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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates 
1981 
Cassette 1, Side 1 
 
Winona Weber  00:00 
At Tulalip? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  00:01 
We, we got-- I think we got a very good education. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  00:07 
At Marysville. I never did go to Tulalip. I wanted to go to Tulalip. Wasn't until after my dad died 
when I signed up to go to Chemawa [laughs]. 
 
Winona Weber  00:15 
Oh, I see. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  00:17 
And my mother was so mad at us girls, because we were going over there to Chemawa. But we 
were kind of in the middle of things. We went to school in Marysville. We were half-- well, my-- 
we're not full blood Indians and they never let us forget it. The people in Marys-- in Marysville 
would say, Oh, she's a little Indian girl from out in the reservation. Then we had to get out in the 
reservation, they'd say, Oh, she's a half-breed, you know, she's, she's [?passed?] and she's [?white 
girl?]. And I had that to put up with all my years, and couldn't quite cope with it. Didn't make me 
resentful, I just didn't know what to think. I was in the middle, and I'm still in the middle, when 
you think of it. They still think that way. The people, or my people. When I went away and lived 
away off the reservation for about 30 years. Then after Philip died, I came back. They still had 
that attitude. 
 
Winona Weber  01:32 
Oh, really? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  01:32 
Didn't know how to handle it, so I just didn't do nothing. Wasn't much I could do, I guess. But I 
married Phillip, and he was a devout Catholic. He lived what he learned in catechism, and I 
didn't know very much about catechism. A lot of times I thought he was sort of fuddy duddy in 
some things. And one of the things that I couldn't understand about him was he always wanted 
me to go with him wherever he went. If he went to pay the groceries, you know, on Saturday, we 
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went together. We always went together. Well, I found out later, when I tried to, you know, 
when I was studying catechism, that they taught you an Indian-- they taught, excuse me, they 
taught you that a couple should be together. Father says, You can't expect to go to one tavern and 
the other go to the other tavern. That's not right. You should be together. And I said, You mean I 
should come down here and go the tavern with Phil? I never went to taverns in those days. And 
he said, Well, yes, why not? And I says, Oh, if that's the case, he better go to the PTA with me. 
Well, he didn't like PTA. Hated it, so he never went. And then I got someone to go to the tavern, 
you know, and they give me more Coke and stuff that I couldn't drink it all at once. And 
everybody was respectful and polite to me, because they knew, they knew that I had [?thought?] 
of-- you know, that I stayed home most the time. That's another thing. I guess because my 
mother stayed home and took care of her family, I more or less did the same thing. Didn't think I 
should do anything else. And Phil was boss. He wasn't mean, he was the head of the house. And 
everybody knew it. The kids knew it, and I knew it. In fact, I asked one of the boys later, Did 
Daddy ever spank you? He said, No, he was bigger than me. He just snapped his finger, so we 
just did it. We just knew, he was consistent, and we better do it. That's what it was. I don't think 
you know how many children I have.  
 
Winona Weber  04:05 
I think Nettie, Nettie mentioned it. 13? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  04:07 
13. I wanted a big family. My mother had a big family, and I thought I wanted to be like my 
mother and have a big family. Everybody thought I would have had a few rocks in my head, but 
they found out after about eight that I guess I meant what I said. But they never knew that-- 
about that times when I thought, maybe I better kind of, give up the idea. You know what the 
doctor told me? There's not a thing wrong with you. You have no problem with your legs. 
There's no varico veins, there's no milk legs, and all the other things that women are bothered 
with. He says, Go ahead and have a few more children. I did [laughs]. I had five more, and I 
think about it, and I was a little angry at him at the time, but then I wouldn't give up the kids for 
anything now. I have 38 grand-- or 37 grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and luckily, 
they've all lived. I think few of the daughters have had miscarriages. I didn't have a miscarriage, 
but I was very lucky. I think I was very lucky also, in that Philip was such a good person. Like I 
said, he was a devout Catholic. He lived what he learned and he's devoted to his family. He was 
good to me and to the kids. Although he was the boss, we didn't mind that at all. He wanted 
everybody at the table, [?he said that to me?]  
 
Winona Weber  04:13 
It works really well when a person-- I really believe that when people really believe, really live 
what their religion teaches, that there's no problem. It's when they preach their religion and then 
they don't live it. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  05:51 
Yeah, yeah. Well, he never preached his, he just [?thinked?] it. And I know when we'd go to 
church, just before his last years, we'd go to church, they all thought it was me that was going to 
church. Then he'd just take me.  
 
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Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  06:34 
They never knew that it was he that was-- this is my Alaska man.  
 
Winona Weber  06:34 
Oh, I see.  
 
Winona Weber  06:44 
Oh, I see.  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  06:46 
Yeah, I believe on the wagon or something, her parents had brought her up in another, and let her 
know that this was going to be her husband, [inaudible]. He was the widow. She had no choice. 
This was what they chose for her. And so one day, after she was with him, she was talking to this 
old lady, her name was Mary [inaudible].  
 
Winona Weber  07:13 
Mary what? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  07:15 
[Inaudible]. Her real name was-- her English name was Mary. And she said to her, and the lady, 
the Indian lady could not speak English, so my mother spoke Indian to her, and she says, You 
know, when a salesman comes up there, he has needles and he has buttons and he has thread and 
things. All these things I need, but my husband will not give me money for it. I don't know what 
to do. And this old lady said, Oh, some men are like that, but you can't change them. So what 
you have to do is find out how you can make your own money. So I will give you this wool, 
show you how to spin it by hand, on one of those kind of-- I don't know what they call them. 
They look like a top to me. You know what I mean?  
 
Winona Weber  08:11 
Yeah, I've seen them.  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  08:12 
And you'll knit your first pair of socks. I'll show you how. And then you sell it, and then you buy 
some more wool. When you get to the point where you can divide this wool into three, after you-
- so let's say you've got three pairs of socks. Then you save-- you take a third of it, then you buy 
your needles and your thread and your buttons, and you take the other third and you put it back 
into the to the wool, and you take the other third and you hide it, and you don't even tell him 
where it's at. Just don't let him know that you have it. So that's what she did. And before when 
she died, she had an order for 72 pairs of gloves, which were $6 a pair, and she couldn't fill the 
order. And she was making around, I believe she-- I'm not sure of the amount of socks. You 
could see what she had.  
 
Winona Weber  09:17 
Yeah, big long line of them. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  09:17 
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I believe they were-- I believe it was pretty close to be 100 and she'd sell it all at once, and then 
she would put some in a bank, pay for her lights and [inaudible], you know, utilities, and then 
keep something for herself. And usually she would wait until she can buy her television, 
whatever she wanted. And she kept that up all those years. And, you know, she was 96 when she 
died. I felt so sorry for her, though, when she was trying to show me how to knit those gloves. 
She wanted me to do it, and I just could not. And she was she couldn't get get it to go through the 
needle. And I says, Mom, you can show me another time, because I didn't want her to be 
frustrated anymore. I took it away from her, but my little sister Louise down here filled the order 
for her. When I was a kid, there was Nettie, Red, and I that was left at home. She would work 
from six until about one, then from one to two or three, that was her hour off. She would take us 
kids, if it was a good day, and go for a walk. She'd have Nettie on her back. Red and I would, if 
Red was sleep, [?while she was?] even home, but I always got to go along. And she would 
always talk about, Oh the pussywillows are coming out. Or if a bird flew up, she said, Oh, the 
grouse-- that was a grouse, it went, you know, flew up in a tree, and just talked about little things 
about the nature. And I liked those. I only forgot those hours that, that she had, that was 
everyday, just as-- like getting breakfast. It was one thing she did for herself, was that one.  
 
Winona Weber  09:38 
She always held that time out for herself and for you. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  10:33 
For us, well, for herself. Of course, she had to take us because they didn't have babysitters in 
those days. So I tried to do that with my children as much as I could. If I didn't go for a walk 
with them, I would read to them, read Bible stories or something. And they kind of look forward 
to that too. But that was before we had television. After you got television, sort of things changed 
after that. You didn't play games, and read, and all this other stuff that they did before. They'd 
like to help each other with-- if they were working out a puzzle or something, especially these 
word puzzles. I never could do them myself, but they could. And I thought my children ran quite 
[?red?]. I think it helped them with their jobs now. There was another thing too, I think that 
helped my children a lot. They understood that they were to go to school, that they were not to 
stay home for any good [inaudible]. And this girl, I think that's one reason why they have jobs. 
Because now Anna, when she got here, when we moved back here, she found all kinds of ways 
she could stay out of school, and I wouldn't know about it until afterwards. And then Robert too, 
the two that moved back here with [?Grandma?] are the two that don't have jobs. And for some 
reason, children aren't made to go to school here. Over in Skokomish it was such a few of us that 
we just didn't think anymore of it, and we'd send them to school. Offer some reason, [inaudible] 
nobody makes them go. I don't know. How is it over in Quinalt?  
 
Winona Weber  10:33 
We have very good attendance. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  12:09 
There must be, because they seem to be more outgoing over there.  
 
Winona Weber  13:31 
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Well, they're, you know, they're all clustered together in this small community, so everybody 
knows whose kids aren't in school [inaudible]. And usually, they have grandmothers and if they 
say [inaudible], they'll send them to school. So it works pretty good. They're not as spread out as 
you know, a place more here. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  13:58 
And I think they're more spread out in Suquamish. In fact, we didn't see each other very much. 
When we did, we was always glad to see each other. And one thing about it, was a little different 
over there, you really didn't know each other's business too much, just you know, because we 
were so scattered. But yet, we were always good to one another. When I go back there, I'd 
[inaudible]. I wished I could have stayed there, but my the old place where I lived was pretty 
cold. It was an old, old house. I don't know how my kids lived through all that when I think back.  
 
Winona Weber  14:37 
Oh, I don't know. Pretty hardy. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  14:42 
But Phil always had wood, you know, and we had an old wood stove. And somehow, the kids 
just went out and played, and they never seemed to have had always had a cold. Like the priest 
said, he-- wasn't much of a house, but it was always a home. And the other thing that the priest 
said about him was he was such a forgiving man. God have mercy on anyone that might have 
met him. And I never thought of Phillip like that. Now, a lot of that didn't rub off on me. I had to 
work attitude to be like that. I mean, this was really-- God Himself knows how hard I had to 
work at that, because I wasn't the most forgiving person. And then my mother, for some strange 
reason in the old people, they sort of talk to the person that died in their language. As she stood 
by his casket, she said, You can rest now. And he is one man that had never said a bad word 
about me as his mother-in-law all these years. And I still to this day, I will tell my children this 
when they get married. I tell them, Always be good to your in-laws, it won't hurt you. I never 
really thought about until she mentioned it, how my-- how, how he'd been to her. I had never 
heard him say anything bad about her, in fact, any of my family as far as I know. He-- there 
might have been a few that he didn't like, but he just said, [inaudible] and that was it. So I was 
blessed with a really good husband and father to the kids. Jim is a good person. He's more of a 
companionship type, and he's even good to our little grandchild. We're raising one right now. 
She was six [grandkids]. Was the neatest thing. He has no children. 
 
Winona Weber  17:17 
Oh, is he? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  17:30 
Mm-hmm. So [inaudible]. 
 
Winona Weber  17:30 
Did you ever go with your mother to the shakes? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  17:34 
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Oh, yes, we had shaker meetings at our house, because our house was big and we would go to 
shaker meetings with them, and we always had to be behaved. At my-- first, my mother would 
not, she always said she would not become a shaker, but she always went to them. She really 
didn't know. It wasn't till my younger brother went to the hospital for an operation that she 
became a shaker. She was washing some flour sacks, taking the markings off of it, and she was 
spraying and rubbing, rubbing them, and pretty soon, she started to shake. And we had to go get 
the shakers to come and take that away, because she didn't quit clapping. She just kept up. And 
she had a choice of becoming a shaker or not. She became a shaker. And the thing that we 
noticed most about it was that she would sing the songs before you could-- she wouldn't know 
how to sing with the crowd, but she'd have songs, a song of her own, and she could, you know, 
join the rest. And she said she would never keep time. She was a very quiet woman, you know, 
and here she was, after doing the rest of them. And some of the things that she brought to our 
attention, I think, were good things, like, for me, she told me, Kate, you'll never watch the time. 
It's important to watch the time. There's a certain time to eat, there's a breakfast, there's lunch, 
and there's dinner. And she says, watch the time and do it. Now here's the host. She said, I would 
always have problems with her because I never watched the time. And she was right. I think 
about it every time, because, you know, here I had to raise a big family, and I had to have the 
meals on time, the kids had to go to school on time. And when I goofed, I think of what she said 
to me, she did this. She did this herself, and so did my husband. He was very firm on time. I see 
it as all come down by my kids, the ones that have their jobs, they're never-- they make sure 
they're there on time. The same way my mom did [inaudible]. So that, to me, it was an important 
thing that she brought that to my attention. Although it was hard for me to keep up with. There 
were some things, you know, that I never could quite understand. But I think there was a-- I 
wished I could have understood it more. I'll tell you one thing that happened to me. My mother 
had sent my, I don't know who was with me, but one of the brothers and sisters was with me. We 
went to look for the cows. We had to walk about two miles out this back road, you know, and 
there was an old abandoned house out there. And I decided I would go in and look at this house. 
So I went inside. And I went upstairs. There was about three bedrooms up there, and they had all 
kinds of doors up there, and I had to see everyone in the room and the closets. And while I was 
up there snooping around, the wind blew the door shut downstairs.  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  21:01 
Scared the daylights out of me. So we went on home, brought the cows home, and I went in the 
kitchen, and I got just desperately sick. This-- I got chilled, and I just got so sick. So my aunt 
start shaking on me, you know, and I wouldn't tell them that I went in that house because, you 
know, so I was afraid to get scolded. And when she got through, she said-- I don't know, but she 
says, Seemed like she went in a house, empty house, and something scared her. That's why I was 
sick. The shock of it was just too much for me, and I finally had to admit to them that I went in 
this house [laughs]. But I never did join, join it myself. I wanted to tell you about the funerals 
that I remember at the houses that we had, or the house where we lived. My father, more or less 
worked for the fellow at the general [?park?].  So they would come to our house for the funerals, 
and all the people would gather around and have what they call a wake, I guess, and someone 
would get up and talk. I wished I could remember what they said, because I feel like the purpose 
of it was to make everybody-- to make them cry. And they all cried together. When they got 
through, they take a basin around, they throw water in their eyes and wipe their face, especially 
their eyes. And I've never quite knew what the purpose of this was, but now that we don't cry 
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when we should be crying, I think we hold it in. It's not good for us. And I think the Indian way 
must have been a good way, because they would tell him, encourage him to cry it out. And I 
think that was a purpose of everybody getting together to make that whoever was closest to cry. 
Have you ever had an experience of not crying at a funeral? I did. I didn't cry at my husband's 
funeral. That's when I remembered this, because I thought it would be too much for my children. 
And I held that in, and held it in. I think I got more nervous, and upset, and confused , or 
whatever you want to say. So one day, something come up. Must have been-- it was after I 
married Jim, something come up about my children, and I got very touchy about it. And I 
remember I said, I do not understand why you folks are picking on my children when their father 
was-- he never would say a mean thing about yours while he was alive. Why are you picking 
them up-- picking on them now that they're dead-- he's dead? And I got home and I cried, and I 
cried, and I cried, and I tried to wash my face and think, Well, I'm through crying, then I'd start 
all over again. Poor Jim, he didn't know what to think. He had to go to Alaska the next morning, 
and he said, I was just-- he said, You look so tough. He said, Your eyes were red and you cried 
so hard. He says, I hated to leave you, but I had to go. Then that's when I got to thinking, I think, 
really, the Indian people had the best way of having their wakes like they did in the old ways. 
Now we go to funeral parlor and think of crying loudly. Not loud, you know, not right out like 
we did in the old days. They thought it was important to do this, even if you felt you were feeling 
real bad the next morning, you could go by yourself and cry if you want to. It's hard to do that 
now that we're getting so close to each other. And I wonder sometimes if children aren't upset 
when they can't cry for their parents or someone that's dear to them, like they did in the old days. 
I don't know. I wished I knew what they said at the funerals. I could understand Indian but we 
more or less had to kind of sit back. 
 
Winona Weber  21:01 
Oh, scary. 
 
Winona Weber  25:45 
It wasn't spoken in English?  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  25:48 
No, they talked in Indian in those days. And they usually had speakers, you know, that did that 
sort of thing. 
 
Winona Weber  25:59 
Did they have certain, certain people that went to funerals? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  26:04 
Well, just did the-- yeah, the speaker. There are some who were just naturally speakers for this 
there, and they knew exactly how to go about talking about things, and you could understand it 
in their language much better than you could in the English language. Because, I don't know 
what it is. I don't know enough about Indian myself, you know, because they told us not to speak 
it. But when I would listen to them, I could understand them, but somehow I don't remember 
what they said at the funerals. I've often wondered about it. I've often wondered too, when did 
they quit having-- when did they start burying them underground? You know, they used to have 
them up on stilts or something. Here they call  [inaudible] Point, I guess that's the way they used 
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to have their graves. Then, when I heard that the first grave was at Snoho-- or not Snohomish, 
but Priest Point. Now, this was just a story that was told. I don't know if it's a fact, if it was ever 
on record, or if anybody else knows it, but I heard it. I was a kind of a kid that was nosy, and yet, 
you know, would listen to all these things. And the way they told it, Father Chirouse had went to 
Priest Point, and he was having his land cleared, and there was an Indian woman that was 
making baskets. I don't know if it was in front of a, just a cabin, or just what it was she was, but 
she was sitting outdoors, making this basket. And a tree came, fell, and killed her. So they 
decided to bury her there at Priest Point. So she was the first one. That's where the first burial 
they had there at Priest Point, that's where it started, Priest Point Cemetery. So from there, I 
guess he'd-- Father Chirouse had decided, well, this really isn't a good place to-- near the water, 
you know, to bring their boats up and stuff. So they moved it over down to Tulalip, right by the 
big cemetery now. And then they had a school there. They built a school, a Catholic school. That 
burnt later. Then I begin to wonder if that's when they first, when they started burying them 
underground. See, I never knew about them, you know, just you hear about it now and you read 
about it. How they used to just have them on little, kind of table-like thing, you know, just leave 
them up above. But they left that place alone. They didn't bother. That's why you don't find 
people living there now, why the white people live there now. We still call it [inaudible] Point 
for the dead people.  
 
Winona Weber  29:03 
Is that what the dead people are called in your language? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  29:06 
[Inaudible.] It's kind of a ghost. [Inaudible.] Anyway, they used to have the funerals at my 
parents' place, and they were-- at first, they used to go by buggy. Then they start having cars. 
Now you should see the funerals, big line of cars. One person can be in the car, but there's a big 
line of them, but they don't have the wakes like they used to. I wonder what a psychiatrist would 
say about that, you know, how he would feel about their ways, because when we were over in 
Suquamish, the Indian people, just before we had moved there, used to still go down to the 
beach. They'd get together and they would cry over somebody that just-- whoever they were 
feeling bad about. They get together and talk about them, and they'd cry. And this one lady, she 
was [inaudible], and she said Those people that go down there and do their crying. She said, My 
[inaudible] gets so [inaudible], I'd almost need to walk through these Indian trails, but I had to 
go. She didn't make fun of them, think she just would just make her kind of spooky, you know, 
which was-- I could understand. But then, all at once, we just keep doing those things. I don't 
know of anybody that actually goes out and cries by themselves anymore or get together even do 
this. I don't know whether we're-- we just hold it back, or-- I don't know what to say. And they 
just let you go at that time. 
 