'I'm still a kid yet': Last of the full-blooded Jamestown S'Klallam, 80, remains a 'local hero'
Lyle Prince, here with his sweetheart Marjorie Russell Lester, is the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe’s last full-blooded member. -- Photo by Diane Urbani de la Paz/Peninsula Daily News
By Diane Urbani de la Paz, Peninsula Daily News
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He's the great-grandson of Jamestown S'Klallam Chief Chetzemoka, the leader of the tribe during the 1800s and namesake of Port Townsend's Chetzemoka Park.
Many who come to the tribal elders' luncheons at the 7 Cedars Casino know this.
Prince is surrounded by family at a recent lunch, including his sweetheart, Margie Lester.
Prince is growing frail, and isn't eager to talk about his unique status.
"I'm still a kid yet," Prince said, as he and Lester, also 80, shared smiles.
Tribal elder and story keeper Elaine Grinnell well remembers growing up with Prince, who is her uncle.
"He was one of the best boxers around, in the '40s; a local hero," she said.
Prince traveled on the Golden Gloves circuit until he went to serve in the Merchant Marine during World War II, she said.
Prince and Lester became a couple nearly seven years ago, after both were widowed.
Prince was married for 54 years to Patricia Elaine Johnson, a Caucasian, so their children are 50 percent Native American.
Friends, of course, lament the fact that the Jamestown tribe, with 574 enrolled members, will one day lose this man.
"It's a sad thing," said Jeff Monson, 42, a son of Florence Adams Monson, who's seven-eighths Jamestown S'Klallam.
Tribe could disappear?
To be an enrolled member of the Sequim tribe, an individual must show his or her blood quantum is one-eighth, while other tribal heritage may be taken into consideration.
"Eventually, that means the tribe could disappear," said Jeff's father, Gerald Monson, 65.
He's the Norwegian American who fell in love with Florence five decades ago.
"I was working on a Sequim dairy farm. The family there had four daughters. Florence came to visit one of them," Gerald Monson remembered.
"We started laughing, and we've been at it ever since."
Their 45 years of marriage have been more about how they're alike than different.
"In both of our backgrounds, divorce was unheard of. And we've always been able to laugh. That gets you through a lot," he said.
Like most of the tribal members and spouses they know, the Monsons didn't strenuously steer their children toward other Jamestown youngsters.
"No matter what they want, the kids are going to choose their own partners," Jeff Monson added.
And Margaret Adams, a tribal member and coordinator of the elders' luncheons, put it bluntly: "We can't marry within the tribe. We're all related."
In fact, there are still Jamestown members who are not too closely related to preclude marriage, said Ron Allen, the longtime chairman of the tribe.
Their bloodlines will be preserved if and when they marry members of other tribes, such as the Lower Elwha Klallam, he added.
Allen: enrollments rising
Allen does not worry about dilution or a time when his people will have very little biological connection to their ancestors.
"For the most part, we are centuries out" from that prospect, he said.
Though some in the non-Native American world may claim that tribes' numbers are diminishing, he said, enrollments are rising.
"More and more are coming back to their native roots, so to speak."
The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs keeps rolls that indicate lineage, and some tribes maintain enrollment documents of their own, Allen said.
Blood-quantum requirements aren't as high as they were 10 or 20 years ago, Allen added.
It's likely that they will keep decreasing.
And while tribal members' pedigrees will show ever-smaller fractions of Native American blood, they and their families are bringing new vigor to native cultural traditions.
"I love the tribe's culture," said Gerald Monson, who displays his collection of carving tools and abalone-shell pendants at the elders' lunches.
"I love that the artwork, the basket-making and carving are taught to children from the time they walk. It's part of their lives."
Respect for one's elders is another tribal value he wants to preserve.
Again, he sees commonality between his heritage and that of his wife.
"There are striking similarities between Viking and Salish art," with the crescent, circle and triangle recurring in both.
This country has evolved some, he said, as members of various ethnic groups now attend school together.
"When I was growing up in North Dakota, we Scandinavians didn't intermingle with the Dutch and Germans. That's different now."
Jamestown S'Klallam tribal historian Kathy Duncan is one-eighth Native American and married to a Caucasian, Brian Duncan.
Sequim versus P.A.
When they got together 43 years ago, people paid attention to another basic difference: the one between those from Sequim and those from Port Angeles.
The latter "thought of us as country bumpkins," said Paula Nelson, a Jamestown descendant from Sequim.
"In the sixties, the standard of living was higher in Port Angeles. The housing was more expensive," added Brian Duncan.
Sequim's farmers, he said, toiled through longer days than did the mill workers to the west.
Allen - who occasionally points out that Sequim is a Klallam word for serene waters - grew up in Port Angeles.
The chairman is fiercely optimistic about retaining his tribe's cultural heritage while building its prosperity on the Peninsula.
The Jamestowns' 7 Cedars Casino will, in the next few years, have a conference center and seven-story resort hotel built next to it, and the tribe's Longhouse Market and Deli is scheduled to open in the spring.
At the same time, Allen reveres the last full-blooded member.
"The fact that Lyle is still with us is reason to rejoice," he said.
"He has always had a strong spirit. And that reminds us of our sense of purpose."
Said Grinnell of her uncle, "Him being the last one makes me very sad, and so proud of him at the same time.
"It's so important to have these ancestral roots," expressed in cultural activities, "so everyone will know where they came from and what's expected of them . . . to take part in the community around you, to be leaders."
Prince has health problems, Grinnell added.
"But that spirit of Lyle is always going to be with us."
________
Sequim Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
Last modified: October 20. 2007 9:00PM