PACIFIC NORTHWEST HISTORIANS GUILD
NORTHWEST HISTORIAN Newsletter
November, 2003
Celia Carpenter: A Historian in Spite of Herself
by Maria Pascualy
Cecelia Carpenter, Nisqually, is well known in the South Sound as the “go to” person when
questions arise about tribal history. This year she received the AASLH Award of Merit for
sustained research writing and teaching about the Nisqually people. Historians interested in
South Sound history should read her latest book THE NISQUALLY, MY PEOPLE for an
Indian perspective on WA history in the South Sound.
Cecelia, now 79, lives in a large older home in South Tacoma with her dogs. She raised a
family in this home, and wrote all her books in a small dining room, which adjoins the living
room where her husband Marvin often sat watching television in the evenings. It is also in
this dining room where she meets visitors and discusses her research. In between writing or
making herself a simple meal, she will do yard work in her large plot of land, which is now
being hedged in by housing developments. Cecelia had no plans to become a historian. But
at age thirty-eight, encouraged by he husband Marvin, Cecelia went to night school and got
her high school diploma. This was the beginning of her second life.
Cecelia’s father, a Danish minister, settled in rural Pierce County in the late 1800s and at age
21 married Cecelia’s mother, a Nisqually who was just 16. Cecelia remembers long days
sitting in the kitchen with her mother as she attended the Indian relatives who often came to
visit. Cecelia, one of 13 children, had no doubt about her Indian roots. But when she went to
stay with her sister in Port Angeles the fact that she physically took after her Danish father
meant hurtful pejorative remarks about Indians were freely made in front of her. At 16 she
moved to be near her brother Paul who was attending Chemawa Indian School in Oregon.
While she was out there, at age 18, Cecelia met and married Marvin, a young soldier from
Wyoming. From then on she focused on being a homemaker, a life she greatly enjoyed.
Pressed, Cecelia admitted that she did write for herself all those years, mostly poetry and
children’s stories. But she did not aspire to more than she had. Marvin, her husband,
insisted she get her high school diploma when the kids grew up. She was now 38.
Cecelia also got a college degree so she could help Marvin, a machinist, continue to support
the family. With an Education degree in hand she taught in Pierce County for 16 years. She
never thought of getting a history degree because she attended Pacific Lutheran University in
the 1960s before Indian History was of interest to historians in the local colleges. Moreover
she was uncomfortable when an instructor’s lack of knowledge in Indian history meant she
had to provide the Indian point of view.
She first taught special education at the junior high level and then transferred to the east side
of Tacoma, where the Indian population was centered and where the state had a special
Indian Education program. However the Indian specialist hired as an education specialist was
a Plains Indian, and not someone familiar with South Sound Indian heritage. To support
Indian youth, Cecelia tried incorporating Indian heritage topics in her English composition
classes and then eventually started teaching history. The lack of a Washington state history
textbook meant she had to write one.
She did her own research and compiled a set of lecture notes, incorporating primary sources
on early Indian life. (These notes would later become the backbone for her books). The fishins, for example, were of special interest to the Indian youth and to Cecelia who had written
her thesis in 1970 on the fish-ins. Classroom discussion was always heated. Rather than
simply get angry she liked to encourage the students to organize their thoughts by writing
them out. Gault was a good school to work at but during the fish-in times Cecelia found that
she had to avoid the teachers lounge because of the cutting remarks. One of her early
writings, Walk a Mile in My Mocassins, was written with those schoolteachers in mind, the
ones who didn’t understand their Indian students, or the world they came from.
Doing research for her classes led to writing articles and books so that the information she
had contextualized could be shared with others. Bruce LeRoy, former director of the WA
State Historical Society, commissioned Cecelia to write an Indian history of Washington for
the bicentennial, based on her thesis on the fish-ins. Weyerhaeuser gave her a grant to
research the history of Ft. Nisqually based on her booklet for the history museum.
At the same time Cecelia was very involved in tribal politics and served on the history
committee of the Nisqually tribe.
Cecelia is presently working on her memoirs. She may do something on Fort Lewis on the
1917 condemnation of Nisqually land to build Ft. Lewis but if she doesn’t she hopes some
young Indian historian unravels that story.