Peace Weavers: Uniting the Salish Coast Through Cross-Cultural Marriages

Observing that Native American women were largely absent in the histories of the Pacific Northwest, Wellman addresses what she views as an intentional and unacceptable oversight. Her focus is on the environs of Whatcom County, WA, in the mid-1800s and its population of Indian women married to Euroamerican men. From that group, she chose to detail the lives of four extraordinary women to show how they navigated the intersection of native and Euroamerican cultures and how that impacted their respective families and communities. Wellman concluded that these women served as cultural brokers, ensuring peaceful coexistence between natives and citizens of the United States, hence the moniker "Peace Weavers." The weakness of her argument is that violence erupted in other counties along the Puget Sound with similar demographics. Peace Weavers had to have been in those communities as well, yet peaceful coexistence proved elusive. Why? Unfortunately, that difficult question is not considered.Verdict Recommended for readers interested in the history of western Washington. Those seeking comprehensive studies of the key roles undertaken by Native American women in the Euroamerican settlement of the West should consider Susan Sleeper-Smith's Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes and James F. Brooks's Captives and Cousins.—John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY