Nora Jewell: The Salish Sea, 1854-1910

Born in 1864 to a First Nations mother and a Danish immigrant father, Nora Jewell enjoyed close ties to her immediate and extended family growing up on San Juan Island. Nora's maternal aunt lived within two miles of the Jewells and had married a German immigrant. Nora remained close to her aunt's family after her father's death in 1876. Despite having family close by, a territorial judge put Nora, then twelve, in James Smith's home, appointing him as Nora's guardian. Washington's territorial legal code by then allowed children of Native mothers and white fathers to inherit their fathers' estates, but did not acknowledge Native women's maternal or spousal rights, leaving Nora, her mother, and sisters vulnerable to the claims of white men after Peter Jewell's death. This chapter chronicles the hardships Nora endured at the hands of her court-appointed guardian, who assaulted and impregnated her before she turned 15, but also traces the strategies Nora used to maintain family ties and secure her own independence as she grew up on the island chain and then moved to the mainland in adulthood.