Topic: Northwest Indians
Washington rivers once teemed with five species of Pacific salmon -- Chinook, chum, pink, sockeye, and coho. Anadromous fish, they hatch and develop in fresh water, migrate out to sea where they live ...
For centuries, salmon have been intrinsic to the culture and subsistence of the Native peoples of King County. For Lushootseed-speaking groups living along rivers and streams where salmon spawn in the...
Coast Salish communities on Puget Sound located villages in places that offered access to resources they could use or trade. On the Elliott Bay waterfront at what is now the foot of Seattle's Yesler W...
The Semiahmoo were a band of Native Americans who lived in the Blaine and Birch Bay area (future Whatcom County) in the centuries prior to European settlement. Culturally and linguistically a Straits ...
Storyteller, wood carver, teacher, and Tulalip cultural leader, William Shelton Wha-cah-dub, Whea-kadim earned great respect in his lifetime from both Indians and whites -- the two cultures that he lo...
William Shelton (1868-1938), cultural leader of the Tulalip Tribes, spent much of his life attempting to bridge the divide between regional Indians and whites through traditional storytelling and art....
Puyallup Tribal member Henry Sicade successfully resided in two worlds during the tumultuous political and social era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Pacific Northwest, whi...
This essay describes the 1862 smallpox epidemic among Northwest Coast tribes. It was carried from San Francisco on the steamship Brother Jonathan and arrived at Victoria, British Columbia, on Mar...
A Wanapum spiritual leader, Smohalla founded what became known as the Dreamer religion, which was based on the belief that if Native Americans shunned white culture and lived as their ancestors had li...
Snoqualmie Falls is a 276-foot waterfall on the Snoqualmie River about 30 miles east of Seattle on the way to Snoqualmie Pass. The falls have been for generations a sacred site for the Snoqualmie Trib...
The Snoqualmie-Skykomish watershed encompasses 1,532 square miles of forests, meadows, hills, and valleys that have been shaped by environmental forces and by generations of human activities. The wate...
U.S. Army veteran David Sohappy Sr. (1925-1991) was a Wanapum fishing activist who became the center of a national controversy involving government regulators and tribal fishers in the Pacific Northwe...
Gustavus Sohon, a native of East Prussia, arrived on the Columbia River in 1852 as a private in the U.S. Army. During the following decade, he accompanied four historic expeditions across Eastern Wash...
Music played a deeply spiritual role in the lives of the Pacific Northwest's First Peoples for eons prior to the beginning of recorded time. Much of this age-old music has survived by being passed dow...
Alexander Spithill was an early Puget Sound pioneer, arriving in October 1856 and settling initially at Utsalady on Camano Island. In 1861 he started what was probably the first logging camp in the Ma...
The year 1858 was the seminal turning point in conflict between Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest and the encroaching interests of the United States. Fur traders, missionaries, and gold...
As Washington's first territorial governor, Isaac Stevens oversaw the establishment of government in what would become Washington state. He also led the survey of a route to Puget Sound for a transcon...
James G. Swan lived one of the most varied and colorful lives in the early history of Washington Territory. He was variously an oysterman, customs inspector, secretary to congressional delegate Isaac ...
Robert A. Clark authored two books and numerous magazine articles dealing with the Old West. He operates Arthur H. Clark Company, in Spokane, publishers of books on the American frontier experience. H...
The Treaty of Medicine Creek was signed on December 26, 1854, at a meeting at Medicine Creek in present-day Thurston County. Sixty-two leaders of major Western Washington tribes, including the Nisqual...
The Treaty of Neah Bay was signed on on January 31, 1855 by Isaac Stevens (1818-1862), Governor of Washington Territory, and by leaders and delegates of the Makah tribe. Following is the complete text...
The Treaty of Olympia was signed by representatives of the United States government and the Quinault Indian tribe on July 1, 1855, and by the Hoh and Quileute Indian tribes on January 25, 1856, and ra...
The Point Elliott Treaty was signed on January 22, 1855, by Isaac Stevens (1818-1862), Governor of Washington Territory, and by Duwamish Chief Seattle, Snoqualmie Chief Patkanim, Lummi Chief Chow-its-...
The Treaty of Point No Point was signed on January 26, 1855, at Hahdskus, or Point No Point, on the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula. Governor of Washington Territory Isaac Stevens (1818-1862) con...