The Tilikums of Elttaes were a fraternal, civic organization composed primarily of influential white Seattle area businessmen who used imagery common to local Indigenous Peoples to promote tourism and the economic development of the city. In July 1911 the Tilikums ("Friends" in Chinook Jargon; Elttaes is Seattle spelled backward) organized the first Golden Potlatch celebration. The Golden Potlatch was a city-wide festival held in July organized by civic boosters hoping to capitalize on the success of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909. The annual continued for each of the next three summers before being suspended due to WWI, and was later restarted as the Potlatch Festival from 1934 to 1941.

The name “Golden Potlatch” appropriates a Chinook Jargon word describing a Native ceremony of celebration and gift giving. It also reflects the importance of the Klondike gold rush to Seattle’s growth. Many organizers and participants in the Golden Potlatch dressed in stereotyped imitations of traditional Native attire, as part of a created Potlatch myth. The appropriation of Native culture in order to market products or events was one common example of discrimination and marginalization faced by Native peoples in the United States.

This portrait is of Potlatch King Edgar Lincoln Webster (1860-1946), a life insurance agent who lived in Seattle from about 1905-1925 with his wife Ann, daughter Edgarita and son Ferris. Additional "royalty" of Potlatch Court included Robert Cummings Stuart III and his wife Rose (Allen) Stuart, the "Duke and Duchess" to whom the inscription on the photograph is addressed.

Handwritten on recto: Greetings to the Duke and Duchess, Edgar. Lest you forget the Potlatch 1911.

Caption information source: The Seattle Daily Times, July 23, 1911, page 46
Caption information source: "Seattle's Potlatch Bug (1912)," by Lorraine McConaghy, HistoryLink.org Essay 8213