Indian Henry
Rob Carson, The News Tribune
In the days when pioneers first settled around Mount Rainier, Indian Henry was one of the only American Indians to eagerly adopt "Boston" ways and bridge the cultural gap with whites. His guidance and openness changed Rainier history.
Indian Henry became a Christian, a farmer and a businessman, all of which made him remarkable among early native inhabitants.
The Indians' reticence wasn't surprising, since during the "Indian War" of 1855-56, white mercenaries hired to exterminate hostile Indians swept across the Mashel Prairie west of present-day Eatonville and killed an unknown number of fleeing women and children.
Indian Henry settled on the prairie after the war, living there until his death in 1895. Along with his three wives, he established a successful farm with fenced fields, a log house and a barn, and he built a community of relatives and friends around him.
He spoke some English, in addition to at least three Indian dialects. He knew the forested slopes south of the mountain and was sought out as a guide by early climbers.
Indian Henry was a friend of the pioneer James Longmire and guided Longmire's climbing party as far as Paradise in 1883 for a fee of $2 a day. Ten years later, he rounded up Indian laborers for Longmire to help clear the first wagon road to the park. Indian Henry was a labor contractor only, declining to take part in the physical labor himself.
He apparently was a willing host, and Puget Sound travelers on their way to the mountain routinely spent a night on the hay in his barn.
John Muir stayed there in 1888 and, in his journal, described Indian Henry as "a mild-looking smallish man with three wives, three fields, and horses, oats, wheat and vegetables."
Also in 1888, Indian Henry is said to have guided Tom Van Eaton to his homestead at what is now downtown Eatonville.
Indian Henry is mentioned in dozens of other pioneer reminiscences, but invariably as an aside, and with few telling details. Beyond those sketchy accounts, little is known for certain about the man. Stories differ even on what tribe he was affiliated with, whether Klickitat, Cowlitz or Nisqually.
The most often repeated story was that he had been exiled from his tribe for having killed a medicine man. The medicine man had supposedly prescribed a treatment that killed Indian Henry's father, and Indian Henry killed him in retribution.
Even Indian Henry's real name, Sotolick, is uncertain. As the story goes, Longmire and fellow pioneers James Packwood and Henry Winsor first encountered Indian Henry near Mount Rainier in 1862.
When they asked him his name, he came out with a tongue-twister that the pioneers remembered as "Sotolick." Winsor told him that the name was too hard to pronounce and that he should take his name - Henry.
Others theorized later that Indian Henry had misunderstood the question and had actually said, "Catholic," having had earlier contact with Jesuit missionaries.
Indian Henry was relatively well off, and white settlers did a great deal of speculating about how he got that way. Some said that he had salvaged gold from a wrecked Spanish ship, and that he had packed his fortune off to a secret cache on Mount Rainier.
Others said that he had a gold mine on the mountain, or that he had found gold that once belonged to Chief Leschi, the great leader of the Nisqually Tribe.
Some believed it was only Indian Henry's natural shrewdness that made him wealthy, noting that he altered the sign pointing the way to Mount Rainier to divert visitors on an unnecessary detour to his farm, where he would charge them for supplies and lodging.
Indian Henry's white neighbors were curious enough about his wealth to follow him to his secret summer goat-hunting area on the slopes of Mount Rainier. They found no gold there, but a luxurious, flower-filled valley that rivaled Paradise for beauty.
The place, in the southwest corner of what is now the national park, is known as Indian Henry's Hunting Ground.
