Henry Cayou

Henry Cayou on Lopez Island

Quick Facts

Significance:

Civic Leader and Businessman

Place of Birth:

Orcas Island, WA

Date of Birth:

1869

Place of Death:

Bellingham, WA

Date of Death:

March 31, 1959

Place of Burial:

Orcas Island

Cemetery Name:

Woodlawn Cemetery

 Henry Cayou was a man with deep links to our history. Cayou was born to a Coast Salish mother and French migrant father who worked as a hunter for the Hudson's Bay Company on Orcas Island during the Joint Occupation, when Orcas Island and the rest of our archipelago was claimed by both the American and British empires. Cayou traced his ancestry to the Michell Bay Band whose ancestral homeland is on San Juan Island.

Henry Cayou was an enterprising businessman with fishing operations at False Bay, within a few miles of our American Camp Unit, from 1912 until 1930. Fisherman Bill Jakle remembered that due to his clever choice of location Cayou’s harvest was “all [high quality] Fraser River king salmon. He used to get tons of them in that trap. He was a rich Indian.” Jakle said Cayou’s fish harvest was so good “he could sell it to anybody that would want it.” Cayou’s business interests straddled our archipelago and employed numerous islands, including a salmon cannery near his Deer Harbor home on Orcas Island where he also had an orchard, fish traps on Lopez Island, and a boat building business on Decatur Island.

In addition to being a successful businessman, he was one of the first Indigenous elected officials in Washington state. The Orcasonian notes that about half of Orcas Island residents at that time were, like Cayou, people who had European and Native parents. He served as the San Juan Island County commissioner for 29 years and spent even more time on the local Board of Education. Cayou also played a pivotal role in bringing electricity to the San Juan Islands as the first president of Orcas Power and Light Cooperative.