowledge the ancestral and traditional territories of indigenous peoples.”
I didn’t think the statement was necessary, but whatever. It reminded me of the Washington State Historical Society insisting that fully accurate historic monuments at the Jackson House near Mary’s Corner and the Cowlitz River at Toledo “cannot stand” because they don’t reflect the Native American point of view. Why remove them? Why not simply share the Native American viewpoint in parallel monuments.
But I digress.
I told Penny I didn’t really care who bought the 40-foot-by-13-foot sign on 3.5 acres or whether it stayed in the family, so long as someone changed the same nonsensical messages posted for the last three years: “How many Americans will we leave behind in Ukraine?” and “No one died in WW2 so you could show papers to buy food!”
We never sent American troops to Ukraine. And we haven’t shown papers or proof of COVID-19 vaccination for years. It’s been rather embarrassing for three years to have the blaring messages that made no sense. Even a “God bless America” or “Land of the Free” message would have been fine.
I met Penny years ago when we both served as precinct committee officers with the Lewis County Republican Party, back when the party supported candidates like President George W. Bush, former Gov. Mitt Romney, and the late Sen. John McCain. I even ran the party’s campaign office during the 2008 campaign when McCain sought the presidency.
Penny, the daughter of William’s grandson Vern Hamilton, said she grew up on the Chehalis Reservation, living with and befriending Native Americans. She described her father as “one of the fairest and kindest men I ever knew.” She said after Ruthie Hamilton attended a Parent-Teacher Association meeting, she returned home dismayed about comments she heard and suggested to her husband, Alfred, a turkey farmer, that it would be great if they had a sign to share the truth.
For decades beginning in the early 1960s, the Uncle Sam sign shared messages to passersby — sometimes humorous, often conservative, occasionally well wishes, and at times controversial sentiments. The John Birch Society, an anti-communist right-wing political advocacy group founded in 1958, stepped up with messages to post on the sign.
“Maybe they were a little strong,” Penny said. “Maybe they weren’t to your liking, but times were different as they are now.”
As I mentioned in my column last week, and in earlier columns I’ve written, the sign demonstrated a First Amendment right we all enjoy: freedom of speech. For many years, I probably agreed with the sentiments expressed perhaps 80 percent of the time or at least appreciated the comments as fodder for consideration. But in more recent years, the Republican Party veered to the far right. It embraced President Donald Trump as he spewed hatred, ridicule and nastiness toward political opponents, the media and women.
I’m still a conservative in many areas, although I’ve had both liberal and conservative friends for decades whom I love and respect. I care for all of them.
I didn’t leave the Republican Party; it left me. And I’m not a RINO — a Republican in name only. I want nothing to do with a party that exonerates bullies who attacked police officers and desecrated public property on Jan. 6, 2021, at our nation’s Capital.
The vitriol and demonization of political opponents — Democrats or Republicans — does nobody any good, and in fact, we saw last weekend how it can lead to deaths.
A 57-year-old man is suspected of masquerading as a police officer and shooting two Minnesota state lawmakers, both Democrats, killing Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and wounding Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who threw her body on top of her 28-year-old daughter to save her life. Yvette was shot eight times, her husband nine.
“There is never a place for this kind of political hate,” Yvette Hoffman wrote in a message to Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat, called the shootings “politically motivated.”
Police captured the suspect, Vance L. Boelter, on Sunday night.
Klobuchar and Rep. Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, denounced the shootings in a joint statement. “Today we speak with one voice to express our outrage, grief, and condemnation of this horrible attack on public servants. There is no place in our democracy for politically motivated violence.”
I agree wholeheartedly.
Sometimes, when I read comments left on Facebook by people angry with the Democrats in Olympia and Gov. Bob Ferguson in particular, I wonder if such actions could take place here. Is it all talk? Or could targeted violence erupt here too — by Republicans or Democrats?
I don’t know. I hope not. I pray not.
•••
Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
