Archives West Finding Aid

Clara Young's diary begins on November 5, 1914, as she leaves Tacoma for Washington's outer coast, with the last entry on June 24, 1916, shortly before her departure from Teahwit Head. The diary begins with a description of the slow trip beginning on the steamer Sol Duc in Tacoma, headed to Seattle and Port Angeles ("horrid town, 9 saloons, no good bldgs"). The journey continued by car, "up & down hills though dense woods," and ferry to Forks and Mora ("1 house.Reservation 1 m. beyond.") and finally to the home of the Orrett family, where she would live, working as a schoolteacher with the Orrett's daughter Barbara in the nearby schoolhouse.

Despite the remoteness of her post in an isolated area of western Washington, Clara Young had an active life in LaPush and Mora. Her diary describes dinners with white neighbors, holiday festivities, and pastimes, including collecting and making Indian baskets. She also writes of her domestic and teaching responsibilities, and of her correspondence with her family back home in Tacoma. The diary also includes descriptions of the weather, climate and landscape of the coast and of Clara Young's interactions with the Quinault, Quileute and Hoh Indians of the area. Families of some of the people mentioned in the diary, such as the Hudson, Paine and Jones families, are still living in La Push.

During her year on the coast, Young bought or traded for Native American baskets and other artifacts. The diary coincides with a period during which the Northwest Coast Indian baskets were changing as a consequence of contact between the Indians and western society. From a traditional object of utilitarian purpose, baskets developed a commercial value, and were traded with whites for tools, clothing, ammunition and tobacco. Clara Young recounts several instances of trading for baskets, often with clothing, and sometimes the very items she was wearing at the time. The diary includes several references to baskets for which Young traded, and to those she made herself. Though Young provides little in the way of identifying details, experts in Indian basketry have made speculative connections between the descriptions and the baskets received as part of the larger Clara Young collection.