Katie (Kate) Kanim Borst was a Snoqualmie Tribe member whose life spanned the dramatic transition of the Snoqualmie Valley from an Indigenous homeland to a majority Euro-American farming community. Born in 1855 at the mouth of Griffin Creek near Pleasant Hill (Tolt), she was raised within the cultural traditions of her people during a period of profound change following treaty-making and American settlement.
Kate was Jerry Kanim’s half-sister and descended from a large, interconnected Snoqualmie family network. Her grandfather, she noted, had many wives, making her related to much of the local Native community. Her father was a medicine man, and she recalled that as a boy he fasted alone for three days, seeking spiritual power and receiving his spiritual guardian power. These early experiences rooted her in Snoqualmie spiritual and cultural traditions even as her adult life increasingly intersected with white settler society.
In May 1880, Kate married Jeremiah W. Borst, one of the earliest and most prominent white settlers in the Snoqualmie Valley. Borst had previously been married to Mina, Kate’s cousin, who had died in 1876. Kate entered the marriage with children from an earlier relationship, and she and Borst had two children together, Eva and Bud.
Contemporaries described Kate as intelligent, self-possessed, and adaptable. She adopted Euro-American dress and social customs with ease, enjoyed fine clothing, and maintained an active household. Yet she never abandoned her Indigenous identity. Her life embodied the cultural negotiation required of Native women who married settlers during the nineteenth century—moving between two worlds while remaining grounded in her own heritage.
One widely remembered episode from her life illustrates this dual cultural framework. When she became gravely ill while living at Fall City, white physicians were unable to cure her. At her stepson’s urging, native medicine men were finally summoned. She later described how they conducted ceremonies and performed spiritual interventions, removing what she understood to be a harmful spiritual force. Afterward, she recovered. Whether interpreted through Indigenous spirituality or frontier medicine, the event reinforced for many in the valley the continuing presence and power of Native knowledge.
Kate became a visible and respected public figure in the region. After Borst’s death in 1890, she later married a Mr. Pohler but continued to use the Borst name. She was invited to participate in civic events, including christening the wooden ship Snoqualmie in Seattle—then celebrated as the largest wooden vessel in the world. Her presence at such ceremonies symbolized both the valley’s pioneer past and its Native roots.
She spent the last thirty-five years of her life in Redmond, maintaining her home and garden well into old age. Described as sharp-witted, sociable, and fond of flowers, she formed friendships across cultural lines and witnessed decades of transformation in the valley. By the time of her death in 1938 at age eighty-three, she had seen the arrival of railroads, the platting of towns, the rise and fall of industries, and the dispersal of her people—who, unlike many tribes, were never granted a reservation after the treaty era.
Katie Kanim Borst was buried beside Jeremiah Borst in the cemetery at Fall City Cemetery. Her life stands as a testament to the resilience of Snoqualmie women and to the intertwined histories of the Snoqualmie Tribe and the pioneer families of the Snoqualmie Valley.