Mrs. Jimmy Joe

thixil-hwut | Mrs. Jimmy Joe

January 15, 1882–February 20, 1967

Known as Mrs. Jimmy Joe, thixil-hwut Ellen Wyse (née Rice) was born January 15, 1882 at puneluxutth’1. Her father, kwalheton George Harold Rice, was from Snokwomush2 and her mother, xalunamut Mary Ann Rice (née Pielle)3, was from puneluxutth’. Her mother xalunamut, was a skilled weaver, healer, midwife, and storyteller. It was from her mother that Mrs. Jimmy Joe received her name thixil-hwut.

As a young woman, Ellen married tkwoamit James (Jimmy) Joe Wyse from Snuneymuxw.4 The couple had two weddings, one in the traditional Coast Salish style and a Catholic ceremony approximately eight months later led by Father Donckele, the principal of Kuper Island Residential School. The first wedding was attended by her family and Jimmy Joe’s relations from Snuneymuxw, with money, blankets and other gifts taken back to Snuneymuxw and distributed among the community there. At the second wedding, guests came from Snuneymuxw and all the way up Vancouver Island to Comox. There were more than four hundred people in attendance at that ceremony. According to her uncle Tommy Pielle, he and her mother siamtunaat (xalunamut) 

“Got one hundred sacks of flour, and seven hundred ducks, and we took them over to Puneluxutth’ for the wedding…. After the wedding we gave away all the flour and ducks to the Snuneymuxw people, and then everyone went over to Jimmy Joe’s big house that he had at Puneluxutth’ for a dance.”

Tommy Pielle, as quoted by Beryl Cryer in Two Houses Half-Buried in the Sand, p.87

The couple resided at Snuneymuxw. Together they had at least 5 sons and 7 daughters. In 1931, when the Canadian census was carried out, Jimmy and Ellen Joe were living on the Nanaimo Indian Reserve with their children Dick (21), Ethel (23), Anna (16), Martha (14), James (12), George (10), Maggie (9), Mabel (8), Phyllis (6), Magdaline (5) and Mary (4). Jimmy Joe was working as a farmer at the time. He died in 1939 at the age of 68, leaving Ellen a widow. She died February 20, 1967 in Nanaimo at the age of 85.

During her lifetime, Mrs. Jimmy Joe generously shared her knowledge of the Hul’q’umi’num’ language with anthropologists, linguists and other scholars. She was an important informant for Wayne Suttles in the 1960s. We are thankful for the important work that she carried out, and are grateful for the knowledge repository her sharing created.

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  1. Penelakut Island, formerly Kuper Island. ↩︎
  2. Port Angeles, Washington. ↩︎
  3.  Also spelled xalanamut and halinamut. According to writer Beryl Cryer, Mary Rice held the name xalunamut as a child (she also referred to this as her ‘singing name’ and took the name of her mother Tzea-mntenaht (siamtunaat) as an adult. Cryer, Two Houses Half-Buried in the Sand, p.55. ↩︎
  4.  James (Jimmy) Joe Wyse was the son of hun’tsow’iyus Joseph Wyse and Sugnuston (1852-1944) and tsa’tass’aya/tl’utasiye Jennie Wyse (née Peters, 1858-1942). The couple were leaders in their community and keepers of oral histories. They shared one of these oral histories concerning the Nanaimo Douglas Treaty with Beryl Cryer, a part-time journalist and lay anthropologist, in the early 20th century. ↩︎