Archives West Finding Aid

The following biographical note was taken from the finding aid for the James Gilchrist Swan papers at the University of Washington, http://nwda.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv77646.

James Gilchrist Swan -- anthropologist, judge, political advisor, artist, schoolteacher, and promoter of Port Townsend (to mention just a few of his occupations) -- was one of the most colorful personalities of Washington State's territorial period (1853-1889). Swan was born in Massachusetts in 1818 and married Mathilda Loning in 1841. He left his wife and two children in 1850, heading to gold rush San Francisco. In 1852 Swan departed for Shoalwater Bay (now called Grays Harbor). He learned the Chinook jargon, and this knowledge led Washington Governor Isaac Stevens to pick Swan as one of several translators for treaty negotiations with the Indians of Western Washington during 1854 and 1855. Swan then returned east and wrote a book, The Northwest Coast; or, Three Years' Residence in Washington Territory. He later worked as Isaac Stevens's personal secretary when Stevens served his first term as the Washington Territory's delegate to the U.S. Congress in 1857 and 1858.

When Congress adjourned, Swan returned to Washington. He spent the next three years shuttling back and forth between Port Townsend and the Makah Indian Reservation at Neah Bay, supporting himself by writing for a variety of newspapers. In 1862 the local U.S. Indian agent appointed Swan the first schoolteacher at the Makah Reservation. Swan supervised construction of the school while convincing Makah parents to send their children there. Believing in acculturation yet still valuing native ways, Swan taught English, farming, and sewing in his school. He was well liked and respected by the Makah. Swan, who was probably the first white person to learn the Makah language, spent his spare time writing an ethnography of the Makah, later published by the Smithsonian Institution. Under criticism for failing to teach Christianity to the Makah, Swan resigned in 1866 and moved to Port Townsend.

Swan was admitted to the bar in 1867 and began practicing admiralty law. The following year he was appointed to the Pilotage Commission of Puget Sound, the agency which examined sea pilots and issued licenses. In 1882 he became a U.S. commissioner (district court judge). He also took the postition of Hawaiian consul to the United States at Port Townsend in 1882. Swan held these jobs for the rest of his life, but he was not particularly fond of them. They paid poorly, and Swan frequently took leaves of absence to go in search of adventure. He worked as a special agent for the Northern Pacific Railway from 1867 to 1871, surveying potential terminuses. (Not surprisingly, he recommended Port Townsend). The Smithsonian Institution hired Swan to collect Indian artifacts for the 1876 world's fair in Philadelphia, the 1884 fair in London, and the 1893 exposition in Chicago. The Smithsonian thus funded Swan's collecting trips to British Columbia and Southeast Alaska in 1875 and 1883. Swan published two articles on the Haida Indians from the notes he took on these trips. An appointment as deputy customs collector for Neah Bay allowed Swan to live at the Makah reservation from 1878 to 1881. The U.S. Fish Commission asked Swan to write a series of reports on the fish and fisheries of the northern Pacific, permitting him to visit Neah Bay intermittently between 1882 and 1891. Swan spent the rest of his life in Port Townsend, dying there in 1900.