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Gig Harbor Now and Then | Pinning down the location of Native artifacts, remains found in Artena

The subject of the previous Gig Harbor Now and Then column was the Gig Harbor neighborhood of Artena. In it, I wrote, “the name [Artena] was, and remains, very appropriate, for in the early 1900s, Native American artifacts several hundred years old were discovered on some of the waterfront property in the Artena plat. Artena is not simply near a Native American settlement, it was part of one.”

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Lack of space prevented the inclusion of a description of those artifacts, so today’s main subject will be:

Native American artifacts discovered on the Artena plat at Gig Harbor

The Native artifacts found on the Artena plat are from at least three discoveries. The location of the first has a slight possibility of being elsewhere in Gig Harbor, but the second and third are positively from Artena.

The first discovery was made by Arthur M. Hunt, on his property. A variety of newspapers around the country picked up the story. None of the versions explained exactly where in Gig Harbor Hunt found it, but I’ll point out two compelling clues a few paragraphs down.

The News Tribune from Tacoma was the first newspaper to print the story, on April 12, 1904. It read, in its entirety:

A well-preserved skeleton under the roots of a huge fir tree that is estimated to be between 200 and 300 years old and that is three or four feet through at the butt is the find made by A. M. Hunt, on his ranch at Gig Harbor, across the Sound, about seven miles from Tacoma.

The skeleton is without question that of an Indian. The bones of the feet and the lower part of the legs were dug out in pieces on one side of the tree and the skull was found on the other. There is no question, Mr. Hunt says, but the skeleton was buried there before any tree started to grow on the spot, for some of the bones of the neck were found in between the roots of the tree in a position as if the roots had grown out around them. 

Tells of the Find.

When first found the bones were rather soft and spongy, but since exposed to the air they have hardened up considerably. Mr. Hunt, in telling of the find, said:

“I was trying to dig out the roots of the old tree. It had been dead, no doubt, for 15 or 20 years, and was fully three and perhaps four feet across about four feet above ground. There is little soil there, the ground being composed of shells and ashes of shells; it evidently having been an Indian camp at one time. I found the bones of the feet first, and although I believed they were human bones thought nothing much about it, as I found no more that day. A few days after I was digging on the other side of the stump when my mattock went through the skull. 

Horns on the Head

“When I saw what I had struck I went at it more carefully and got the skull out in pretty fair shape, though it was quite soft at first. From the high cheek bones I was certain it was the skull of an Indian, but if that was not enough the things I found with the skull would have convinced me. There were two little horns about three inches long, one lying on either side of the head, that had evidently been used for ornamentation. All of the teeth were in the jawbones and were well preserved.

“I have not finished digging out the stump, but I am certain that I will find the balance of the skeleton under the roots, for the head was lying close up against the roots and the neck bones came from between two roots that had grown around them. Then, too, the bones of the feet and lower part of the legs were dug from in under the roots of the other side of the stump.”

It’s a fascinating tale, but incomplete. The only additional information I could find is from Walla Walla’s Evening Statesman, April 16, 1904. It adds a little, but is still not the full story:

Hunt thinks that the time the Indian was buried was so remote that the Sound must have flowed very near the spot where the skeleton was found, but that through some seismic disturbance or on account of some slow natural shrinkage of the ocean, the burial spot has been left far above the high tide line. Clam shells found where the skeleton lay tend to substantiate his theory that the Indian was buried above the high-tide line.

While the exact location in Gig Harbor was not revealed. Arthur Hunt owned 20 lots in the Artena plat at that time, with 17 of them contiguous. Half the lots were on the waterfront.

Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer aerial base map.

Parts of Hunt’s upland lots were well above the high-tide line, so they fit his limited description of the grave site. But he owned multiple pieces of land on the Peninsula, allowing for the possibility of the artifacts having been found on a different one of his properties. However, the second discovery supports the idea that the grave he found was on his group of lots in Artena.

Similar circumstances, different artifacts

On Aug. 19, 1908, The News Tribune had another interesting story on Native artifacts discovered in Gig Harbor:

A sharp stone ax, [sic] polished as beautifully as expert polishers of today could do it, was found this week on George Milton Savage’s place at Gig Harbor, under a stump that was fully four and a half feet through. The ax has been turned over to Curator Gilstrap of the Ferry museum [in Tacoma].

Mr. Savage is having his place cleared. When this big stump was uprooted, fully two feet of oyster and clam shells were found beneath it, and among them was this stone ax and several arrow heads.

The ax is as sharp as the ordinary steel ax, and would make a very good tool even now. It is plainly a slab cut from the center of a stone that must have been nearly round. Apparently sharp tools were used in the cutting, for the tool-marks where the stone was cut off at one side show plainly.

The stone seems very hard. It is of a reddish color, though not as red as the pipe-stone of Minnesota, and is mottled.

In its coverage of the story one day after The News Tribune’s, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer added comments from the Ferry Museum’s Curator William H. Gilstrap:

“This stone ax,” said he, “is an important find from the fact that it carries back the date at which primitive man made his advent here to an earlier period than our people generally suppose. Many people are inclined to believe that man’s appearance in the Sound region is a comparatively recent event in the history of the races. Why, just across at Minter we have shell heaps six and a half feet deep, and on top of them growing trees from three to four feet through. Horn tools, and other instruments have been found near the bottom of those heaps.

“Other heaps, from six to seven feet through, have been found at the mouth of Chambers creek, at Dungeness and at the mouth of the Puyallup river, all showing that man made his advent here at a date very remote in the past. No one, I think, would be hardy enough to put the date at less than a thousand years ago.”

The similar settings of the artifacts found by Hunt and Savage — under the stumps of very old trees — are compelling. Even more compelling is the fact that they appear to have been found on the very same piece of land. Arthur Hunt sold all 20 of his Artena lots to George Savage in February 1908, six months before Savage made his own discovery. It was on those Artena lots that he built an impressive summer home that same year, which is the reason the land was being cleared.

While that is not absolute proof of Hunt’s discovery having been made in Artena, it seems very highly likely.

Another grave

One more Native American grave discovery in the Artena plat was reported in 1932. No details of the find were given, but the exact location was. From The Peninsula Gateway on Jan. 29:

While workmen were doing some repairing on the bulkhead about Mr. A. Uddenberg’s home this week, they discovered the skull and bones of an Indian which had been laid to rest many years ago.

Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer aerial base map.

Other Native American artifacts found locally

… are stories for another day.

Don’t you hate that?

A new question of local history

The idea for this week’s question comes from Carl Campen. As an aside to whatever topic we were discussing at the time, he told me some months ago about multiple houses in Gig Harbor that share something significant in common. He couldn’t recall the exact year when they first came to his attention, but knew it was in the early 1950s.

Last month, I happened to come across a newspaper article about those houses, which pinpointed the year as 1954. After I emailed him the clipping to confirm that it was about the same houses he had described to me, we got together and he pointed out three of them. They are circled on the map below.

Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer aerial base map.

Carl also showed me where a fourth house used to be, on the northwest corner of Stinson Avenue and Regatta Court. It was torn down a few years ago, and a new house built in its place.

There were originally seven houses in the group that shared something significant in common. I suspect I know where the other three are, and I think they’re all visible in the map above, but without being certain, I won’t speculate.

The seven all had the same owner in 1954, and they all appear to have been 768 square feet, but neither is the answer I’m looking for. They had another significant something in common.

The three houses pointed out in this column were part of a group of seven that shared something significant in common in 1954. What was it?

Hint: 1954 was not the year they were built.

Next time

The Sept. 7 column will have the answer to today’s question of local history, then move on to a new topic. Unless I can come up with something somewhat less boring, the new subject might have something to do with stamp collecting.

Actually, unless I can come up with something less boring, it will have something to do with stamp collecting. A stamp collecting segment is already in the can, waiting to be pasted into an incomplete Gig Harbor Now and Then column. And guess which column is currently incomplete?

Yes, the Sept. 7 one.

Oh, boy, stamp collecting.

Can you sense my enthusiasm?

— Greg Spadoni, August 24, 2026