The word “documents” conjures images of paper stacks in a lawyer’s office or musty yellow pages written in undecipherable script. But Lorraine McConaghy has chosen a lively and wide interpretation of that word to illustrate the history of Washington in her new book, “New Land, North of the Columbia: Historic Documents that Tell the Story of Washington State from Territory to Today.”
McConaghy is a historian at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry and teaches at the University of Washington. She’ll appear at Tacoma’s Main Public Library for a slide show and book signing Sunday. Admission is free.
“New Land” is a collection that spans time, place and demographics. Using maps, correspondence, photographs, drawings, postcards, fruit labels, song books, mug shots and other means, McConaghy allows us to see the people and events of the past. It’s her all-encompassing curatorial eye for artifacts combined with her historian’s knowledge that makes this book so enjoyable.
The book is made for browsing from one snapshot to the next. Each document is given several paragraphs of text that explains its importance and context in Washington history. But that’s not to say each artifact is a Magna Carta. Yes, there’s a handwritten note from Abraham Lincoln, but there also is a 1947 brochure titled, “How to Spot a Communist and Slick Tricks of the Commies.”
There are hundreds of images, all reproduced in full color – even old newspaper clippings have a yellowed patina. Many have text but most are reproduced large enough to be readable.
Native Americans, African Americans and Asian Americans are well represented. From a 1954 poster/calendar for a Mexican restaurant in Zillah, we learn that Mexican immigrants have been working in Washington for more than a half century. The book doesn’t shy away from Washington’s darker moments (the Chinese expulsions, Japanese incarceration) but it also highlights triumphs: the building of Grand Coulee Dam, the 1962 World’s Fair and the release of Microsoft’s Windows 95. Cultural moments from grunge music to gay pride are covered. South Sound highlights include:
• A hand-drawn map by James Tobin from around 1920 shows Native American place names in the Olympia area. A portage across a bend in the Black River was called Stuck goo qwit, or “dragging a canoe,” and Priest Point originally was called D’ Kot.
• A postcard from Tacoma shows a cartoon character promoting the city with, “You won’t be sorry you come to this place!” while another postcard shows a photo of five loggers pausing during their falling of a giant fir – two of them resting in a cut of the tree “near Tacoma.”
• In an 1860 letter to acting territorial governor Henry McGill, Olympia resident James Tilton complains about his black slave, Charles Mitchell, fleeing to Canada on board a steamer. Mitchell kept his freedom – the only known passenger on the Puget Sound underground railroad.
• A list, written in both Chinese and English, details the Chinese businesses in Tacoma burned in 1885 by arsonists angry over immigrant workers willing to work longer and harder than Americans for lower wages.
• A watercolor of Tumwater Falls painted in 1853 by Navy Lt. James Alden, commander of the U.S. survey vessel Active.
• A 1924 clipping from the Seattle Times that reads, “In scathing terms, the United States Geographic Board for the fourth time has rejected ‘Tacoma’ as a name for the majestic mountain in Washington and ruled that is shall be and remain ‘Mount Rainier.’ ”
• A wedding photo from 1922 shows a handsome young Auburn couple, Masato and Suzue Yamada, in their nuptial clothes. The couple later owned a grocery story in Kent.
Craig Sailor: 253-597-8541, craig.sailor@thenewstribune.com
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