Geography of Puget Sound Tribes
The central section, comprising the shores and islands of Admiralty Inlet, Hood Canal, and Puget Sound proper, is occupied by numerous tribes with variously spelled names, mostly terminating in -mish,…
From: 1874 C.E. To: 1874 C.E.
Location: Puget Sound, Washington, United States of America
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America by Hubert Howe Bancroft, 1874.
The Sound Indians, by which term I find it convenient to designate the nations about Puget Sound, constitute the third family of the Columbian group. In this division I include all the natives of that part of the territory of Washington lying west of the Cascade Range, except a strip from twenty-five to forty miles wide along the north bank of the Columbia. The north-eastern section of this territory, including the San Juan group, Whidbey Island, and the region tributary to Bellingham Bay, is the home of the Noocksack, Lummi, Samish, and Skagit nations, whose neighbors and constant harassers on the north are the fierce Kwantlums and Cowichins of the Nootka family about the mouth of the Fraser.
The central section, comprising the shores and islands of Admiralty Inlet, Hood Canal, and Puget Sound proper, is occupied by numerous tribes with variously spelled names, mostly terminating in -mish, which names, with all their orthographic diversity, have been given generally to the streams on whose banks the different nations dwelt. All these tribes may be termed the Nisqually nation, taking the name from the most numerous and best known of the tribes located about the head of the sound. The Clallams inhabit the eastern portion of the peninsula between the sound and the Pacific, the western extremity of the same peninsula, terminating at Cape Flattery, is occupied by the Classets or Makahs; while the Chehalis and Cowlitz nations are found on the Chehalis River, Gray Harbor, and the upper Cowlitz.
Excepting a few bands on the head-waters of streams that rise in the vicinity of Mount Baker, the Sound family belongs to the coast fish-eating tribes rather than to the hunters of the interior. Indeed, this family has so few marked peculiarities, possessing apparently no trait or custom not found as well among the Nootkas or Chinooks, that it may be described in comparatively few words. When first known to Europeans they seem to have been far less numerous than might have been expected from the extraordinary fertility and climatic advantages of their country; and since they have been in contact with the whites, their numbers have been reduced—chiefly through the agency of small-pox and ague—even more rapidly than the nations farther to the north-west.
Bancroft, Hubert Howe. Native Races of the Pacific States. Vol. 1, Appleton, 1874.
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