Ike Kinswa State Park – state parks quest #38

This post was supposed to be about tiger muskie. A fierce game fish known for its sharp teeth, tiger muskie are a draw for fishers at Ike Kinswa State Park, which sits on the northern shore of Mayfield Lake. The lake is a reservoir formed by the Mayfield Dam, and the water is stocked with tiger muskie, trout, salmon, and bass. When I visited on a chilly spring day, a few boats glided along the water, fishing poles sticking up like antennas, and a few people stood on the shore, casting and reeling, casting and reeling. The posted campground map includes a “Gone Fishing” sign and a drawing of a fish. Clearly, it’s a fishing park.

But I wanted to know, who is Ike Kinswa? The park website devotes a single sentence to him, noting Kinswa was “a well-respected Cowlitz Indian who lived along the shores of the rivers’ confluence.” The park brochure expands a little: “The area was originally named Mayfield Lake State Park, but the name was changed in 1971 to honor Ike Kinswa, a member of the Cowlitz Tribe who represented his people in the 1880s.” 

As you might expect, there is more to the story. In fact, Kinswa’s story is a convoluted mash-up of territorial and tribal history, government paternalism, hydroelectric dam politics, and homesteading. Let’s start in the middle: 1948, to be exact.

Dam the Cowlitz

As Washington’s state population grew during the mid-20th century, the City of Tacoma realized it would need more electricity to serve its customers. In 1948, Tacoma City Light announced it had selected the Cowlitz River for two new hydroelectric dams. Immediately, the state Fisheries and Game departments, along with sportsmen’s groups, sued, arguing the dams would ruin game fishing. In an attempt to preempt dam construction, the legislature quickly authorized a fish sanctuary on the Cowlitz River. This litigation went through five courts before the City of Tacoma finally prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court. Dam construction started in 1955.

But litigation continued. That year, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe sued the City of Tacoma to stop the dams, arguing that traditional fishing sites and native burial sites would be flooded. The Cowlitz argued that because they had not signed a treaty with the United States government ceding their traditional lands, they still owned the land where the dams would be built and should be compensated under the 1946 Indian Claims Commission Act, enacted to help resolve longstanding tribal claims for monetary compensation. The Act did not require plaintiffs to be federally recognized, and at that point, the Cowlitz Tribe was not. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that because the tribe was not suing the federal government, the case was not a federal question. The tribe’s appeal was dismissed and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 1958.

Cowlitz land, Cowlitz people

The Cowlitz were justifiably concerned about losing important places along the Cowlitz River. Anthropological research conducted in the 1930s and 1960s by Verne Ray and published in Handbook of Cowlitz Indians (1966) paints a picture of a sophisticated, expansive society that relied on several waterways.

Stretching along the Cowlitz River from its headwaters on Mount Rainier to just above its mouth at the Columbia, along the Lewis River, and into the Willapa Hills, the Cowlitz occupied an enormous swatch of territory in southwest Washington. Unlike Puget Sound and coast tribes, however, their territory did not touch salt water. In exchange for saltwater fish and shellfish, the Cowlitz traded horses, slaves, wapato roots, camas, dried berries, pelts, mountain goat and wool dog hair (used in weaving), and baskets.

Ray writes that although the Cowlitz were expert canoeists who fished the freshwater rivers along which they lived, they were prairie-oriented, excellent hunters and equestrians who pursued deer, elk, and other game in broad meadows they maintained with cultural burning. Cowlitz Prairie, near present-day Toledo, was one important hunting ground and the spiritual heart of the Cowlitz people. Indeed, the word Cowlitz, spelled by whites in dizzying variety (Cowelitch, Ta-wa-l-litch, Coweliske, to name a few), is thought to mean “capturing the medicine spirit.” It’s a reference to the practice of young tribal members being sent to Cowlitz Prairie to seek spiritual guidance and power.

People of the Cowlitz River 

The geographic diversity of their homelands meant that four groups developed within the tribe. Two of these, the Upper Cowlitz, or Taidnapam, and Lower Cowlitz, lived in seasonal and permanent camps in the Cowlitz River basin. Taidnapam territory included lands from present-day Mossyrock to the headwaters of the Cowlitz River on Mount Rainier. Members of that group spoke a dialect of the Sahaptin language, which developed on the Columbia River plateau and is spoken by some Yakama and Klickitat peoples. The Lower Cowlitz occupied at least 30 villages from south of Mossyrock to just above the Columbia River, and spoke a Salishan dialect. The demarcation between Upper Cowlitz and Lower Cowlitz territory at Mossyrock is significant because it’s just a couple of miles from Ike Kinswa’s home.

The Lower Cowlitz controlled the Cowlitz Corridor, an important transportation route that connected the Columbia River to Puget Sound. The corridor included the lower Cowlitz River to Cowlitz Prairie, then followed the Cowlitz Trail north to Puget Sound. In the early 19th century, Cowlitz leader Scanewa held sway in the corridor, leveraging his power to forge political alliances with other tribes and with white incomers. One of Scanewa’s daughters married Simon Plamondon, a trapper with the North West Company, later the Hudson’s Bay Company. Plamondon settled on Cowlitz Prairie, helping to pave the way for the HBC in 1838 to build a large farm there to supply its outposts in the region. Catholic missionaries arrived a few years later and established the St. Francis Xavier Mission nearby. Decimated by disease, especially an 1829-1830 epidemic of “intermittent fever” (likely malaria), and seeking ways to exist with whites, some Cowlitz joined the church, which still exists today.

Isaac “Ike” Kinswa’s homestead

Isaac “Ike” Kinswa (Ike Ken Swa in some records) grew up about five miles from the eastern edge of the Cowlitz Prairie. According to archival records from the 1920s, Kinswa was born about 1835 to Taw-we-way and Wa-ha-che, and lived and worked where the Tilton River empties into the Cowlitz—the site of the current state park. Ike appears to have been a nickname for Isaac, used as a middle or surname by his descendants.

In 1880, Isaac Kinswa filed a claim for about 76 acres of land there. In 1910, Kinswa and his wife, whose name is variously recorded as Attie, Hattie, Ida, and Atele, deeded the land to their only surviving child, John Ike Kinswa, who served as chair of the Cowlitz Tribal Council from 1922 to 1934. In 1926, John Ike Kinswa and his wife, Martha or Mattie, sold about two-thirds of the land, possibly to pay property taxes. In 1944, John deeded the remainder to Mattie. By 1965, John and Mattie’s son, James, owned what was left of the original homestead, about nine acres. 

Dams and parks and land

Tacoma City Light began operating Mayfield Dam in 1963. The previous year, the City of Tacoma granted a use permit to the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission to develop a 154-acre state park on the shores of Mayfield Lake. But to do so, State Parks needed to acquire some private land in the middle of the proposed park, including James Kinswa’s nine acres.

What was to become the main road through Mayfield Lake State Park ran through a corner of Kinswa’s property. In late 1962, an internal State Parks memo warned that if the agency did not secure it, “the potential growth and desirability of the park development will be severely limited in the long-range outlook.” 

Kinswa’s wasn’t the only property needed, but he turned out to be the only landowner who proved difficult to locate. By 1965, State Parks was desperate to obtain what it called “ten acres referred to as the Indian property.” In April 1965, agency director Charles H. Odegaard pleaded with local state representative Hugh Kalich for help finding “Henry” Kinswa, whose mother, Martha, was a “patient at a rest home” in Chehalis and willing to go along with whatever her children wanted. The fact that State Parks did not even have a correct first name for James Kinswa implies the difficulty of tracking him down. The letter noted that he was a migrant farm worker with no permanent address, and that although State Parks had also contacted his siblings, they hadn’t yet found “Henry.”

The cemetery

In early May 1965, Tacoma City Light offered State Parks a gift of a “small Indian cemetery” near the proposed state park, providing “some disposition could be made of the Indian burial ground.” The State Parks memo about the proposal noted that “people interested in local history” had told them of the cemetery. 

By the end of the month, a staff memo to the agency director warned, “Tacoma City Light is attempting to unload this cemetery and a bad situation upon someone else. If there is any historical significance to the buried Indians …Tacoma City Light could very well interpret and maintain and operate an appropriate memorial.” The Cowlitz Tribe had ultimately lost its 1958 suit against the City of Tacoma, but the city had been ordered to relocate Indian remains from one cemetery and search for other remains in the area to be flooded.

In his history of the Cowlitz Tribe published in 2000, former tribal chair Roy Wilson wrote, “Although the tribe had reported numerous aboriginal burial sites in the proposed area, no member of the tribe was allowed to accompany the City’s surveyors who conveniently found no aboriginal cemeteries, thus the City was not confronted with this problem. The dams were built and their waters inundated … property of several Cowlitz Indians as well as several aboriginal cemeteries mentioned in the suit. Only one cemetery was evacuated, a Christian cemetery, and the surviving relations of Cowlitz members buried there were later billed a $10 administrative fee.”

It isn’t clear when Tacoma City Light surveyed the cemetery, or its precise location, but it seems likely that this is the cemetery referred to by Wilson and in the State Parks memo. It was known as the Tilton River Indian Cemetery. Lewis County Genealogical Society records that it is “now covered by Mayfield Lake; 31 Indians from this site were moved to the Dunn Cemetery.”

Isaac Ike Kinswa, James Kinswa’s brother and a grandson of the future park’s namesake, was one of the people who spoke at the tribe’s annual meetings in 1955 and 1957 about the impact of the dams. He focused on tribal burial grounds, noting that several were still actively used. And that brings us back to the Kinswa family, because the Tilton River Indian Cemetery was located somewhere on their land.

Finding James Kinswa

It took another two years, but in early August 1967 State Parks finally reached James Kinswa by phone and offered him $9,000 for his property. Apparently Kinswa did not respond quickly enough, because the agency sent a letter at the end of the month warning that his property would be condemned if he did not answer.

In early November 1967, James Kinswa sold his property to State Parks. It was the last piece of private property needed for park development. The sale price of $9000 is equivalent to about $70,000 today and would have been a fortune for Kinswa, whose annual income as a farm worker was probably around less than $2500 ($20,000 today) at the time.

Renaming Mayfield Lake State Park

Throughout the years of controversy over the dam and the effort to amass the land needed for the park, the planned new recreation site was referred to as Mayfield Lake State Park. Then, in autumn 1970, some sixth-graders from Mossyrock Elementary School had the notion to name the park for prominent Cowlitz artist Mary Kiona, who had died earlier that year at between 115 and 121 years old. They lobbied their local state representative, Elmer Jastad (D-Morton) to introduce a bill in the state house in December 1970. 

But one longtime area resident thought there was a more appropriate honoree. Rev. J. Melvin Core’s ancestors had homesteaded land near Ike Kinswa’s, and the families were old friends. When Core’s father came to the Pacific Northwest in 1888, the reverend wrote, he walked from Centralia to the mouth of the Tilton River and met Ike Kinswa, who rowed him across the river. “Ike’s family still held this property when the park system forced them off their land through process of law,” he wrote in a 1971 letter to the editor of the Centralia Daily Chronicle. “Where this park stands the Ike family had buried their dead for God only knows how many years. Their family graveyard was forceably moved by the City of Tacoma to what is now the Harmony [Dunn] Cemetery. …[I]f we are going to give an Indian name to the state park, then we ought to honor the family from which we forceably took not only their property but their very burial ground.”

Core held Mary Kiona in high regard, but suggested that as she was Upper Cowlitz — from the area above Mossyrock — naming the park for her made no sense. Ike Kinswa was lower Cowlitz, the park was in lower Cowlitz territory, and Ike Kinswa had lived on the land that was to become the park. Core gathered signatures and presented his petition to state representative Warren Smith (R-Chehalis), saying, “All the old-timers feel that since Ike Kinswa owned and lived on the property designated as a state park, it should bear his name.” The Lewis County Historical Society agreed, supporting the name change. In February 1971, the Centralia Daily Chronicle weighed in, opining “the ultimate choice doesn’t really matter,” although support for honoring Ike Kinswa appears to have been “achieved by those who talk the loudest.” 

The renaming bills passed the state house and senate in February and March, and Gov. Dan Evans signed the legislation on March 22, 1971, with Rev. Core and Rep. Smith looking on. It’s not known whether any members of the Kinswa family attended the signing.

Ike Kinswa State Park was officially dedicated in July 1972. Newspaper coverage doesn’t mention whether any members of the Kinswa family attended. 

After selling his land to State Parks in late 1967, James Kinswa disappeared from the written historical record until his death on the last day of 1973 at age 56. He’s buried in the Ike Cemetery, about 10 miles downstream from the state park, near his brother Isaac, his parents, and grandmother. Rev. Core delivered the eulogy.

The Kinswa homestead

That James Kinswa owned the land at all turned on the outcome of a complicated series of court and administrative rulings generations earlier. In the early 20th century, the Kinswa family almost lost their land, which could have made the outcome of the park naming saga quite different.

In 1880, Isaac Ike Kinswa filed a land claim for 76 acres at the mouth of the Tilton River. This was the land where he grew up and where he lived with his family for at least 35 years. In 1888, Kinswa made final proof on the land, demonstrating that it had been under cultivation for at least five years, but he did not pay the final fee required to obtain clear title. Two years later, the federal government issued a restricted homestead certificate under the Indian Homestead Act of 1884, which prevented Kinswa from “alienating”(selling or transferring) the land for 20 years.

In its paternalistic wisdom, the federal government each year extended the restriction on Indian homestead lands claimed under the 1884 act, thus preventing Indian homesteaders from potentially profiting from the sale of their land and effectively keeping indigenous peoples out of the lucrative real estate market.

In January 1910, Isaac and Attie Kinswa deeded the homestead to their son, John Ike Kinswa. To raise cash, the younger man took out a $350 mortgage with local farmer John L. Finstad, giving $200 to Isaac and keeping $150 for himself. But when Isaac and Attie transferred the land to John, it became part of the county tax rolls and John Kinswa now owed property taxes in addition to the mortgage payments. Isaac Ike Kinswa died in December 1910.

In August 1916, John Kinswa renewed the mortgage by taking a new, one-year loan for $463 at 8% interest with Bank of Coffman & Dobson of Centralia. He was unable to repay the loan on time, owing principal and interest totaling $537.08. The following August, Finstad filed to foreclose on the property, and the Lewis County Superior Court granted his request. The property was to be offered in a public sale in early 1919.

The feds get involved

Sometime in late 1918, the superintendent of the Cushman Indian School, E.H. Hammond, wrote the U.S. Attorney for Western Washington about the situation, asking for help with the Kinswa situation. (It’s not clear how Hammond became involved. The Cushman Indian School, part of government efforts to assimilate indigenous children into the white culture by forcing Western-style education on them, was on the Puyallup Indian Reservation in Tacoma. By opening a public school in nearby Fife that proved much more popular with native families, one of the school’s former students eventually helped force its closure in 1920.)

In early 1919, the Department of Justice held a hearing at the St. Helens Hotel in Chehalis (the building, now apartments, still stands on Market Street), to determine the rightful heirs of Isaac Kinswa’s homestead. The first step was untangling which homestead act applied.

If Kinswa had intended to file under the 1884 Indian Homestead Act, the homestead would have still been under restriction in 1910 when it was deeded to John Kinswa. Both deed and mortgage would be invalid. But if Kinswa had intended to file under the 1875 homestead act, its five-year restriction would have expired in 1895. The federal government would have no further jurisdiction in the matter, leaving Isaac Kinswa’s heirs vulnerable to legal action.

Government paternalism

In 1919, the Department of Justice determined John and Attie Kinswa were the rightful heirs to the property, and that Isaac Kinswa had filed under the 1884 act. Although that meant the deed and subsequent mortgage were invalid, Lewis County had foreclosed on the land for unpaid taxes. The Department recommended filing suit to “remove the cloud upon the title [of] said lands, and restrain the officials of Lewis County from collecting any further taxes against said lands.” Finstad, who held the mortgage, could separately file suit to recover his investment. In the meantime, John Kinswa could pay Finstad the $350 owed plus interest “as soon as spring comes and his cattle get fat.” In February 1920, John Kinswa repaid Finstad $596.35 and reclaimed his land.

The Department of the Interior, through the U.S. Indian Field Service, also got involved, perhaps because local officials felt the land patent issue was not resolved to their satisfaction. Launching its own investigation, the Interior Department determined in 1924 that Isaac Kinswa had filed under the 1875 Homestead Act despite not paying the final fee to get clear title. In fact, since the federal government had not asked for the fee, it was unreasonable to expect Isaac Kinswa, who did not speak English and could not read or write, to offer to pay it. The fact that he didn’t pay the fee, in other words, didn’t mean he filed under the more restrictive 1884 act. The Secretary of the Interior agreed, and the order was changed to reflect the Kinswa homestead to have been filed under the earlier act. 

By that time, however, the mortgage issued with Finstad had been resolved. While Kinswa now had to pay property taxes, he was able to hold on to the homestead, gradually selling pieces until State Parks purchased the last nine-acre parcel in 1967. That’s pretty much the end of the park creation story.

Ike Kinswa State Park today

Typically for the times, State Parks struggled to get funding for the new park, eventually opening a campground and developing a boat launch and swimming beach. Today, the park covers about 450 acres on both sides of the Tilton River and a point of land that juts into Mayfield Lake. To access the campground and cabins on the point, you have to drive through what was once Isaac Kinswa’s land. But you’d never know it, because there is no interpretation. There could be several reasons for that omission: lack of funds and/or staff, Cowlitz Tribe preference, lack of knowledge, or indifference. It would be nice, I think, to have a sign that provides a little context about the park’s name.

On the day we visited, the park was fairly deserted. A hardy group picnicked near the swimming beach despite the chilly weather. A few boats and some Canada geese drifted on the lake. Until a giant mud puddle forced us to turn around, Miz Fitz, Dewey the adventure dog, and I hiked the trail parallel to the Tilton River, spotting twinflower, bleeding heart, wild ginger, and wood violet. On the south side of the road, we walked along the lakeshore and admired the campground’s forested setting. 

Near the cabins, a couple of men fished, talked, and lounged on the shore. Cabins 1, 2, and 3 have unobstructed lake views, and most are named to evoke the park’s chill vibe: Serenity, Relax Inn, Whispering Firs, Pinecone Lodge, Ducking Inn, and Backwoods. The last two cabins, though, are named Tilton and Cowlitz, probably for the rivers that form the park’s water border. But I like to think they’re named to honor Ike Kinswa’s ancestral home on the waterways that remain integral to the culture and history of the Cowlitz people.

Fast facts about Ike Kinswa State Park

• 421-acre camping park, open year-round
• 46,000’ of freshwater shoreline
• Discover Pass required, $10 daily or, for a very reasonable $30, purchase an annual pass
• Nine cabins, 31 standard campsites, 41 full hookup sites, 31 partial hookup campsites, max site length 60’, reservable online or by calling 888-CAMPOUT (one campground loop closed in winter)
• 4 restrooms, 10 showers
• picnic tables, playground, horseshoe pits
• hiking, horseshoe pits, mountain biking
• rental facilities
• boating, fishing (license required), swimming, waterskiing, sailboarding
• 40’ dock, two boat launches
• park brochure
• park map

Land acknowledgment

I’ve wanted to add land acknowledgments to my posts for quite a while, and this post, about how land long inhabited by Cowlitz people became a state park, seems the ideal place to start. Land acknowledgments remind us that the places we live, work, and travel have for millennia done the same for others. Indigenous peoples’ relationship to the land long predates and is fundamentally different from our own. Acknowledging that, I hope, helps ensure that relationship, and those histories, will endure. I rely on research and the website native-land.ca to identify the indigenous peoples who historically and continually dwell on the lands now occupied by state parks. Please contact me to offer your comments and insights. 

Ike Kinswa State Park sits on the unceded and traditional lands of the Cowlitz people, who have lived, traded, and traveled here since time immemorial. The Cowlitz Indian Tribe achieved federal recognition in 2000 after nearly 90 years of effort.