Nordic American Voices

Interwoven Oral History Project National Nordic Museum ID: 2020.042.001 Interview of Leonard Forsman October 30, 2020 Suquamish, Washington / Seattle, Washington Interviewer: Alison DeRiemer Alison DeRiemer: [0:00] This is an interview for the Interwoven Oral History Program at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle. Today is October 30th, 2020, and I will be interviewing Leonard Forsman, the Chairman of the Suquamish Tribe. My name is Alison DeRiemer, and this interview is being conducted remotely over Zoom. So, Leonard, welcome, and thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed today. We really appreciate it. I’d just like to start, please, by getting your full name, and where and when you were born. Leonard Forsman: [0:30] Okay. My full name is Leonard Andrew Forsman, and I was born January 25, 1962 in Bremerton, Washington. Alison: [0:41] Okay, great. Can you also tell me your current location where you are today? Leonard: [0:47] I am in Suquamish, Washington, on the Port Madison Indian Reservation. Alison: [0:51] Okay. Great. Could you tell me a little bit about what you know about your Nordic ancestors, even if it’s not a lot. If you know any names, where they might have come from, where they immigrated to—if you know any of that information. Leonard: [1:10] Okay. Well, my paternal grandfather… My father was James William Forsman. His father was Alexander Forsman, who immigrated from Sweden. I don’t know a whole lot about his past, other than I believe the census records show him kind of coming via the Midwest, I believe Indiana, or something like that. He was a carpenter by trade, and built a number of houses here in the Suquamish area. He married my maternal grandmother, Marion Temple, who was a Suquamish Indian. Alison: [2:06] Okay. That’s your father’s side. What about your grandparents on your mother’s side? Leonard: [2:13] I have no Scandinavian heritage on my mother’s side that I’m aware of. Alison: [2:19] What is the heritage on that side? Leonard: [2:22] I really haven’t got a whole lot of information on their heritage. I know it’s kind of a complicated ancestry over there. It’s taken some work to find… I’ve found out a lot about the National Nordic Museum- Interwoven – L. Forsman Page 1 of 15 genealogy, but the actual ethnicity, or anything like that is difficult. My mother’s name was Helen Winterbottom, from what I understand, but she had a number of other names—some of the stepfathers that she had. [3:08] Her mother’s name was Miriam or Marion Winterbottom. I’m not sure. She had two different ways of spelling it. All I know about the Winterbottom side is that they came from Ohio and moved to Baltimore. So, my mom and dad met in Baltimore during World War II. He was in the Coast Guard. Alison: [3:35] Okay. So, both your Suquamish ancestry and your Swedish ancestry come from your father’s side. Leonard: [3:42] Yes. Alison: [3:43] Okay. Tell me about the Suquamish Tribe—its history, and its present, and what it was like for you… were you immersed in that when you were growing up? Leonard: [4:01] Essentially, the Suquamish Tribe have lived on the Peninsula for thousands of years, and are a fishing tribe, primarily, and relied on canoes to do a lot of travel in, and had villages throughout the Kitsap Peninsula and beyond—even up on Whidbey Island, and of course on Bainbridge Island, Blake Island, and within Kitsap County. They had winter houses relying on salmon, big, winter ceremonial complex of events that occurred in the wintertime, exemplified by Old Man House, which was one of the largest winter houses in the Pacific Northwest. It was here on what is now the Port Madison Indian Reservation. [4:56] The first contact was in about 1792, with Captain George Vancouver, and then a lot of frequent missionaries and traders that came through. Up until the 1830s, when the Hudson’s Bay Company put a permanent trading site at Fort Nisqually—then, about a decade after that, the immigration into the area, or migration, I guess we’d call it—settlers, moving out to the area, essentially had the United States lay claim to the area. [5:37] It started to occur, and this created a problem, because the British and the Americans were kind of vying over what is now the State of Washington, or Washington Territory. The Americans were claiming land, the British were saying their claims were invalid. At least that was intimated. There was also a lot of division and strife and hostility from the tribes, because they felt like they hadn’t been consulted or paid or acknowledged for land that was being given away in these donation land claims. [6:23] In 1855, the United States, when they went to clear the title question, got the railroad out here, got people to settle out here, and establish an economy out here in the Puget Sound. The Treaty of Point Elliott was signed in January of 1855 in Mukilteo. Chief Seattle signed on behalf of the Suquamish, and that treaty established the Port Madison Indian Reservation here. [7:01] My family, of course, was here, on my dad’s side—my ancestors were here on the reservation. They all lived at Old Man House, and then lived in cabins around Old Man House up until 1905. In 1905, the land had already been allotted into 160-acre parcels, but everybody still continued to live around Old Man House. Then, the Army came in and wanted to buy it and put a fort there at Old National Nordic Museum- Interwoven – L. Forsman Page 2 of 15 Man House. There was a big negotiation that went on. [7:54] There was more hostility there, but eventually the tribe was resigned to the fact that the Army was going to put this fort in there, and moved off. They never built the fort, and the land was sold off, so that kind of scattered the tribe around the reservation to live where they could, because some of the allotments were not conducive to settlement, because they weren’t near the water, etcetera, etcetera. A lot of people made do fishing, or clam-digging, or cutting logs, or things like that. That’s kind of where my family has been associated with the reservation, pre-treaty, and then post-treaty. Alison: [8:36] Okay. Thank you for that history. When you were growing up, did you have contact with your grandparents—your grandmother and your grandfather: the Swedish grandfather and the Suquamish grandmother? Leonard: [8:49] No. All my grandparents were gone when I was born, so I never met any of them. My grandmother, Marion—she went to the Tulalip Boarding School, which was established around 1900. This was a mandatory, basically a K-8 boarding school that the children were forced to go to. I think she lost a lot of her language and culture there. When she got out of boarding school, she came back to the reservation, and apparently met Alexander some way. I’ve never really heard how that happened. They married. [9:50] I know that this boarding school that she attended was very disruptive to the transmission of culture and heritage. They were intended to do that. They were intended, just like the allotments and the boarding schools, to assimilate, and kind of push away the tribal culture, and the tribal cohesion, and the tribal identity, because it had such great power, because of our presence here for thousands of years. The United States kind of wanted to get that adaptation, that tradition, that connection between us and our landscape eliminated. So, I did not know her. She died relatively young. They had two children, my father, James, and my uncle, Joseph. They were both World War II veterans. Alison: [10:54] Did your father ever tell you any stories about his parents that you’d like to share? Any traditions that he might have grown up with? Leonard: [11:03] I don’t know why he didn’t talk about his parents much. I guess because he was really young when his mom died. His father was kind of around, and kind of helped support the family the best way he could through his work. He helped build the house that I grew up in on the reservation here. I did hear some stories about his accent. My mom used to talk about him, what a nice person he was. He always talked about living by the golden rule. That was his main reference point. He wasn’t super religious, but he really believed that is the way people should carry out their life, and the way they conduct themselves. [12:11] Apparently, he didn’t like the New York Yankees baseball team, and he used to say, “Those damn ‘Jankees,’” the one thing that I remember hearing. He couldn’t pronounce that very well. So, he did have a pretty heavy accent, from what I understand. And I’ve seen pictures of him. He did have some disabilities later in age, with his legs. I think that did affect him. But apparently, he was pretty well-liked around here, as far as we know. [12:51] My older brother has talked about him, because he was alive when he was alive, and he remembers him being very kind, and buying him an electric train set when he was little.

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