Coast Salish

Coast Salish is a subgroup of the Salishan language family, but can also refer to First Nations or Native American cultures in British Columbia and Washington who speak one of these many languages or dialects. Thus Coast Salish is also a cultural or ethnographic designation although there is no one language or people named "Coast Salish".

Geography

The Coast Salish homeland encompasses most of the Strait of Georgia-Puget Sound Basin, encompassing the sites of the modern-day cities of Vancouver, British Columbia, Seattle, Washington and others. A branch of the Coast Salish established themselves on the coast of Oregon near present-day Tillamook, Oregon, to the south of the Chinookan peoples whose territory lines the lower reaches of the Columbia River. Archeological evidence indicates that the Coast Salish may have inhabited the area as far back as 9000 B.C.E.^{[citation needed]} What is now Seattle, for example, has been inhabited since the end of the last glacial period (c. 8,000 B.C.E.—10,000 years ago).

It should be noted that in the past the Nuxálk or Bella Coola or British Columbia's Central Coast were considered Coast Salish, but recent research has indicated that they are not part of the Coast Salishan languages group and are an independent offshoot from the main Salishan stream .

Language group: Peoples speaking a Coast Salish language

Listings are from north to south. Peoples generally inhabited the mentioned watershed and the shores if a body of water is mentioned, as well as further environs. Adjacent tribes or nations often shared adjacent resources and other practices, so boundaries were seldom distinct.

Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island

• Comox (Courtenay area, east coast, central Vancouver Island)—K'omox
• T'souke, Sooke. (southern Vancouver Island) —North Straits Salish
• Snuneymuxw (Nanaimo, southeast Vancouver Island, north of the Saanich)—Hunquminum
• Saanich (Victoria area and north, southeastern Vancouver Island; also north coast of the Olympic Peninsula, Washington)—North Straits Salish
• Somena (Cowichan Valley, west and interior southern Vancouver Island, west of the Snuneymuxw)—

Lower Mainland and Sunshine Coast

Lower Mainland and Sunshine Coast

• Comox (northern Georgia Strait and Toba Inlet, northern Sunshine Coast) —K'omox
  • Sliammon
  • Homalco
• Shishalh, Sechelt (Sechelt Peninsula, Jervis Inlet, Skwakwa River, Pender Harbour)—Shishalh
• Skwxwú7mesh (or Squamish)—Skwxwú7mesh snichim
• Upriver Sto:lo (Upper Fraser Valley)—Halkeymelem, see Halqemeylem
• Downriver Sto:lo (Lower Fraser Valley-Vancouver)—Hulquminum, see Halqemeylem
• Tsawwassen (Delta, south lower mainland)—North Straits Salish.^{[citation needed]}

Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound

Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, excluding Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, are categorized north to south but otherwise are alphabetical. Northern Lushootseed is spoken around northern Puget Sound, Southern Lushootseed around central and south Sound. Before treaties of 1854–1855, more than fifty named tribes existed, each with one or more winter villages and several summer camps as well as traditionally-allocated resource sites.

• Klallam (Strait of Juan de Fuca: Washington and Becher Bay, southern Vancouver Island, B.C.) —North Straits Salish
• Nooksack, Noxws'a7aq (Nooksack River, Deming, Washington, Northern Straits, Washington, {southeast Strait of Georgia})
• Lummi, Lhaq'temish (Bellingham Lummi Island, northern Puget Sound)—North Straits Salish
• Samish, S?abš (Samish Bay and Lake Samish, northern Puget Sound, east)—Lushootseed
• Skagit (tribe), Sqaĵet (Skagit River, northern Puget Sound, east)—Lushootseed
• Sauk-Suiattle, Sui?aẋbix^w (Suiattle and Sauk rivers, northern Puget Sound, east hills)—Lushootseed
• Snohomish (tribe), Sduhubš (northern Puget Sound, east) —Lushootseed
• Swinomish (tribe) (northern Puget Sound, islands and east) —Lushootseed

• Skokomish (Twana) (Skokomish River, western Hood Canal and Portland Canal watersheds, western Puget Sound)—Twana

• Duwamish, Dkh^w'Duw'Absh and Xacuabš (metropolitan Seattle, central Puget Sound east to blend with the Sammamish) —Lushootseed
• Sammamish, eastern Duwamish (central Puget Sound, east) —Lushootseed
• Snoqualmie, Sduk^walbix^w (Snoqualmie River, central Puget Sound, east hills)—Lushootseed
• Stkehlmish sacakaləbš, treaty SK-tahl-mish (north central Puget Sound, east) —Lushootseed
• Suquamish, Suq^wabš (Agate Pass, central Puget Sound, northwest) —Lushootseed
• Nisqually, sq^wali?abš (Deschutes and Nisqually rivers, southern Puget Sound)—Lushootseed
• Muckleshoot, bəpubšl, Inland Duwamish (Black, Green, and White rivers, southeast Puget Sound)—Lushootseed
• Puyallup, Spuyaləqəlpubšut (Puyallup River, south southeast Puget Sound)—Lushootseed
• Sehewamish, S?əhiw?abš (southwest Puget Sound, west) —Lushootseed
• Squaxin Island Tribe (Case Inlet, southern Puget Sound) —Lushootseed

• Chehalis (Chehalis, Eastern Washington) — Chehalis language.^{[citation needed]}

Culture

Social organization

External
Neighboring groups, whether villages or adjacent tribes, were related by marriage, feasting, ceremonies, and common or shared territory. Ties were especially strong within the same waterway or watershed. There existed no breaks throughout the south Coast Salish culture area and beyond. There existed no formal political institutions.

External relations were extensive throughout most of the Puget Sound-Georgia Basin and east to the Sahaptin-speaking lands of Chelan, Kittitas and Yakama in what is now Eastern Washington.

There was little political organization. No formal political office existed. Warfare for the southern Coast Salish was primarily defensive, with occasional raiding into territory where there were no relatives. No institutions existed for mobilizing or maintaining a standing force.

The real enemies of all the Coast Salish for most of the first half of the 19th century were the Lekwiltok Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka'wakw). With earlier access to guns with the fur trade, they raided for slaves and loot. Organized retaliatory raids from several tribes were raised several times.

Internal
The highest-ranking male assumed the role of ceremonial leader but rank could vary and was determined by different standards. Villages were linked to others through intermarriage; the wife usually went to live at the husband's village. Society was divided into upper class, lower class and slaves, all largely hereditary. Nobility was based on genealogy, intertribal kinship, wise use of resources, and possession of esoteric knowledge about the workings of spirits and the world — making an effective marriage of class, secular, religious, and economic power. Many Coast Salish mothers altered the appearance of their free-born by carefully shaping the heads of their babies, binding them with cradle boards just long enough to produce a steep sloping forehead.

Unlike hunter-gatherer societies widespread in North America, but similar to other Pacific Northwest coastal cultures, Coast Salish society was complex, hierarchical and oriented toward property and status.

Slavery was widespread.^{[citation needed]} The Coast Salish held slaves as simple property and not as members of the tribe. The children of slaves themselves became slaves.^{[citation needed]}

The staple of their diet was typically salmon, supplemented with a rich variety of other seafoods and forage, particularly for the southern Coast Salish where the climate was even more temperate.

The art of the Coast Salish has become a popular idiom for modern art in British Columbia and the Puget Sound area.^{[citation needed]}

Recreation
Games often involved gambling on a sleight-of-hand game known as slahal, as well as athletic contests. Games that are similar to modern day lacrosse, rugby and forms of martial arts also existed.

Beliefs
Belief in guardian spirits and transmutation between human and animal were widely shared in myriad forms. The relations of soul or souls, the lands of the living and the dead, were complex and mutable. Vision quest journeys involving other states of consciousneess were varied and widely practiced. The Duwamish had a soul recovery and journey ceremony.

Architecture

Villages of the Coast Salish typically consisted of Western Red Cedar split plank and earthen floor longhouses providing habitation for forty or more people, usually a related extended family. Also used by many groups were pit-houses, known in the Chinook Jargon as kekuli (see Quiggly holes). The villages were typically located near navigable water for easy transportation by dugout canoe. Houses that were part of the same village sometimes stretched for several miles along a river or watercourse.

The interior walls of longhouses were typically lined with sleeping platforms. Storage shelves above the platforms held baskets, tools, clothing, and other items. Firewood was stored below the platforms. Mattresses and cushions were constructed woven reed mats and animals skins. Food was hung to dry from the ceiling. The larger houses included partitions to separate families, as well as interior fires with roof slats that functioned as chimneys.^{[citation needed]}

The wealthy built extraordinarily large longhouses. The Suquamish Oleman House (Old Man House) at what became the Port Madison Reservation was 152 x 12–18 m (500 x 40–60 ft), c. 1850. The gambrel roof was unique to Puget Sound Coast Salish.

Diet

Provisionally, this is primarily southern Coast Salish, though much is in common with Coast Salish overall.

Anthropogenic grasslands were maintained. The south Coast Salish may have had more vegetables and land game than people farther north or on the outer coast. Fish and salmon were staples. There was kakanee, a freshwater fish in the Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish watersheds. Shellfish were abundant. Butter clams, horse clams, and cockles were dried for trade.

Hunting was specialized; professions were probably sea hunters, land hunters, fowlers. Water fowl were captured on moonless nights using strategic flares.

The managed grasslands not only provided game habitat, but vegetable sprouts, roots, bulbs, berries, and nuts were foraged from them as well as found wild. The most important were probably bracken and camas; wapato especially for the Duwamish. Many, many varieties of berries were foraged; some were harvested with comblike devices not reportedly used elsewhere. Acorns were relished but were not widely available. Regional tribes went in autumn to the Nisqually Flats (Nisqually plains) to harvest them. Indeed, the south Salish Sea watershed was so abundant that the south Coast Salish as a whole had one of the only sedentary hunter-gatherer societies that has ever existed.

History

This is provisionally primarily south Coast Salish history. Coast Salish in British Columbia have had similar economic experience, although their political and treaty experience has been different—occasionally dramatically so.

(c. 9,000–8,000 B.C.E. : Evidence of established settlement)

(6th century C.E.: Prominent villages along the Duwamish River estuary, for example. These remained continuously inhabited until sometime in the later 18th century.)

1792: Brief contact with the Vancouver expedition

1810s: Coastal fur trade with infrequent ships extends south from farther north.

1824: John Work party of the HBC traveled the length of the central and south Salish Sea.

1827: HBC Fort Langley established east of present-day Vancouver, B.C. Contact and trade began accelerating significantly, primarily with the northern and north-central Coast Salish.

1833: HBC Fort Nisqually and farm was established between present-day Olympia and Tacoma, Washington. Contact and trade began accelerating significantly with the southern Coast Salish. Significant social change and change in social structures accelerates with increasing contact. Initiative remained with Native traders until catastraphic population decline. Native traders and Native economy were not particularly interested or dependent upon European trade or tools. Trade goods were primarily luxuries such as trade blankets, ornamentation, guns and ammunition. The HBC monopoly did not condone alcohol, but freebooter traders were under no compunction.

1839–40: Catholic missionaries arrive in Puget Sound country. 1841–43: Interest diminishes. 1840–42: Methodist missionaries arrive, have no success at all.

1840–on: Missionaries. Churches divided territory among themselves by the federal Peace Policy of 1869.

1854-55: Treaties. Reservations. Some tribes do not participate and others dropped out of treaty negotiations. (See, for example, Treaty of Point Elliott #Native Americans and # Non-signatory tribes.)

The Muckleshoot Reservation is established after the Indian War of 1855–56.

1850s–60s: Traditional resources are less and less available. Sawmill work and employment selling natural resources begins and continues; Native men work as loggers, in the mills, and as commercial fishers. Women sell basketry, shellfish, and make other adjustments.

1870s: Agricultural work in hopyards of the east Sound river valleys grows, even mushrooms.

1880s: White-Indian demographics shift dramatically. Commercial fisheries employment begins to decline significantly.

1884: After years of suppression, the potlatch is banned in Canada, and in the U.S. some years later.

1934 (U.S.), 1951 (Canada): Official suppresion of the potlatch ends. Some potlatching becomes overt immediately, and a renaissance follows.

1960s: Renaissance of tribal culture and national civil rights engenders civil action for treaty rights.

1960s–1970s: Employment in commercial fisheries has greatly declined; employment in logging and lumber mills declines significantly with automation, outsourcing, and the decline in available resources through the 1980s.

1974, Supreme Court upheld 1979: The Boldt Decision, based on the Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855 restores fisheries rights to federally recognized Puget Sound tribes.

The right of taking fish at usual and accustomed grounds and stations is further secured to said Indians in common with all citizens of the Territory,

In implementation, this means half the catch, at sustainable levels by subsequent negotiations.

1970s–present: Many federally recognized tribes develop some economic autonomy with (initially strongly contested) tax-free tobacco retail, development of casino gambling, fisheries and stewardship of fisheries. Extant tribes not federally recognized continue ongoing legal proceedings and cultural development toward recognition.

Population
Among losses due to diseases, a smallpox epidemic broke out among the Northwest tribes in 1862, killing roughly half the affected native populations. Documentation in archives and historical epidemiology demonstrates that governmental policies furthered the progress of this epidemic among the natives, and did little or nothing about the waves of other introduced epidemics [*citation needed or delete*]. Mean population decline 1774–1874 was about 66%.

Pre-epidemics about 12,600; Lushootseed about 11,800, Twana about 800.

1850: about 5,000.

1885 less than 2,000, probably not including all the off-reservation populations.

1984: sum total about 18,000; Lushootseed census 15,963, Twana 1,029.

See also

• Interior Salish

Bibliography

• Bates, Dawn and Hess, Thom; Hilbert, Vi; map by Dassow, Laura (1994). in Bates, Dawn, ed.: Lushootseed dictionary. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. ISBN (alk. paper). Retrieved 2006-06-06. 
  Completely reformatted, greatly revised and expanded update of Hess, Thom, Dictionary of Puget Salish (University of Washington Press, 1976).
• Boyd, Robert (1999). The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence: Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline Among Northwest Coast Indians,. Seattle and Vancouver: University of Washington Press and University of British Columbia Press. ISBN (alk. paper), ISBN. Retrieved 2006-05-21. 
• Cole, Douglas and Chaikin, Ira (1990). An iron hand upon the people: the law against the potlatch on the Northwest coast. Vancouver and Seatttle: Douglas & McIntyre and University of Washington Press. ISBN (acid-free paper). Retrieved 2006-05-21. 
• Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa and M. Dale Kinkade (1998) "Salish languages and linguistics" in ibid. (eds.) Salish Languages and Linguistics: Theoretical and Descriptive Perspectives. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 1-71.
• Dailey, Tom (2006-06-14). "Duwamish-Seattle". "Coast Salish Villages of Puget Sound". Retrieved 2006-04-21.
  Page links to Village Descriptions Duwamish-Seattle section [1].
  Dailey referenced "Puget Sound Geography" by T. T. Waterman. Washington DC: National Anthropological Archives, mss. [n.d.] [ref. 2];
  Duwamish et al vs. United States of America, F-275. Washington DC: US Court of Claims, 1927. [ref. 5];
  "Indian Lake Washington" by David Buerge in the Seattle Weekly, 1-7 August 1984 [ref. 8];
  "Seattle Before Seattle" by David Buerge in the Seattle Weekly, 17-23 December 1980. [ref. 9];
  The Puyallup-Nisqually by Marian W. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940. [ref. 10].
  Recommended start is "Coast Salish Villages of Puget Sound" [2].
• Kroeber, Paul D. (1999) The Salish Language Family: Reconstructing Syntax. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
• Lange, Greg (4 February 2003 [rewritten since 8 December 2000]). "Smallpox Epidemic of 1862 among Northwest Coast and Puget Sound Indians". HistoryLink.org Essay 5171. Retrieved 2006-07-21.
  Lange referenced a very extensive list.
  Summary article
  • Lange, Greg (2000-12-08). "Smallpox kills 14,000 Northwest Coast Indians from April to December 1862.". HistoryLink.org Essay 3176. Retrieved 2006-07-21.
    Lange referenced Lange, "Smallpox Epidemic of 1862 among Northwest Coast and Puget Sound Indians" [3], HistoryLink.org Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. Accessed 8 December 2000.
• Miller, Jay (Lenape). (1996). "Seattle (Si'al)". Encyclopedia of North American Indians: 574–6. Ed. Hoxie, Frederick E.. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN. Retrieved on 2006-05-21.
• "The people and their land". "Puget Sound Native Art and Culture". Seattle Art Museum (2003-07-04 per "Native Art of the Northwest Coast: Collection Insight"). Retrieved 2006-04-21.
• Suttle, Wayne P..; Lane, Barbara (1990-08-20). "South Coast Salish". Handbook of North American Indians 7. Northwest coast: p. 491. Ed. Sturtevant, William C.. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN (v. 7). Retrieved on 2006-08-06.
• Talbert, Paul (2006-05-01). "SkEba'kst: The Lake People and Seward Park". The History of Seward Park. SewardPark.org. Retrieved 2006-06-06.
• Thompson, Lawrence C.; Kinkade, M. Dale (1990-08-20). "Languages". Handbook of North American Indians 7. Northwest coast: pp. 30-51. Ed. Sturtevant, William C.. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN (v. 7). Retrieved on 2006-08-06.
  Wayne Suttles (ed.)

Further reading

• Sarah C. Fletcher, (17 April 2000). "The First Nations of the North West Coast-Coast Salish; Connections to the environment, involvement in conservation." First Nations of the Northwest Coast: Coast Salish
• Tom Dailey. "Coast Salish Villages of Puget Sound", start page.
• Traditional Ecological Knowledge (PDF). "Traditional Ecological Knowledge of the Coast Salish informs modern research and resource management."
• "Coast Salish. Collections: Archeology and Ethnology of the Gulf of Georgia" collection, Province of British Columbia
• "Language Family Trees: Salishan", Ethnologue classification for Salishan.
  • From Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.

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