Vice President Curtis Shares a Skookum Apple with a Native American Man

This photograph shows Vice President Charles Curtis posing while holding a Skookum brand apple with an unidentified Native American man in 1929. The brand name was registered by the Northwestern Fruit Exchange in 1914, with its name derived from a Chinook word meaning "special." In 1921, the Skookum trademark was transferred to the Skookum Packers Association which became a leader in the apple farming industry for the Wenatchee region in central Washington, ancestral home of the Wenatchi-P'Squosa people. Born in Kansas to a white father and Native American mother, and raised by his maternal grandparents, Curtis was the first person of Native American descent as well as the first person of color to serve as vice president. He served as vice president for President Herbert Hoover.