The Shuttleworths of Fort Colville

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Frontier Washington was full of surprising and unexpected character, but perhaps none more so than Henry Shuttleworth.

Shuttleworth was born in Bengal, India around 1837, the son of a colonial indigo farmer. While his youth is largely unknown, as a young man Shuttleworth received some form of education. He shows up in the Washington Territory in the 1850s, working as a clerk for the Hudsons Bay Company.

While in the territory during the 1850s, Shuttleworth's position as a clerk in the Hudson Bay Company was a respectable one, and while stationed at Fort Colville he married Isabella, a Native American woman from a local tribe.

Shuttleworth and Isabella had several children together before moving to western Canada. In 1870 a census taker recorded the family as Henry and Isabella, sons George and Henry, and daughter Mariah. The eldest son George later married a chief’s daughter before moving to Okanagan where he worked as a rancher for years and taught local citizens Interior Salish. George Shuttleworth would live to be a hundred. Another Shuttleworth son, Harry, would join George in Canada’s rodeo competitions in the early 20th century.

While much is not known of Henry Shuttleworth’s life in eastern Washington, the few glimpses gained from early records show the vast global connection many immigrants brought to Spokane's early settlement population and the various paths in life they took once there.