The Violence Done By Perpetuating The Name Mount Rainier / by S.H. McKownBarrett-Redfield Press, Tacoma, Wash., 2nd ed., 1924.

1. It does violence to the sentiment of respect for the Indian race. This sentiment exists; it has held wide sway, in attestation of which is the very great use of Indian names in our geographic nomenclature. About one-half of the counties of this State, Washington, bear Indian names. Considerably more then half of the States of the Union bear Indian names. The original thirteen colonies almost all bear the Colonial names given them by charter from the English king, or the proportion of States with Indian names would be still greater. The great bulk of our rivers across the entire continent from the Appotomattox and the Shenandoah to the Ohio and the Wenatchee bear Indian names.

The same as to our mountains, as witness the Adirondacks, the Alleghanies, the Ozarks and the Massanutta; also our waterfalls, as Minnehaha, Niagara and Yosemite.

Among these names are some that have impressed themselves upon the songs of our land, now grown old, many of them, e.g.:
"Way down upon the Suwanee River"
"Oh, sweet is the vale where the Mohawk gently glides."
"Where flow the waters of the blue Juniatta."

How would you go about sticking the rough, angular, clumsy name of Regnier into such places as these old familiar names have filed? It would be sacrliege. Yet this is what has been done just outside the gates of Tacoma in the name of the mountain here. The white man paid the red man not a dollar for his hunting grounds or his corn patches or his fishing haunts. "The white man came a timid suppliant few and feeble. He asked to lay down on the red man's bear skin and to warm himself at the red man's fire, and to have a little piece of ground on which to raise corn for his women and children. And now he has grown strong and mighty and bold and spreads out his parchment over the whole and says, 'It is mine'"!--(Edward Everett). If, now, we continue to more sonorous and oftentimes sweet sounding names that they left us, it will be but paying a late and scant, but just tribute due their vanishing race.

2. The perpetuating of the name Rainier does violence to the sentiment of American patriotism. No controversy exists as to the identity of the man who bore this name nor as to his historical relation to America. "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people," this language found in the Declaration of Independence used against George III, being only figuratively true of King George, is literally true of the man whose name has been saddled upon Mount Tacoma. The meagre history and tradition of him as, at that time, an obscure man, unite to tell us this.

The commander of a ship that cruised along our Atlantic board, his part was to descend at will on defenceless communities and rob them of all of their available provisions to be carried off to British camps, which, having done, he would lay hold of their leading citizens and consign them to the hold of his ship, in which and in like quarters on regular prison ships to which he transferred them, great numbers of them sickened and died from harsh treatment and exposure, and their bodies would be heaved over the side of the ship as so much common garbage. Authentic history with tradition abundantly testifies to this.

Thus this man Regnier did all in his power to destroy us when as an infant nation we were struggling for existence.

Suppose one of your children, on visiting this mountain with you should, after he had gazed upon it, say to you, "Father, who was Mr. Rainier, and what great things did he do for us that this great mountain should be called by his name?" And how would you get out of the hole into which your little child's innocent question would put you?

Someone writing recently in a Tacoma paper in defence of the name Regnier, after saying that it was attacked because he was an Englishman, demands to know what we would have left if we took away all that is English. Why, we would have Bunker Hill, and Lexington, and Saratoga, and Yorktown. We would have John Hancock, and Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams. We would have the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States, and this broad land made safe for Democracy now for more than a hundred years, to which the eyes of the weary and heavy laden the earth around have turned for hope.

Those who talk of its being an act of international discourtesy to take this name away from the Mountain, we challenge to go over to the British isles and find a single lake or mountain or river or city or town or postoffice or crossroads named after John Hancock, or Patrick Henry, or George Washington? They don't do things that way over there, and why should we be doing it here? On what principle of right or reason can American people be called upon to keep fresh and green in their memories and the memories of their children the career of such a man by giving his name to the most celebrated object of its kind within their borders, Mount Tacoma, standing among the mountains of America where Niagara stands among her waterfalls, each without a peer? To perpetuate this man's name on this majestic mountain is to do violence to the sentiment of patriotism supposed to exist in every American heart. Those who clamor for it today would have been found with the Tories in our Revolutionary War, and as soldiers would have been classed with Benedict Arnold-- no matter whether it was a Merriam from Washington, or a Squires or Burke from Seattle, or any Reinier-advocating man or club anywhere.

3. It does violence to the wishes and rights of the people of the sovereign State of Washington, formally and forcibly expressed. Here is a bit of history from the pen of Samuel W. Wall, of date April 26th, 1920: " The chief geographer of the United States, Robert B. Marshall, when visiting the Mountain, four years ago, in an authorized interview, declared the name Rainier as attached to the mountain to be an insult alike to our intelligence and our patriotism; that he believed the board would change it if steps were taken by the people of the state to give him warrant. A letter was sent to the board for confirmation of this view with an inquiry as to what action on our part would be deemed necessary. In answer the Secretary, Charles S. Sloane, said that if the State Legislature would pass an act indicating its desire it would likely serve with the board as warrant to make the change. In May, 1917, we went down to Washington with a memorial making the request that the name Rainier be taken down and another name substituted. It had been passed by a two-to-one vote of the legislature. Its passage was supported by literally every newspaper in the State, save one, and all the great newspapers of Portland. The Post-Intelligencer had advocated it most generously. Many of the great newspapers of the East urged it. Scores of eminent men and women wrote and some of them wired the board to listen to the plea. Theodore Roosevelt in a letter at that time said, 'I heartily wish you success in your effort to have Mount Tacoma taken as the official name of the mountain. It has always struck me as a piece of genuine childishness to follow any other course.' Now, the terms of the memorial called for the selection of the substitute after an open hearing had been given where the merits of the names proposed should be discussed. The only name offered at that hearing for substitution was the Indian name Tacoma. In face of all the facts here set forth the board 'refused to reconsider its previous action.' The reason of record for not granting the State's appeal was that the name Rainier had stood so long and was so generally accpeted by cartographers that it was impractical to change it!!"

That bit of history tells the tale of the violence done to the wishes of the sovereign State of Washington, formally and respectfully, expressed.

The rehearsing of the three foregoing items of violence done by perpetuating the name Rainier will suffice to compel the question: who has done this thing? Where is the guilty agent? Some have laid it at the door of the board in Washington, and doubtless some measure of this is true. But, supposedly, that board, like all boards, act only as they are acted upon. There has been a power behind it. By what may be truthfully called common consent the blame for this state of things is lodged in a neighboring town in distant view of the mountain-- Seattle.

Here is another bit of history: "Some thirty years ago a citizen of Seattle, then a United States Senator, Watson C. Squires by name, sworn to faithfully serve the people of the entire state, betrayed his trust, violated his oath and committed a grevious wrong against the people of the entire state when he secretly went before the Board of Geographic Names in Washington, D.C., and persuaded that body to officially fasten upon the greatest mountain in America the name of an obscure British admiral whose only connection with our history, as the late President Roosevelt has put it, 'is that he fought against us when we were an infant nation and tried to destroy us.' No notice was given the people of this State of such an intended action on the part of our representative, no opportunity for any protest of the submission of any evidence of the wishes of the people or the injustice of such a course or proceedings. The very fact of the great secrecy which attended the transaction is sufficient proof that had proper publicity been given the matter at that time no such action as this would ever have been taken."

This bit of history appeared in the News Tribune of Tacoma, after having been sent to the Post-Intelligencer of Seattle, over the names of the officials of the Mt. Tacoma Club.

4. It does violence to the Moral Sense of the Nation Expressed in the Triumph of the Temperance Cause. Out on the uplands of this State two objects stood for years side by side, one of those in reality, the other in imagination, one was vast in its physical dimensions but far reaching in its beneficient influence, the other diminutive in its dimensions but far reaching and wide spreading in its damaging effects, the one a massive mountain pile built by the great Architect of the universe, has stood for ages enwrapped in its mantle of spotless white, changing its vesture at every revolution of our planet in its orbit, its melting snows furnishing purest water, which, by brook and rivulet and river on their way to the sea, through fields and forests and farms and gardens, past hamlets and towns and cities, ministers life and health and happiness to man and beast.

The other farther reaching and wider speading in its influence, not limited to the force of gravity that carries the snow water to the sea, went forth blazing its way by broken fortunes, broken families, broken lives, broken hearts, on and on past almshouses, hospitals, asylums, jails and penitentiaries, down and down through drunkards' graves unnumbered into a drunkards' hell unending; these two objects, each dealing out its influence after its kind, each having the same name, stood for years in the public view-- the one the Nation's grandest Mountain, the other a certain not far away, community's Keg of Beer-- stood they together there until the righteous wrath of the better people of the commonwealth aroused itself and hurled beyond her borders that Keg of Beer, name and all-- that name common to both object spelling Rainier. Unhappily, it still clings to the Mountain.

"Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds and hears Him in the wind."

No wonder that when on his hunting trips he found himself at its base, and through some opening in the dense canopy of evergreen on the lofty firs above him got a near view of it, should, as he stood awe-stricken in its presence, acclaim it "Tacoma! Tacoma!" "The Mountain That Is God! The Mountain That Is God!" and should refuse to climb it;-- no wonder that when, as late even as 1870, two adventurous travelers led by Sluskin, the long time Indian Guide of the Mountain, were suddenly halted by his refusing to go a step further into the ascent, declaring that all above that spot was the possession of a Great Spirit who, at its top, presided over the Mountain, and that never a mortal who ventured to the top had ever returned --they (Stevens and Van Trump), venturing on unguided, reached the top and staying all night there, the first men ever known to have done so, and returning, found their faithful guide where they had parted from him the day before, who was so frightened at their reappearance, thinking that they were the disembodied spirits of the destroyed men, that he would have fled from them had they not reassured him by their voices that they were still the very men he had been guiding.

Now, all this is injected here to show the impression that this majestic mountain pile, lifted by the great creator in the midst of their hunting grounds, made upon the minds of these simple children of nature. But today cultured and far-traveled people, both from foreign lands and our own, by thousands and tens of thousands as they stand in its presence and survey its immense dimensions and feel its majesty, pronounce it the most awe-inspiring object of its class they have ever looked upon in any land. But now, what is the name by which these people will carry away the memory of this Monarch among American Mountains and tell of its grandeur? Men love to perpetuate the characters and achievements of the great and good by applying their names to prominent admired objects in nature, thus the names of Washington and Lincoln are found applied through all our coasts; and we say, "Well and good." But when we come to this great Mountain here, whose name and achievements do we find it perpetuating? A commonplace British sailor in a little office, promoted later for doing us all the damage in his power in the critical hours of our infant struggle for existence; coupled with this the name perpetuates a soul and body destroying product once brewed in a neighboring community and known as Rainier Beer, which by the American has been swept from the face of the earth in our land by the 18th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. The universal admission in this home region of the Mountain is that this malodorous name would have been dropped years ago but for the influence of this brand of beer joined with other underworld influences of the community in which it was manufactured. Unchallenged, tradition has it that a whole car of beer and finer intoxicants rolled in connected with the scandalous midnight proceedings by authorities in Washington thirty years ago, fastening the name Rainier upon the Mountain thereby prostituting this noble mountain to be an advertising agency of a brand of intoxicating liquor. Such are the two things whose memory is perpetuated in this insulting name upon America's Grandest Mountain,-- a British marauder's atrocities and a brand of lager beer? A shame-- a burning shame is this to the lofty toned America of 1917 and 1918! A lasting insult to the men of 1776 who fought our battles and won our freedom for us.

The writer is not a swearing man, if he were he would lift aloft the Henry Waterson war cry in the late Hohenzollern Strife and, paraphrasing it, devoutly cry, "To hell with the name Rainier from Mount Tacoma."