Native Americans

The Coast Salish villages of Puget Sound are Native Americans who lived and still live in the Puget Sound area of Washington State. These people inhabited an incredibly bountiful and mostly heavily-forested area, interspersed with myriad waterways. They shared a similar life-style oriented towards fishing, hunting and gathering, as well as creating the implements necessary to engage in these activities. Salmon was the most important food. The dugout canoe was the primary means of transport. A typical village was located adjacent to navigable water and composed of a small number of large cedar-planked longhouses–each giving shelter to thirty, forty, or more, usually related individuals. In some cases, all of the longhouses of a village were located right next to each other. In other cases, houses considered part of the same village might be strung out for miles along a river.

Inside the longhouse, along the walls, sleeping platforms were constructed. Woven reed mats were piled for mattresses and cushions, animal skins for covers. These would be removed during the day so the platform could be used for seating. Above the platforms were storage shelves holding baskets, tools, clothing, etc.; firewood was often stored below. Dried food hung from the ceiling above the earthen floor, which could be used as a work area or cleared for gatherings. In the larger houses each family would have a fire and partitions made of mats would separate the family compartments. Roof slats could be adjusted to let smoke out and light in.
The people took their principal identity from these permanent villages where they lived during the rainy winter months. (During the rest of the year variously composed bands would migrate among traditional camps at resource-rich areas, usually mingling with people from other, sometimes faraway, villages.) Strength of “tribal” affiliation varied among groups and probably throughout time, depending on whether there was a need requiring organized action. Although I have used currently accepted tribal designations in the village descriptions, some would consider them to be vast oversimplifications, or even largely artificial constructs, made for the sake of convenience by the early white settlers and perpetuated ever since.

The period around 1800 was one of flux. Settlers had not yet arrived in this area but their diseases had. Vulnerable coastal villages were already being decimated. Some coastal groups were re-consolidating in more favorable locations. Some riverine people were moving to occupy depopulated villages along the coast. So, although most all of the village sites described herein were of long-standing, their composition may have been of more recent origin. And memories of other settlements have not only long been lost, but doubtless were never recorded.

The most important uses of the big cedar houses happened after everyone had returned — after the moon (approximately November) called Sicalwas (shee-chal-wass) “putting paddles away.” It was in winter that the most important yet least tangible wealth of traditional Puget Sound — the ancient legends and ceremonies handed down through generations — became most manifest.

If a village did not possess a separate structure for ceremonial use, one of the large dwelling houses or al?al? (ahl-ahl) could be cleared of partitions and excess domestic furnishings and converted to a piGidaltx (pee-gwee-dalt-wh), a “smokehouse” or “longhouse” where tribal members, friends, and relatives from other groups could nightly share the dances and songs given to them by their guardian spirits as visible proof of a relationship with the supernatural world. Friends and family would help each dancer by singing along with the songs they recognized, and were themselves helped in their turn. Everyone present could benefit from this sharing of tradition and spiritual power.

These gatherings were also the best times for other cultural “work.” The whole community, along with visitors from other villages and watersheds, might be called to witness the joining of two families by marriage, or the confirmation of a family name, handed down through generations, on a young person who had proved worthy of carrying it. Guests were lavishly fed and given gifts according to their wealth and status, agreeing by their presence to be witnesses to the work. Healing ceremonies also required the community’s help to provide singers and witnesses.

Major gatherings and events would occur from time to time throughout the winter, but every evening one or more of the elders would provide the experience that gave Puget Sound Native American culture its surest continuity — the telling of syayahub (syah-yah-hobe) or legends for the education of young people and enjoyment of adults. Through the oral literature of the syayhub, given as short vignettes, epics, or cycles of stories, the culture’s wisest members could pass on information about the origin of the world and its inhabitants, about ancient monsters, natural phenomena, and present day species, and about culture and the effects of right and wrong behavior. If a listener thought carefully and applied the teachings of the syayahub, she or he would grow to deserve an honored family name.

It was into this complex society of interrelated villages and families, of resources managed with a light hand, and of economies suited to the products of environment and trade that the first Europeans came into contact with in the late eighteenth century. Despite the effects of new diseases, religions, mores, and technologies introduced by explorers and traders, this traditional culture was largely intact as the first permanent Euro-American settlers began to arrive in the mid-nineteenth century. With the treaties of 1854 and 1855 began a time of enforced change, adaptation, and struggle which continues today.