Since election day, the president has issued a vast and horrible horde of executive orders. Most have been short-sighted and narrow-minded. Many have been racist, mean-spirited, and vindictive. Others have been perplexing and one or two can be classified as mainly the gestures of a megalomaniac. I would like to comment on one of the latter ones, in part because it has a Seattle connection.
In 1886, William Andrews Dickey arrived in Seattle. It was the home of his wife’s parents, Dillis and Sarah Ward. Dickey was a chess prodigy and star pitcher for the Seattle Reds and supposedly one of the first baseball players in Seattle to throw a curve ball. Around 1893, he moved to Denny Hill and lived at its high point, 4th and Blanchard, with his wife and her parents. Formerly wealthy but now not, Mr. Ward nicknamed Denny Hill “Poverty Row.”
Ten years after arriving in Seattle, Dickey traveled to Alaska, attracted by recent discoveries of placer gold around the mouth of the Sushitna River at Cook’s Inlet. His plan was to head upriver and find the source for the gold. (“Luckily,” he wrote, “in June, the days are so long that it is never too dark to see to kill mosquitoes.”) When the weather finally cleared two weeks into the trip, he sighted a great mountain. “All the Indians of Cooks Inlet call it “Bulshoe” Mountain, which is their word for anything very large.” Actually, Bulshoe is the Russian word for big, as in the Bolshoi Ballet.
To the Indigenous people of the region, the mountain was, and still is, Denali. The name came from "deenaalee," a word from Denaakk'e or Koyukon Athabaskan, the Indigenous language of the Alaskan interior. According to an article in ICTnews, deenaalee means "the long one," though some people also refer to the mountain as either the big one or the great one.
After returning from Alaska, Dickey wrote an article, which appeared in the January 24, 1897, New York Sun. Noting “the total absence of the great Alaska range…on the Government charts of Alaska,” he appears to have decided that it was his obligation to bestow a new name on deenaalee. He chose to honor President William McKinley because he had first heard the news of McKinley’s nomination while in the wilderness. (Washington state voted for his opponent.) Dickey estimated the mountain to be over 20,000 feet high, “no doubt…the highest in North America.”
In 1975, Alaska’s State Board on Geographic Names attempted to change the name back to the Indigenous name. Starting the pathetic tradition of being someone who felt he had the right to abuse his power despite having no regard for the Indigenous people and no relationship to the mountain, Ohio Congressman Ralph Regula blocked the renaming…for 34 years. Not until six years after Regula’s retirement was President Obama’s Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell (a Seattleite) able to have the mountain renamed Denali, in 2015. Most of Ohio’s House Representatives thought the return to Denali was a travesty and a miscarriage of presidential power. Regula compared Obama to a dictator.
I find it hard not to consider the post-1975 history and the recent re-renaming to be the deplorable moves of arrogant bullies. These elected officials seem to think that their office confers some sort of power to dictate thoughtless and spiteful decisions. It doesn’t. Their actions illustrate their lack of consideration, sympathy, and empathy for others who are different from them. By the way, the act to change the name is known as “Restoring names that honor American greatness.” True greatness understands that what made this country great is compassion, diversity, and respect for others, not pathetic displays of pettiness.
Consider in contrast how the Washington Board of Natural Resources recently renamed two peaks in the Glacial Peak Wilderness. Crook Peak is now Goat Mountain and McCall Peak is now Huckleberry Mountain. Both of the new names are based on Indigenous names and replace the names of Lt. George Crook and Lt. James McCall, who were involved in an 1858 massacre of innocent Wenatachi Tribal members.
The president’s plans to change the names of Denali (and the Gulf of Mexico) pale in comparison to what is happening with immigrants and their families, to people of color, and to the LGBTQ+ communities, as well as what will happen to the environment. But these name changes are illustrative of how this presidency operates and how they lead to capitulations. (Sadly for the sake of journalistic integrity, the Associated Press immediately stated that it “will use the official name change to Mount McKinley.”) Aren’t there far more important issues to address and far better ways to make this a great country?
Paying too much attention to the news, I have been thinking about language and animals, in particular the metaphors we use. I would like to propose a few substitutes. It seems to me that whatever animal we hold in contempt, our own behavior is far worse than anything that animal has done or could do.
Toady - Really no better choice than going with Bezos as representing someone who capitulates in the hope of gaining favors. “The AP bezosed when it decided to go with Mount McKinley.'“
Weasel - How about Zucker (which seems better than Zuckerberg) for someone who misleads or shiftily manipulates.
Scum - Goetz, duh, with no disrespect for the amoeba that comprise scum.
Jackal - Hegseth seems appropriate for someone behaving in an aggressive or predatory way, as the OED puts it.
Please suggest your own.
February 19, 2025 – Elliott Bay Bookstore – 7pm – Wow! It’s the book launch for the new, exciting 2nd Edition of Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City. I will be in conversation with the splendid Taha Ebrahimi, author of Street Trees of Seattle: An Illustrated Walking Guide. Sign up here.
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