EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series on the final retrieval of artifacts and remains from the former graving yard site in Port Angeles. Part 2 is Monday.
PORT ANGELES — Another painful chapter in the saga of the uncovering of Tse-whit-zen village is coming to an end.
On Friday, Lower Elwha Klallam tribal members working on Port Angeles’ industrial waterfront finished the delicate task of recovering artifacts and bones of their ancestors from the mountains of soil, rock and concrete left at the 18-acre Marine Drive site — once slated to be a graving yard where giant floating-bridge components for the state Department of Transportation were to be built.
The tribe now must catalog the last of the most recent artifacts it has found — roughly 2,000 since July — and devise plans for a museum.
On display at the facility will be the tools and crafts found at the mostly barren piece of land on Marine Drive between the Port of Port Angeles’ log yard and the Nippon paper mill and about a mile west of downtown Port Angeles.
64,793 artifacts
Just six years ago, graving yard construction workers unearthed the first artifacts and burials.
What they found was later identified as evidence of the ancient Klallam village of Tse-whit-zen, where archaeologists discovered plentiful signs of habitation dating back 2,700 years.
Transportation conract workers were digging the graving yard where huge replacement bridge components were to be built for the Hood Canal Bridge and other spans in the Puget Sound area.
With 335 unearthed burials and 64,793 artifacts uncovered in 2003 and 2004, tribal members — the descendants of people who inhabited the village through the 19th century before being forcibly removed — found themselves facing a painful part of their past that they said they couldn’t ignore, especially after numerous complete sets of remains were uncovered.
After a long battle among the tribe, city of Port Angeles, the port and Transportation, the graving yard was shut down.
Transportation had the components built in Tacoma — but not before spending about $100 million and losing the promise of bringing more than 100 family-wage jobs to the North Olympic Peninsula.
While tribal members have travelled a long, emotional road for six years, tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles said Friday that what they and the Port Angeles community can gain from it — education and a better understanding of the history and culture of the Klallam people — cannot be taken for granted.
“I think it’s really an education opportunity for everybody,” she said, “but not only for our young . . . It’s something that we can share with all nations, whether native or non-native.”
Which is why building a museum on the land is essential, Charles explained.
Tribal lease
The tribe received $2.5 million to build a museum on the site as part of the legal settlement with the state over the graving yard shutdown, the retrieval of artifacts and the reburial of remains.
The tribe also received 13 acres to rebury remains Transportation workers unearthed during excavation.
Tribal members had found and moved burials out of the way of construction before the project was cancelled.
The tribe is planning to build the facility, which will share its trove of artifacts with Seattle’s Burke Museum of Natural History and cost approximately $8 million, on five additional acres of land at the site the Lower Elwha is leasing from the state.
The lease agreement says the tribe must build the museum by 2012, which puts it on a tight deadline, but also makes funding difficult, Charles said.
Since the tribe doesn’t own the land, attaining grants to help cover the rest of the cost is nearly impossible, she said.
The tribe won’t build on the land it owns there because that is where tribal ancestors were reburied and now rest, she said.
Tribal leaders are seeking funds from nonprofit organizations to cover the costs that the tribe won’t be able to meet, Charles said.
Some groups have already contacted the tribe, but no funding is secure at this time, she said, before adding:
“Until we get the land situation figured out on the property, it’s kind of stuck in a limbo right now.”
Totem poles
In the meantime, Charles said the tribe plans to build a workshop on the site to build totem poles and other crafts that will be placed on the property.
The tribe also will bury several small cedar boxes containing bone fragments, known as isolates, and begin reintroducing native plants to the property.
The parcel is still free of vegetation except for the occasional weed pushing its way through dirt and concrete, and still holds many characteristics of its industrial past, which includes being the former home of one of the largest timber mills in the world.
The totem poles, four in all, will be placed on the corners of the burial site, she said.
“With everything the way things are now, we are really happy,” Charles said.
“It [the site] looks a lot better than it has ever.
“We still have a lot of things that we want to see happen and get done.”
Charles said also hopes that since communication between the tribe and the city has improved immensely since Tse-whit-zen was uncovered, tribal artifacts and burials known to be buried under Rayonier Inc.’s former mill site two miles east of Tse-whit-zen will be protected.
The city intends to redevelop the 75-acre property, once home to the Klallam village, Y’Innis, on the opposite side of Port Angeles Harbor from Tse-whit-zen through the Port Angeles Harbor-Works Development Authority.
“They are working more closely with the tribe,” she said.
“We’re always going to be concerned, but [now] so is everybody else.”
Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
