Pacific County WA Archives Biographies.....Knowles, Joe August 13, 1869 - 
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Ila Wakley iwakley@msn.com February 15, 2011, 1:51 pm

Source: History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. III, Published 1928, Pages 956 - 960
Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company

     JOE KNOWLES.  In the entire Columbia River valley there probably resides 
no man who is more closely in touch with the out-of-doors than Joe Knowles, 
whose comfortable cottage home is located near Seaview, Washington, where he 
spends his days in communion with nature and in depicting on canvas the 
beauties of the scenes by which he is surrounded. "The Nature Man," as he is 
frequently called, has seen much of the world, both by land and by sea, takes 
a sound and philosophical view of life, and all who know him hold him in the 
highest esteem for his ability as an artist and his sterling personal 
qualities. Fred Lockley has at various times printed in the Portland Daily 
Journal interesting articles, written by him after interviews with Mr. 
Knowles, as follows:

     "While walking from Ilwaco to Long Beach recently I ran across a most 
interesting character. After a walk of a mile or more through the woods from 
Ilwaco you come out near 'The Rocks,' on the shore of the Pacific. A short 
walk along the beach brings you to a stream. A hundred yards back from the 
curling surf and just above the stream, on a rounded knoll, perches a neat 
little cottage. As I passed this cottage I noticed a roughly dressed man in 
the back yard working near a line on which some split salmon were hung out to 
dry. Crossing the stream on an improvised bridge of driftwood, I stopped to 
pass the time of day with him. Pointing to the salmon, I asked, 'Do you catch 
them hereabout?' He shook his head and said, 'No; the fishermen are not 
allowed to sell salmon weighing less than twelve pounds, so when they happen 
to find a few in their nets weighing less than that they give them to me and I 
smoke them. I have a few cod and a lot of salmon I am drying. As you see, I 
dip them in that tub of brine, then hang them up to drain, and later I smoke 
them. My wife is filling all her fruit jars with salmon. It helps keep down 
the H. C. L. Canned salmon, kippered salmon and smoked salmon come in handy to 
vary the monotony of crabs, clams and fresh fish.'

     "'What am I doing? Come into this woodshed and I will show you. I have 
converted it into a studio. I have traveled pretty well all over the world, 
but nowhere have I seen more gorgeous sunsets than are to be seen on North 
Beach.' We entered the woodshed and on an easel near the window was a large 
canvas. Pointing to it, he said, 'There is a fanciful sketch which I have just 
completed. The central figure is a girl seventeen or eighteen years old. She 
has just come from the ocean, as you can see by the gleam of the water on her 
bare flesh. She has caught up that wreath of sea moss and, with head thrown 
back and body poised, she is rejoicing on being alive. I think I shall call 
it "Life's Springtime" or "The Joy of Life," or some such title, to show her 
abounding vitality and joyousness. Yes, with the woods as a background, the 
sea in the foreground, with the gleaming, wave kissed sand and that sky 
effect, it does make a rather effective setting for the central figure, the 
nude figure of the young girl.

     "'How do I get my sky effects? I have worked that out since I have lived 
here near Seaview. Time and again I have taken my easel out by the edge of the 
water, facing the sunset, and, with colors mixed, I have tried to catch the 
wonderful merging tints of the sunset, but, like an opal, they change even as 
you look. Sunset colors are as evanescent as the colors that come and go on a 
soap bubble. At last I hit on the expedient of catching them by words, not in 
color. Here are my notes on twenty or more recent sunsets. See; with my pencil 
I draw a quick sketch and jot down the positions of the colors. Here in the 
foreground the word "umber" stands for the wet sand; the next are shades of 
green to represent the sea; then come the pearl gray, silver, salmon, orange 
and on up to carmine of the evening sky. Come on into the house and I will 
show you a lot of my recent sketches.'

     "We went on up the winding path to his house, and across the threshold I 
stepped into another world. The walls were decorated with Indian trappings, 
furs, sketches, paintings, weapons and the spoil of many a voyage to many 
lands. We sat down on chairs covered with furs and he showed me a book of 
cover designs painted by himself and used by various magazines. He showed me 
dozens of paintings of Indians, of landscapes, wild animals in their native 
haunts.

     "'Art is a stern and jealous mistress,' said my host. 'I had been a guide 
in the Maine woods, a sailor, a logger, a roust-about, a gob in the United 
States navy, and finally I determined to break into art. It was a heart-
breaking job. I starved and struggled till I landed a job on the Boston Post. 
At last things came my way, and I did page drawings for the Sunday magazine 
section and drew the pictures and wrote the text for wild animal life 
pictures. I worked up to a salary of one hundred and fifty dollars a week and 
was offered a position as head of the art department, but the wild called me. 
I could hear the wind in the trees. I could smell the trout and bacon frying 
under the night sky. I could hear the splash of trout jumping in the deep 
pools and the call of the moose on the edge of the lake in rutting time. So I 
resigned my job and went back to nature, where I wouldn't have to call someone 
else boss and punch the time clock and wear out my heels and soul on the city 
pavement. And here I am, and here I have been, beside the sea, near the 
Columbia's mouth, for the past three years.

     "'My name? Oh, you have heard of me. You have probably seen me, for I 
have toured the whole country on the big circuits. My name is Joe Knowles, the 
Nature Man.' "

                              * * *

     "Joe Knowles, the nature man, lives near Seaview, on North Beach. I 
presume he is called the nature man because he regards nature as his friend 
and protector, in place of being afraid of nature, as are most men. When a man 
nowadays who is out in the woods discovers that he doesn't know where his camp 
is he is apt to become panic stricken. If he happens to stay away from his 
camp overnight his companions organize a search party to find the 'lost' man. 
The papers each summer give advice on what to do if you are lost while on a 
camping trip. We have become artificial by living within walls and depending 
upon steam heat. When we find ourselves 'lost' in the woods, so accustomed are 
we to gas or electric stoves, to electric lights and street cars, and to signs 
on street corners, that we are well-nigh helpless. Our woodcraft instincts 
have atrophied through lack of use. Men lost in the mountains in winter, 
finding their matches wet, will lie down and freeze, when a savage would 
skirmish around and discover some dry wood under the snow and by friction soon 
have a camp fire. The white man will starve in the woods, while the savage 
will live on the fat of the land, trapping squirrels and rabbits, catching 
fish and finding edible roots and nuts.

     "Joe Knowles was born white, but he is a throwback to the old cave days. 
He loves nature, and nature responds to his nature worship by caring for and 
sustaining him when he forsakes the haunts of man. As we sat talking in Joe 
Knowles' cabin overlooking the sea, I said, 'When you leave civilization 
behind and strike out into the primeval wilderness without a stitch of 
clothing on you, without a weapon or any man-made thing, how do you live? What 
do you do, first of all?' 'People have made a lot of mystery about it, when 
there is no mystery at all,' he answered. 'Living the simple life, living next 
to nature — is the natural life. You don't have to hurry or worry about rent 
or the cost of fuel. The high cost of living problem has vanished with the 
last signs of what we term civilization, but which in reality is a refined 
cruelty and a competitive cut-throat game. What do I do first? Get something 
to eat. I size up the country to see where there is a mountain stream. Here in 
the northwest there are so many mountain-born streams that it is always easy 
to find one. I watch the riffles to see if there are trout in the stream, and 
it is a rare stream in the west that is not a trout stream. I find willows, 
or, if I cannot find willows, I strip bark from any small growth and weave a 
net. I use the lining bark of the cedar and with a fir bough make a hoop to 
which I fasten my net. I find a shallow hole at the foot of a riffle, and 
there I sink my net, with a stone in the center to hold the net down and a bit 
of bark or wood attached to the hoop to make the top float. I fix up a gateway 
out of stones — a sort of rock inlet or sluice — leading to my fish trap. Then 
I walk up stream on the bank for a few hundred yards and wade down the middle 
of the stream, splashing the water vigorously. The trout are frightened and 
swim down stream, and of the score or so of trout that swim through my rock 
inlet several will get into my trap. I take them out and replace the trap, and 
during the night I am apt to get several more. If I haven't time to rig up a 
fish trap I go upstream until I find an overhanging bank and I wait there 
until a fish comes under the bank. The fish will lie there, headed upstream. I 
put my arm in the water back of him and, as quietly as a shadow, I advance my 
hand till I can stroke the sides of the trout. If you are gentle and do not 
get in a hurry the trout will let you stroke its sides and belly. Gradually 
you work forward till you insert your finger and thumb in his gills; then a 
quick clutch, and you can throw it out upon the bank. Poachers in England and 
Scotland call this the art of tickling a trout, and this way of catching trout 
and landlocked salmon has been in vogue for untold centuries in the old 
country.

     "'How do I make a fire? That's dead easy. There are three ways. I will 
show you the quickest and the simplest. This is the plan used by the Indians 
of the northwest.' Taking a crooked stick about two feet long, Joe fastened a 
heavy bit of cord loosely to both ends so that it looked like a bow with a 
loose string. Picking up a stick as thick as his finger, he looped the string 
once around it. Then he pressed a rock on the upper end of the small stick and 
pressed the lower end against a bit of dry driftwood he picked up on the 
beach. He began sawing the bow back and forth vigorously, making the small 
stick revolve rapidly. In a few seconds I smelled scorched wood. A moment 
later a tiny wisp of yellow smoke came from the pile of fragments beside the 
hole the revolving stick had made in the top of the bit of driftwood. Gently 
blowing on the glowing embers caused by the friction of the revolving stick, a 
tiny blaze appeared. 'That's all there is to it,' said he. 'With plenty of 
fish, with mushrooms, berries and roots and bear meat, you may stay out 
indefinitely.'

     "'Yes, I said bear meat. That robe you are sitting on is from a bear I 
killed while out on my last trip. I found a windfall and, having no tools but 
fire, I burned a lot of eight-inch and ten-inch trees through to the length I 
needed and rigged up a bear trap. I weighted it with heavy rocks and rigged up 
a figure-four trap on which I fastened a dead salmon that I found in a riffle. 
It was a small bear, not over one hundred and seventy-five pounds, that sprung 
the trap. I killed it with a club. The biggest job was skinning it. When I 
came out of the woods I had a pair of sandals and a serviceable cloak from its 
skin. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear and an understanding mind, 
nature will supply all your needs and be your mother. She will furnish you 
food and clothing, with roots and herbs to cure your ills. You are free and 
independent and far happier than when trying to conform to the requirements of 
the fear-driven, flabby-muscled, sad-eyed throng in the cities.'"

                            SOLITUDE

                Give me my open fire in the forest,
                And for music whistling winds among the pines.
                You may keep your gold that glistens in the sunlight, 
                Silent moonlight on the silver lake for mine.

                Lest I forget that nature was my mother,
                Let me paddle in my little birch canoe,
                Let me glide beneath the starlight on the water, 
                Where in silence, my mother, I may be with you.
                                           —JOE KNOWLES.

                               * * *

     "Joe Knowles has received more criticism and more praise from the papers 
than many a presidential candidate. He is simple and direct, a lover of 
nature, a natural woodsman and a man of great tenacity of purpose. When I 
visited him at his cabin beside the sea on North Beach he answered frankly 
every question that I asked.

     "'I was born at Wilton, Maine, on Friday, August 13, 1869,' he said. 'My 
mother, now eighty-seven years old, still lives in the old home place. My 
father was of English and Irish ancestry on his father's side and of Scotch 
and Indian blood on his mother's side. My mother is Scotch-Irish and was born 
in Canada. Her maiden name was Mary Hitchcock. My father had followed the sea 
in his youth. was raised inland, but the call of the sea was in my blood, and 
when I was fourteen years old I shipped aboard a schooner and for five years 
the sea was my home. When I was nineteen I signed on in the navy. I served an 
enlistment and a half.

     "'Yes, I deserted. For some triflng infraction of the rules I was not 
allowed shore liberty. Like a good sport, I took my punishment, but I thought 
it excessive and unjust. When I later applied to this same officer for shore 
leave he refused and said I would have to get along without shore leave for 
the rest of my enlistment. When we reached Fortress Monroe I again applied for 
shore leave and reminded him I had not been off the ship for seven months. He 
said, "No, and you won't get off as long as I am in charge." I said, "Because 
you have it in for me and because you have the power, you think you can break 
my spirit. I'll go ashore tonight in spite of you." He put me in double irons 
for insubordination. That night I picked the lock of the brig, got rid of the 
irons and dropped overboard. My chum had arranged to pick me up in a small 
boat between eight o'clock and eighty-thirty. I drifted around until the tide 
turned and it carried me out to sea. I swam till my arms cramped so I turned 
on my back and floated. Just before midnight an oyster boat picked me up and 
took me ashore. I couldn't walk for three or four days. My muscles seemed to 
be paralyzed, but I hid out till I could get about, and then I beat it up to 
the Great lakes and signed on with a merchant ship. Henry Cabot Lodge, upon 
showing Secretary of the Navy Daniels the record of the officer who had placed 
me in irons and showing him that this officer had been dismissed from the navy 
for cruelty in striking a gob with his sword, secured from Secretary Daniels 
an honorable discharge for me.

     "'After a year or so on the Great lakes I heard the call of the Maine 
woods so strongly that I went home to Maine. For several years I acted as 
guide to hunters who were willing to pay well for a man who could take them 
where they could hag a bull moose with widespread antlers. I studied the 
haunts of the moose till I knew its habits, and as a consequence was always in 
demand as a guide. My Indian blood helped me here, for I became an expert in 
making birchbark canoes and in hunting and trapping. I acted as guide in the 
summer and fall, and in winter I made even more, trapping wolves, bear, 
bobcats, lynx, marten, otter, sable, beaver, fox, mink and other fur-bearing 
animals. One summer a hunter who saw one of my sketches of a moose beside a 
lake told me I could set the world afire if I would come out of the woods and 
study art. I took his advice and came out and starved for a few years until I 
finally landed; but the success you find in the city doesn't feed your soul 
hunger. You die of soul starvation in the midst of plenty.

     "'One day I heard some chaps in a hotel in Boston talking about life in 
the woods. I told them of a dream I had the night before of being lost in the 
woods. I laughed and said how impossible it would be to lose me in the woods. 
I said a man could be turned adrift naked in the woods and could come out in a 
month clothed and in good condition by depending entirely upon what he found 
there. A newspaper man wrote up what I said. It caused lots of talk. The 
Boston Post asked me to prove my claim. I did. The Post copyrighted and 
syndicated the stuff and made a big killing from a circulation standpoint. 
When I came out after sixty-one days there were over one hundred thousand 
people gathered on Boston Common to greet me. I was welcomed by the mayor of 
Boston and the governor of Massachusetts. Professor Dudley A. Sargent, of 
Harvard, had sponsored the trip and vouched for the accuracy of my experiment.

     "'Well, that was the first of that type of trips. I published a 
book "Alone in the Wilderness" on the subject and more than thirty thousand 
copies have been sold, so you can see how much interested the public is in 
outdoor life. I have traveled pretty well all over the east lecturing on the 
subject. I have been in Europe, the West Indies, Africa and Central America, 
seeing how the natives live in the open.

     "'When a man has lived for a while in the open his senses become as keen 
as those of an animal. He can tell by the odor that a bear is near, or he can 
get the scent of a moose, a fox or bear. He can tell in the darkest night 
whether he is approaching cedar, spruce or pine woods. Most folks are afraid 
to sleep in the open for fear of wild animals. I know of no animal in this 
country that is not afraid of the scent of man. Man is the most dangerous and 
wantonly destructive of all animals, and the furred and feathered folk realize 
this and fear him accordingly. The only thing they fear more is fire. A forest 
fire destroys their fear of man and of one another. Wolves and deer, cougar 
and caribou will all flee together before it, the lesser fear being swallowed 
up in the common danger. If you are lost, keep cool, don't get rattled, don't 
hurry, take it easy; find a stream and follow it, for it will lead you to the 
settlements.'"

                                * * *

     "Joe Knowles, one of the unique characters of the west, is up from his 
home at Seaview and is spending a few days in Portland. He is arranging to 
have an exhibition of his paintings. For the past three or four years he has 
lived in sight and sound of the sea at Seaview, on Long Beach. He has 
succeeded in an unusual and rather remarkable manner in getting the atmosphere 
of the sea upon his canvases. He has caught the delicate Nile green shades of 
the surf just before it breaks, the yellow sand, the water-worn brown rocks, 
the ever changing sea and the chameleon-like sky, and made them live again 
through the medium of merging tints of paint and canvas. His fame as an artist 
was originally based on his pictures of action — Indians charging against the 
foe, bucking horses trying to dismount their riders, bears playing or 
fighting — but of late he has turned to more peaceful subjects, such as 
landscapes and marine views or wind-blown hemlocks on the edge of the cliff. 
These and similar subjects have won his attention.

     "'I am a lover of and believer in nature,' he said. 'The lesson man needs 
to learn is to act in harmony with nature, not to oppose it. I have lost my 
desire for hunting. I would rather paint a deer than shoot it. Here is a 
canvas that I enjoyed painting. It is, as you see, the picture of an Indian on 
his horse by the shore of the western sea, looking toward the sunset. It is 
symbolical, as you can see, of the end of the trail. The Indian is silhouetted 
against the deep green and the fiery red of the evening sky. His face wears a 
look not of defeat, but of sadness and resignation.'"

     Recently Mr. Knowles has painted a series of pictures which now adorn the 
walls of the Hotel Monticello, at Longview, Washington, one of the finest 
hotels of the northwest. The scenes are historically valuable, as they depict 
the growth and development of the Pacific northwest from the coming of the 
first white man down to the present day, and they are greatly admired by all 
who see them.

     On Friday, November 13, 1914, Mr. Knowles was united in marriage to Miss 
Marion Louise Humphrey, who was born and reared in Dedham, Massachusetts, and 
is a student of the Pape Art School of Boston. Mr. Knowles is a man of broad 
views and high ideals, and possesses those traits of character which make for 
esteem and friendship, being uniformly recognized as one of the worthy and 
highly respected citizens of his locality.

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