For a writing project I am working on, I needed to better understand the history of Seattle concerning the regional Native American community.
Low and behold, I had the good fortune to find this jewel of a book, The River That Made Seattle, written by BJ Cummings.
It’s a short book (171 pages) but extremely well referenced (29 pages), dense with both stories and facts. It takes us—by way of the Duwamish River, Seattle’s Only River—from the time of pre-contact between the diverse thousands-years-old settled (Puget Sound’s pre-existing native population) with the equally diverse, but very recent incoming settlers.
It certainly can (and should) be read as a social justice book, but Ms. Cummings doesn’t bludgeon you over the head to make her case—the facts she presents, such as the extremely high level of unhealthy PCB levels in the soil of the communities surrounding the river, do that just fine.
It can be read as a book about city politics, where she describes the competing interests of individuals in the early 1900s deciding the best way to connect Lake Washington with Puget Sound (which, incidentally, lowered Lake Washington by 9-10 feet, resulting in the death of one of the Duwamish River’s critical watershed feeding rivers).
It can be read as a case study (or better yet, case studies) involving competing interests of the State Government versus the Federal Government.
Finally, and how I first started reading it, The River That Made Seattle can be read to better understand the devastating role industrialization has on local environments.
Sounds depressing, doesn’t it?
Well, it’s not. Although she pulls no punches, there is an optimistic tone to the book, one that is created by her examples of individuals such as John Beal, a somewhat broken Vietnam Vet who made it his mission (a successful one I might add) to “daylight” Hamm Creek, or Ken Workman, a Boeing analyst, who later in life discovered he was a direct descendent of Se’alth (“Chief Seattle”) and who is now one of the leading Native American voices leading he way for change.
Anyway, for anyone interested in the history of Seattle, the Pacific Northwest Native American Community, or the environmental impact of industry on rivers, this is a must-read book.
Thank you, Ms. Cummings.