Matt Ready

January 13th, 2025
Dear Members of Port Townsend City Council and Planning & Community Development
Department,
I write to you regarding the historical significance of the land that is currently the Port Townsend
Golf Course and Camas Prairie Park. I have closely followed the rezoning proposal and, in the
following letter, I share pertinent research related to this parcel of land. For context, I am a
professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where I hold the position of
Audain Chair in Historical Indigenous Art. An anthropologist and archaeologist by training, I
earned my Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brown University. I possess personal and professional
ties to Port Townsend, having lived, worked, and conducted academic research here. My
dissertation examined S’Klallam history and cultural revival in Jefferson and Clallam counties,
and I have lectured and published extensively on Port Townsend’s Native past. For almost a
decade, my work has emphasized S’Klallam and Chemakum history, and I have acted as an
educational consultant for numerous local organizations, tribes, and businesses—Finnriver Farm
& Cidery, Hama Hama Oyster Company, New Old Time Chautauqua, the Chemakum Tribe, and
Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, to name a few. Furthermore, I am editor of the
journal, Archaeology in Washington, and I have compiled a database and map of nearly 400 local
sites significant to S’Klallam and Chemakum interlocutors.
Approaching the golf course from its paved entrance along Blaine Street, you are met by a large
Douglas fir tree to your immediate right, anchored by a light gray boulder. Seemingly
unremarkable, this tree possesses a troubling past and offers a stark reminder of Port Townsend’s
role in anti-Indigenous violence. It was here where a Chemakum man named Kia-a-han was
lynched by a vigilante mob in the 19th century. Hanged from the fir tree’s branches, Kia-a-han
was accused of killing a roaming steer who belonged to Percival Chamberlin, a non-Native
farmer in Chimacum. Chamberlin had previously received warnings about his wild herd who
terrorized the local community. Hoping to locate his wayward bovine and avoid further scrutiny,
he announced that “Indians” could hunt the steers, provided that they report the kill to the farmer,
who would then share the beef with the hunter. As luck would have it, Kia-a-han spotted one of
the cows grazing near Anderson Lake, and promptly fired his shot. Anticipating a share of his
prize, he contacted Chamberlin, but was inexplicably met with anger. Frightened by the
homesteader’s response, he fled to Station Prairie, where the Jefferson County airport is now
located. Chamberlin’s wife, a S’Klallam woman familiar with her husband’s temper, had secretly
recommended this hiding spot. In the meantime, Chamberlin organized a posse of Port
Townsend citizens to search for Kia-a-han and enact vigilante justice. After many futile attempts,
the group approached Kia-a-han’s wife, O’wo-o-ta, threatening to kill their entire family unless
she revealed her husband’s whereabouts. Kia-a-han and O’wo-o-ta acquiesced, the mob then
handcuffing Kia-a-han and mounting him to a horse. They rode him to Port Townsend, where he
was quickly hanged from a limb of the tree that greets you at the golf course.
Indigenous oral histories recalled the murder of Kia-a-han, lynched for merely hunting a
runaway cow. The Native man’s death was documented by Mary Ann Lambert (1879-1966) in
her 1961 publication, Dungeness Massacre & Other Regional Tales, on pages 22-24. Lambert
was a respected Jamestown S’Klallam historian of S’Klallam and Chemakum descent whose
family held ancestral ties to the Discovery Bay area, and whose published works reflected her
deep-rooted knowledge of the northeastern Olympic Peninsula. She was partially raised by the
famous Discovery Bay couple, Tammoe and James Woodman, who encouraged Lambert to
record her childhood recollections for posterity. (Tammoe was a woman of S’Klallam,
Chemakum, and Makah lineage born at Discovery Bay, whereas James was an Englishman who
kept detailed diaries and stocked the family’s enviable library.) Likely prompted by Lambert’s
monograph and the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, it was in the late 1960s-early 70s
when Dorothy Hunt (“Mrs. Gerald A. Hunt,” then the Corresponding Secretary for the Jefferson
County Historical Society) filed a nomination with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s
National Park Service to include the tree on the National Register of Historic Places. When using
my online account to access WISAARD (Washington Information System for Architectural &
Archaeological Records Data), it appears that the tree’s nomination was unsuccessful. This is
why the tree is not officially protected, as well as why the site lacks a plaque or signage
highlighting its importance. Yet, photos and maps provided by Lambert and Hunt, juxtaposed
with a 2025 photo, confirm that the tree in question is indeed the same tree that stands at the golf
course today.
The area adjacent to the 56 acre golf course possesses further Indigenous significance. For
instance, the golf course’s miniscule 1.4 acre prairie, which blooms with purple camas and
checkered fritillaria in early May, is a mere remnant of a vast prairie and marshland that once
encompassed the entirety of Sims Way to North Beach. The region’s Indigenous name (Qatáy,
anglicized as Kah Tai), loosely translated as “Portage,” hints at how this unique ecosystem was
utilized by Native individuals. One needed to portage or wade their canoe from a landing at
North Beach to Port Townsend Bay (along what is now San Juan Avenue) through a series of
prairie ponds and bogs because Point Wilson’s notorious currents capsized even the sturdiest
vessels.
Additionally, prairie grasslands were culinary and cultural mainstays for tribes such as the
S’Klallam and Chemakum, who dug starchy camas bulbs for roasting and eating, gathered
acorns from Garry oak trees (the only oak tree native to Washington), hunted deer and elk who
grazed on grasses, and used pole nets to snare waterfowl. Indigenous women inherited and
owned rights to prairie parcels which they tended by planting seeds and saplings, weeding out
unwanted plants, and propagating vegetal varieties through a combination of Indigenous
horticultural knowledge and complex trade routes that provided access to new or desirable
plants. Because prairie flora are incredibly receptive to fire, Native women expertly conducted
controlled burns on an annual basis to stimulate new growth, eliminate underbrush and vermin,
and prevent a much stronger, hotter wildfire from decimating an unmaintained prairie.
Upon settler arrival in the 1850s, the Qatáy prairie was farmed by non-Natives using irreparably
destructive methods. Viewing the prairie as an impediment to progress, settlers allowed their
cattle and pigs to graze the prairie to a naked crust, thus accomplishing their goals of clearing the
land and feeding their livestock free of charge. It is highly ironic that Kia-a-han died at the Qatáy
prairie because of a cow, the very animals later tasked with extinguishing the prairie.
Settler attitudes toward the local landscape mirrored the treatment of Native individuals in Port
Townsend, as illustrated by an 1871 city ordinance that legally banned Indigenous people from
entering city limits without a white chaperone, lest they incur a fine equivalent to $2,000 in
modern currency. It was also in 1871 when the populous village of Qatáy, located along Water
Street, was burned down by government officials in an attempt to evict S’Klallam and
Chemakum families from the city. Qatay residents were then towed in their canoes via steamship
to the Skokomish Reservation, where they were ordered to live. Shortly after, Kah Tai Lagoon
was referred to as a troublesome “swamp” in documents from the 1890s, with the waterway soon
transformed into the city’s dumping ground. By eliminating the prairie and filling its marshes
with debris, settlers blocked the portage route and thus prevented the region’s former Native
residents from accessing the area as they had done for thousands of years.
This pattern of “developing” (or, destroying) the lagoon persisted: in the 1930s-40s, infill was
added to roughly half of the lagoon to construct Sims Way, and a large remaining portion was
filled with sand in the 1960s. The lagoon that you see today is a fraction of what it once was. Just
as the protected prairie at the golf course reminds us of a previously massive swath of grassland.
Just as the inconspicuous fir tree signals a gruesome murder.
Although I have presented you with disturbing accounts of the golf course and its surrounding
landscape, even more disturbing is its potential neglect or destruction. Of the prairies that were
previously commonplace throughout Washington, only 3% remain intact today. This shockingly
low percentage is the result of real estate development, infrastructure, agriculture, and invasive
plants, all of which pose serious threats to prairie ecosystems. Yet, the golf course prairie also
represents a site of cultural trauma—a murder—that risks being buried beneath Port Townsend. I
urge us to resist the amnesiac tendencies that often quietly seep into our quaint Victorian seaport
town, and to instead acknowledge and preserve (rather than ignore or obliterate) this important
landmark. As a city whose council and residents are rightfully concerned about social justice,
diversity, and equity, it is prudent to begin our “decolonial” (to use that increasingly ubiquitous
yet oblique phrase) work at home, where history exists in our own backyard—or, on our own
golf course. Protecting the hanging tree and nearby scrap of prairie, as well as promoting public
awareness of the significance of these somber places, is one small albeit tangible step that we can
take to right historical wrongs.
Thank you for taking the time to consider these comments, and please contact me if you require
further information.
Best,
Dr. Alexandra M. Peck