Leona Eddy, 79, Lifetime Elder For Snoqualmie Tribe

Leona Eddy, the honorary lifetime Snoqualmie elder who for a half-century was the genealogist and wisdom keeper for her people, died yesterday (Sept. 5) of heart failure after a period of ill health. She was 79.

With the respected "Grandma," as she was known, goes a chunk of the heart of the Snoqualmie Tribe.

But the memories, songs, dances, beading and language she taught live in her sisters, nieces and nephews.

So does the branch of the Indian Shaker Church she helped found in her Sammamish Plateau home.

And so does the sharply honest wisdom she dispensed, relatives say.

"She taught, by example, `quiet strength, ingenuity and endurance that goes beyond time,' " said Terry Mullen, wife of Mrs. Eddy's nephew Ray Mullen, choosing words from an old newspaper clipping.

"She was always there to talk to. She told us the truth and we loved her dearly for it. If something was wrong, she'd tell you. She said what she believed, and if you didn't agree, there was probably something you should look at in your own life."

She sometimes hid her wisdom in blunt humor: Regarding one wrongdoer, she said, "They should just whip him, and whip him good!"

She liked to joke that if you were mad at a person of another culture, you should "talk to them in Indian" so they can't understand you.

"She had a wonderful sense of humor and kept us on our toes," said her sister Mary Anne Hinzman of Duvall.

Mrs. Eddy was born in Wapato, Yakima County, to parents of Snoqualmie, Yakima, Duwamish and Irish descent. After her father died and her mother remarried, she lived in Redmond and the Tolt Valley, where she did farm work and helped rear her younger sisters.

She never forgot the backbreaking labor of digging her fingers into river-bottom soil for bulky tubers.

"There was such huge big potatoes raised up and down the valley there," she once told a reporter.

She worked beside her step-grandfather, Jerry Kanim, the last lineal chief of the Snoqualmie Tribe.

During the Depression, she was sent to St. George's Indian School in Tacoma. It was the era when Native-American pupils were often punished for speaking their native tongue or observing customs, Hinzman said.

Mrs. Eddy descended from the Snoqualmie healer and midwife Mary Louie, who often walked across the Cascade Mountains to visit relatives and pick hops in the Yakima Valley.

During World War II, Mrs. Eddy worked at Boeing as "Rosie the Riveter," as she said. She retired from Boeing after 32 years.

In the 1940s, a Snoqualmie relative and tribal leader singled her out to keep birth-and-death records for their people. She was named Honorary Lifetime Elder, authorized to give advice and keep traditions.

She joined the Indian Shaker Church in the early 1970s.

"She was our oldest sister and the head of our family," Hinzman said. "She had been on the Tribal Council 55 years, was head of enrollment for 55 years, and fought for our recognition all her life. She has seen a lot of her dreams come true."

The Snoqualmie Tribe, excluded as a federally recognized tribe in 1953 mainly because it lacked the reservation-land promised in the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855, was officially re-recognized in 1997.

Mrs. Eddy's other survivors include her sisters Arlene Mullen of Issaquah, Norma Eddy of Olympia, Kathy Barker of Monroe, and Vione Applebee of Everett; her brother, Joe "Bud" Forgue of Newport, Ore.; and a nephew she reared, Joey Forgue of Redmond. Her husband of 36 years, Walt Eddy, died before she did.

Services are at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the Indian Shaker Church on the Muckleshoot Reservation near Auburn. Another service is at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at Green's Funeral Home, 16551 N.E. 79th St., Redmond.

Remembrances may go to Group Health Hospice/Kelsey Creek, 2210 132nd Ave. S.E., Bellevue, WA 98005.

Carole Beers' phone message number is 206-464-2391. Her e-mail address is: cbeers@seattletimes.com