In February 1939, the representatives of the Port Gamble band of the Clallam (now S’Klallam) people invited a Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter and photographer to come to their village south of Hansville on the Olympic Peninsula. Chairman of the tribe’s governing committee Benny George, along with his aid Jackson and Rev. Karl Leonard of Bremerton, had been in contact with the Bureau of Indian Affairs asking for aid to help with unsanitary conditions in the village, with no success. During the trip, George and Jackson led the visitors around the village of 114 tribal members, showing the lack of food and the poor living conditions. In the article written after the visit, the reporter outlines how treaty promises are not being met, and that while a reservation was created in 1936, homes with proper sanitation and access to clean water promised on the reservation still have not been built.

In this image, George and Mary Adams, stand outside their home. The couple did not keep track of their exact ages but were nearly 100 years old. Mary distrusted promises of aid from the government, saying, ‘I’ll never believe we’ll get help until I see it.”

Caption information source: “Indian Group in Dire Need; Asks U.S. Aid,” by Walter Rue, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 26, 1939.