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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 2 
 
Winona Weber  00:06 
You came in-between, you think? In-between two— 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  00:06 
-- In-between two cultures is the way I-- this is just my own opinion. I don't know if I'm right in 
it or not. This is my own thing that I lived and I feel it had lots to do with what happened to me. I 
was so confused and I didn't know what to do. The priest tell me I didn't have enough faith, and 
yet I felt like they're my children, they're my, my responsibility. What am I supposed to do? The 
more I fought at the heart, the more they got away from me. And finally, when the one daughter 
there had left home, and I didn't know where she was, naturally I worried about it, but I didn't 
say anything to anyone, but my mother knew. She was in bed. She was, she had cancer. She must 
have known I was worried about her, and she would have been the last one I would have told and 
finally, one day, she said to me, Kate, when your children quit minding you, let them go. They 
have to find out for themselves. That's not easy to do, because when you think, when you think 
of them out there, wondering, where are they staying? In an empty house? And you want to go 
look for them, but I did quit going to look for her. I just let her go. Yeah, I think, I think some of 
their old ways were good, but we've lost it so fast. You know, that's my issue about being 
educated and being, living like a white person, that we're forgetting some of the old ways. 
Another thing that I advise-- an old person had told this, this young girl had run away from 
[inaudible]. She was only 16, and she ran away with this fella that was about, oh, I don't know if 
he's quite a bit older than her. I don't remember exactly. Hence, she married him, and these old 
people were the guardians of her. And so the old fellow, when they found her, they said-- he 
said, Annul the marriage and bring her back to school. And the old elderly lady said, No, Andy, 
no. She knows what it is to have a husband [?love?]. I And if you send her back, she will go 
back, and go with every time [?they come here?]. She didn't say it that way, but you know. They 
should be considered [?developed?]. This way, she has a husband, and she might be a wife and 
have children, and stay with him, this sort of thing. And surprisingly, he said, Okay, maybe 
you're right. And do you know that that young girl had 12 children. She's still with her husband. 
She has a stroke, but she's still with her husband. She has beautiful children. And when I, I think, 
here I've heard this advice, yet I didn't do that for my own daughter. I stopped her from getting 
married to this fellow that she wanted to get married to. I wanted her to go to school. And I didn't 
let poor Anna. I should have let her go then. You know, it's hard to say, really, but I think some 
of those old people really have good advice. You wonder where they hear it from? From living, I 
suppose.  
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Winona Weber  01:36 
Well, traditionally, the most honored people in our, in our tribes, were always the oldest one, 
because they were supposed to know most, because they had lived the most. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  04:23 
They were the wisest. Now, this old lady was telling me, too, that one time her and her husband 
had lived way out in the Quinault place, and only way they could get to the doctor, they had to 
go through a railroad track into town, and she had a little baby that was sick. So she brought the 
baby in, and the doctor gave her some medicine, When you get home, give him this medicine. 
She said, Okay. So she wrapped the baby in a towel and brought him home. She laid the baby on 
the bed, was going to give him his medicine. She looked at him, he had passed away. So she 
said, I just wrapped him up again and brought him, turned around, walked all the way back 
downtown to bring him back to the [inaudible]. I would have never done that, but she did. I 
don't-- maybe, maybe I could have, I don't know, our mothers do some strange things when it 
comes to their kids. You know, those old people must have had some pretty hard life those days. 
I know my mother did, but she kept working, kept doing something. I think sometimes to not 
think about it, you know, just keep working. That's probably why she was such a hard worker, 
because she needs a job. She was never on welfare. Did Maddie tell you that? 
 
Winona Weber  06:20 
No, she just said that she worked real hard all her life, raising her kids, and raising chickens, and 
raising sheep.  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  06:31 
Yeah, she made sure-- I think she stayed up all night thinking about what we should be doing 
before-- around Fourth of July so we wouldn't go out with the rest of them and raise hell. 
Because we ended up either bringing in the hay, all of us would have to work on it, or we went 
out berry picking, and we each had our own basket, and she had a great big basket we had to fill 
up. 
 
Winona Weber  06:55 
What kind of berries is that? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  06:56 
Blueberries. She was-- she made sure we had blackberries. She had 100 half gallons one time, 
when we lived up here in a logging, an oak house. Every day, she would go out early in the 
morning, pick her berries, and come in, and can it. And then she would put it on the floor, you 
know, because we didn't have no shelves. It was 100, the half gallons that she canned and 
someone came, and she was gone, and took every one of them. They must have known when she 
was gone. Must have known they were there. And she-- all she said was, I wish they'd just bring 
my jars back. I thought if I ever knew who did it, I think I would have wrung their neck [laughs]. 
But the reason she said this is because she went to town to get these jars from the ice cream 
parlor. She paid two bits for this here, half gallons with the little glass top to them. And it must 
have been something for her to have to save the two bits to go down and get those jars, pack 
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them up. But that's what she had. They took the jars and all. They probably just broke them, or, 
you know, threw them away.  
 
Winona Weber  08:21 
Aw, that's bad. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  08:26 
When you can think of those little things and then still just kept on working, and living, and not 
feeling bad about it.  
 
Winona Weber  08:44 
I've got to stretch. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  08:51 
I really think that the older people, for me, were something I was most interested in. Because I 
guess I wanted to know about their living, so I always kind of listened to them. And it was a 
good thing I could understand the Indian language  [inaudible]. My father always taught us to 
help them out if we could. He had maybe one old lady living in kind of a cookhouse-- or not 
cookhouse, a bunkhouse, you know, close to home. Another one on on the other side. And if we 
had extra food, we would bring it down to them. I still have a little basket that one old lady had 
given me because I had brought her down a box of strawberries. I remember, she was so tickled 
that I brought it to her, that she kissed me and she brought this little basket out and gave it to me, 
and I, I don't have it myself. I gave it to my oldest daughter. That thing must be about 60 some 
years old, for bringing her box of strawberries. And that time, I didn't know what was so great 
about bringing her box of strawberries, but I suppose she appreciated it because she couldn't go 
pick them. She was that old, and she probably was hungry for them, I don't know. But my 
brothers would always bring fish, or they'd cut wood, just whatever they could, you know, to 
help them out. And one old lady that my brother was cutting wood for, she said she-- I guess he'd 
brought her down to buy groceries, and they were snowing and they were going home. She said, 
in Indian, You want to be careful in your car. How your drive-- don't drive so fast. You might get 
hurt. And he said, in Indian back to her, You be careful. Don't go out there in the woods and try 
to get wood. You're liable to fall down and I won't know about it, and you won't be able to get 
back to your house. He scolded her back, see [laughs], I thought that was cute. That was the 
advantage of talking to Indian people, you know, if you could take their advice as well, you 
know, give them a little bit of advice. Then I-- there was one old lady, her name was [?Klolitz?]. 
She came up to me, and she was talking Indian real loud, and she said, she said, Girl, come on in 
into the office and give him my grocery list. She said an [inaudible]. I can't interpret exactly what 
she said, but I understood. So I went in and I started to tell him the things she wanted on her 
grocery list, and it come to səpləl. Səpləl is flour, and it also is a loaf of bread. And she said, 
səpləl [inaudible], səpləl. So I remember səpləl is flour. And I said, she wants flour. And my 
brother said, Why didn't you tell the clerk she wanted a loaf of bread that long. Why didn't you 
tell him of yourself you were-- you could talk Indian. And you see, that was a disadvantage I 
had. I couldn't speak the language in order to, you know, talk back to her. I was just getting it 
one way, but we got the grocery list in. Got quite a chuckle out of it. And I think that was one 
thing I was a little bit too bad about me not-- all of us not being able to speak our own language. 
But the purpose, I think, for my father doing this was because my older sister couldn't speak very 
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well, very plain English. And so they thought she was talking Indian. And so they said, If-- my 
father said, You folks have to talk English, do not talk Indian. You can listen to us, but you're not 
to speak it. Our own father told us this, that's why we never spoke. But my older brother and 
sisters, they did because they knew it before my father married my mother, they knew the 
language, but less younger kids did. 
 
Winona Weber  13:45 
And of course, you went to Marysville. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  13:51 
Yeah, they didn't allow you to talk in Tulalip either. They tried to stop you. Some did, kind of 
behind the matrons' back but. Now my husband here, now this is one thing I cannot understand. 
He's younger than I am. Up in Alaska, they stopped him too, and you know what they did with 
him? Was all he knew, was a Tlingit language. He didn't know English at all. They put, what is 
it, a hot pepper, or cayenne pepper, teaspoon of that in your mouth, and he says, Well, his tongue 
was all swollen. And he said he couldn't talk for a while, and they just told him he was not to 
speak the language. Look at language. He says, you have that done to you a couple times, do as 
you say to this day, he does not talk the language. He understands it, but he does not speak it. 
And to listen to Jim talk, he leaves some of the words out. You almost have to know what he's 
thinking in order to figure out what he's saying. He flips to the point right away. You know, he 
doesn't get around like I do. Like if he's asking about somebody else, somebody, I'm trying to 
think, who is he talking about. His description is pretty good. If I get pretty close to it, I can 
follow what he's saying. He has learned to read, and reads quite a bit because he's quite deaf 
now, and so he does a lot of reading. Actually, he's pretty smart in all of those things. Now, he 
lives real typical Indian [inaudible], Indian food, the Indian ways. And I think that's what he likes 
about being married to me, is that he can go and he can cook his food and I'll eat with him. Yeah, 
he's not afraid. This is Melinda. 
 
Winona Weber  15:57 
She's sneaking in here, and I couldn't figure out what she was doing. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  16:04 
I was the youngest one, and I didn't really have an awful lot of problems. We always had plenty 
to eat. We had a place to stay where I didn't have the problem of being left in the car while 
everybody else went in the tavern, all this sort of thing. We just had a home right there. And then 
I found out, boy, other people didn't live like that. For one thing, we had a big orchard. We had 
plenty of fruit. My mother was a person that went out to get all these things and put it away, you 
know, can it and whatnot. And we had chickens, we had cows and horses. We always had 
something that we were going-- that they were saved for Thanksgiving and Christmas whether it 
was a goose, or turkey, or whatever it was. And we always had the fruit, the pies and stuff. And 
then when I went out for this year, this job, I found that they have to buy everything, and it's so 
much harder. And when you don't know how to buy things, it really is, you know, they they 
didn't have enough food to last them until the end of the month. We always had something. 
There was always something in the cellar where she kept her fruit. I remember one boy. She 
wondered why her blackberries were spoiling. Finally, she found out one of the boys that was 
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staying with us, was opening it so he could-- he'd ask for, can I have it? Can I have it? He was 
making wine out of it. When she found out, she sure bowled him out.  
 
Winona Weber  17:46 
Oh gee, I'll bet. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  17:47 
She never kicked him out, she just bowled him out. You know, it's strange, but she had a lot of 
young fellas that didn't have a place to stay, stay with us, and she would have them work with the 
rest of the boys out there in the barn or out cutting wood. She always had work for them to do, 
and somehow those boys always respected us. They were just like sisters to them. When I think 
of it, I often wonder how she had all this support for everyone, all-- everyone that lived there. 
And when my-- when her brother took sick, they told-- told her-- told both my mother, she was a 
widow then, and my aunt, your brother has cancer, and he has only three months to live. And 
they, right away, said, Bring him up to our house. We'll take care of him here. Moved the whole 
family up there, the mother, you know, his wife and his eight kids, and there was already a bunch 
of us kids too, you know. Moved them onto their [inaudible], sure enough, he lived for three 
months, and we took care of him. In the morning, they'd change him, take care of him. Priest 
come up and talk with him. Doctor would come up and give him medicine. Then, finally, finally, 
towards the end, everyone was in the living room. That's where they had him, in the living room, 
very big living room. Everybody was sitting around visiting him and whatnot. He had this 
cancer, it was just like a big beehive. And I guess the top of it came off, you know, the scab. And 
of course, when it started to hemorrhage, well, then the doctor knew there was no stopping it. 
That was it. It was caused from a bruise. So he said to everybody, do-- you'll all have to get 
down and say the rosary. It was half through, halfway through the rosary, he must have passed 
away. And I thought, what a nice way to go out. Listen to what we were praying for him as he 
passed away. But I still wonder where all that food came from where they were feeding all those 
people three meals a day. We had chickens. I knew where they came from. I knew the you-- you 
could have one egg if you want, could have three if you wanted, you know. I remember, were 
they staples or-- because my mother wasn't working and she wasn't on welfare. And I've asked 
my older brothers and sister, where did all the food come from? And they didn't seem to know 
either. Well, I knew she planted a lot of beans, and we had-- so she'd have a sack full of this year 
pinto beans, you know, and she-- and she had some of this white ones and different kinds, not as 
much, but she always had salt pork, and so she would cook up a bunch of beans and we would 
have that. And anyhow, she had her vegetables. But how she got her meat and rest of it all? I 
don't know. Maybe, if I keep asking, I might find out someday. I don't want-- 
 
Winona Weber  21:27 
-- Well if you keep asking them, maybe you can put together bits and pieces, and you might be 
able to figure, deduct it out.  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  21:34 
Yeah, I've been meaning to ask Louise down here, because Lanette's younger than I am, so she 
probably won't remember. You know, Martin, he's-- can't hear too well, and so he doesn't know 
how talk about half the thing. And then the other brother that-- the older one has died since. His 
wife might know, though, because she lived right next door. She might know where some of that 
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food come from. Had to come from somewhere. No, it's pretty hard to do things. Did your 
family, did the people who were in Quinalt, did they sort of live together?  
 
Winona Weber  22:15 
Like you mean what? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  22:16 
Like-- 
 
Winona Weber  22:16 
Like one family living in one house?  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  22:17 
Yeah, maybe a cousin'll move in because he didn't have no place to stay, or something like this 
here? This is still that way here in some places. 
 
Winona Weber  22:27 
Oh yeah, still that way in different places in Taholah. Like, gee, my grandmother has a two 
bedroom house, and she's got about five people living with her. You know, a married couple, 
two or three single, single men. You know, young guys, early 20s, teenagers. I don't know. I 
think the house expanded like, I don't know [laughs]. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  22:55 
Remember when we were living over at the log house, when we lived in Suquamish. Somebody 
came over and stayed, and we had quite a time bedding everybody down. Grandpa says, he says, 
I think our house is kind of bursting at the seams [laughs]. Grandpa-- Phil. And he never minded 
having people there, and it was kind of hard for me to get enough blankets and everything. 
Seemed like the kids didn't really care where they slept, but we just managed somehow, same 
way with eating. We didn't have a real big dining room table and yet, if we had, had 30 people to 
feed, we always managed to feed them.  
 
Winona Weber  23:51 
Did anything shift? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  23:52 
Yeah. Now at the ranch, now, that big old house there? They had a dining room there. We had a 
big table. See, they used to have loggers there at one time, so they had a great big table. They had 
enough dishes for everybody, so we didn't have no problem there. And she already had the big 
pots and pans that we'd cook in. But I didn't have that much room at the log house, but we still 
managed with the room. We still kind of do that here too. Now, my daughter up there's got a 
bigger house than I have [inaudible] and I ought to trade houses with her. 
 
Winona Weber  24:33 
That is an idea. [Inaudible.] Oh, god damn it. That really bugs me. I'll be sitting here thinking 
about what you're saying and I'll think-- [inaudible]. 
 
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Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  25:00 
I don't know if they [inaudible].  
 
Winona Weber  25:03 
They'd get kicked out of their houses? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  25:04 
Their homes, like [inaudible]. They went there, well, then for the [inaudible]. Brother got kicked 
out because he was for the [inaudible] that would help the Indians. I was talking to a fellow over 
there in [inaudible]. Colorado. Denver, Colorado. He was just casually talking about how, I don't 
know, he said, This [?feel?] and how I feel really [inaudible]. So I hang onto the old chief's way 
of doing things, telling people what to do, because this is-- now they have, usually, if they have 
one person in there, his whole family get in there and the others have nothing more to say, that 
family takes over. And I thought to myself when we were singing, that's right, that's the way they 
do it here. 
 
Winona Weber  26:00 
That's right. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  26:03 
And of course, I didn't know what the old chief's way was either. But then, do you folks have 
very much of the old Indian ways? 
 
Winona Weber  26:15 
No, in fact, the last longhouse on the Quinault reservation burned down during the '30s. Do you 
remember anybody having a longhouse? Were there any up around here? The great houses? 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  26:31 
What was it that they had over in Suquamish? Wasn't that a longhouse?  
 
Winona Weber  26:34 
Well, I don't know.  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  26:35 
Does a-- or was that same, or did they call it something else, did they call it? Anyway, it was a 
big, long building with a lot of apartments to it, kind of thing. They burnt it down because they 
said there was too many fleas. And here these people took so long to build it, great big timbers 
and stuff. I think the government was kind of sorry they did this.  
 
Winona Weber  27:02 
When was that?  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  27:03 
I don't know when it was. I read it too, but I know my husband did bulldoze the place right near 
the water where it was, and he said, you'd be surprised of all the people that was following that 
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bulldozer, looking for things. They knew more about it than we did. See, like I say, I never 
studied a proper Indian longhouse. 
 
Winona Weber  27:31 
Oh yeah, police go everywhere. But there was one at Taholah where they held, because my mom 
remembers this, they held dances and ceremonies there up until the '30s. Until-- up until the 
1930s they had one there. And then, and then it burnt down in the '30s sometime, and no one 
ever rebuilt it. I was just wondering if they had anything like that here. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  27:58 
Well, they have one down at Tulalip. I guess that's where they do their dancing. I don't 
understand a lot of this. They had just built this room. It was certainly like the same old one that 
they had there before for years. And we have pictures in the office of the people that have long 
time ago, that used to do the dancing, and they had their head gear and all this other stuff. They 
didn't have feathers, though. They had more of a suit. Their outfit was a little different, and that 
always made the people back in Plains, I guess it is that had the fancy beadwork, and feathers, 
and stuff when Hen-- back when Harriet Shelton would bring this here out, kind of copy theirs. 
And it wasn't really-- 
 
Winona Weber  28:46 
It wasn't really [inaudible]-- 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  28:47 
They didn't like that. 
 
Winona Weber  28:51 
Did you ever see any of those, any of those cedar masks or headdress, whatever they were?  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  28:58 
I seen the headdress. I'm not too familiar with the masks. It was at a parade when I was over here 
on the Fourth of July, and this one Indian fellow was out here dancing. They sort of made it like 
a square with, I think, a tassel thing, and their dress was different. They didn't have all kinds of 
beads and stuff. 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  29:24 
I think they, with the women, they might have had. I didn't see that. I've seen a woman's dress, 
but I don't know if that's the way they did things in those days, but she had more of these little 
shells pinned on. My mother, when she did any moccs and things, it wasn't all fancied up. It was 
kind of like, like the old army used to do, you know, wrap around your feet, sort of protect your 
feet, was what I saw. Or maybe that was a [?sleeve?] type [laughs]. They had to have something 
to protect your feet, and that was the way hers was. It was not any fancy work. And I think they 
used an awful lot of this here mats that they got from, what is it, cattail.  
 
Winona Weber  29:25 
What did they have? 
 
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Winona Weber  30:07 
Yeah, cattails.  
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  30:16 
They used it for several things, I think, for bedding and making little huts or something. When 
they were traveling downriver to pick hops and stuff. She said, take this. Take them a good week 
or so to get down there, in you know, the little boats, they'd take cooking-- just your cooking 
utensils, whatever they needed. Now, you can be down there in an hour in the car.  
 
Winona Weber  30:56 
Yeah, that's right. Do you remember any of the old Indian doctors? We call them [inaudible] 
down-- 
 
Katherine Ethal Sheldon Contraro Berkeley Gates  31:07 
-- Yes, we had one up at the house. 