The Coast Salish peoples are a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak the Coast Salish languages and Tsamosan languages.
The Coast Salish are a large, loose grouping of many nations with numerous distinct cultures and languages. Territory claimed by Coast Salish peoples span from the northern limit of the Salish Sea on the inside of Vancouver Island and covers most of southern Vancouver Island, all of the Lower Mainland and most of Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula (except for territories of the Chemakum people). Their traditional territories coincide with modern major metropolitan areas, namely Victoria, Vancouver, and Seattle. The Tillamook or Nehalem around Tillamook, Oregon are the southernmost of the Coast Salish peoples.
Coast Salish cultures differ considerably from those of their northern neighbors. They have a patrilineal and matrilineal kinship system, with inheritance and descent passed through the male and female line. According to a 2012 estimate, the population of Coast Salish numbers at least 56,590 people, made of 28,406 Status Indians registered to Coast Salish bands in British Columbia, and 28,284 enrolled members of federally recognized tribes of Coast Salish in Washington State.
Terminology The term "Coast Salish" is used to refer to the speakers of fourteen contiguous Salishan languages on the western coast of North America. This definition sometimes extends to include the nearby communities of speakers of the Salishan languages Tillamook and Nuxalk. Usage of the term "Coast Salish" to refer to these peoples began in the late 19th century.
The name "Salish" comes from the Salish people of Montana, who are also known as the Bitterroot Salish or Flathead. Their language, Montana Salish, is an Interior Salish language and the easternmost Salishan language.
Classification The Coast Salish culture group can be broken up into four main subgroupings:
Northern Coast Salish
Homalco Klahoose Island Kʼómoks (historically) Pentlatch shíshálh (Sechelt) Tla'amin (Sliammon)
Central Coast Salish
Cowichan Esquimalt Halalt Hwlitsum Klallam (S'Klallam) Lekwungen (Songhees) Lummi Musqueam Nooksack Penelakut Saanich Samish Semiahmoo Snuneymuxw (Nanaimo) Squamish Stz'uminus (Chemainus) Stó꞉lō T'Sou-ke (Sooke) Tsawwassen Tsleil-Waututh
Southern Coast Salish
Duwamish Nisqually Puyallup Sauk-Suiattle Snohomish Snoqualmie Squaxin Island Stillaguamish Suquamish Swinomish Twana Upper Skagit
Southwestern Coast Salish
Quinault Lower Chehalis Upper Chehalis Cowlitz
History
Evidence has been found from c. 3000 BCE of an established settlement at X̱á:ytem (Hatzic Rock) near Mission, British Columbia. Early occupancy of c̓əsnaʔəm (Marpole Midden) is evident from c. 2000 BCE – 450 CE, and lasted at least until around the late 1800s, when smallpox and other diseases affected the inhabitants. Other notable early settlements that record has been found of include prominent villages along the Duwamish River estuary dating back to the 6th century CE, which remained continuously inhabited until sometime in the later 18th century. Boulder walls were constructed for defensive and other purposes along the Fraser Canyon in the 15th century.
Early European contact with Coast Salish peoples dates back to exploration of the Strait of Georgia in 1791 by Juan Carrasco and José María Narváez, as well as brief contact with the Vancouver expedition by the Squamish people in 1792. In 1808, Simon Fraser of the North West Company entered Coast Salish territories via the Fraser Canyon and met various groups until reaching tidewater on the Fraser's North Arm, where he was attacked and repelled by Musqueam warriors. Throughout the 1810s, coastal fur trade extended further with infrequent shipping.
The establishment of Fort Vancouver in 1824 was important as it established a regular site of interaction with Clackamas, Multnomah, and Cascades Chinooks, as well as interior Klickitat, Cowlitz, Kalapuya. Parties from the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), led by John Work, travelled the length of the central and south Georgia Strait-Puget Sound.
From the 1810s through to the 1850s, Coast Salish groups of Georgia Strait and Puget Sound experienced raiding from northern peoples, particularly the Euclataws and Haida.
In 1827, HBC established Fort Langley east of present-day Vancouver, B.C. Whattlekainum, principal chief of the Kwantlen people, moved most of his people from Qiqayt (Brownsville) across the river from what was to become New Westminster to Kanaka Creek, near the Fort, for security and to dominate trade with the Fort. European contact and trade began accelerating significantly, primarily with the Fraser River Salish (Sto:lo).
Fort Nisqually and its farm were established in 1833 by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company a subsidiary of the HBC, 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 catastrophic 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.
Catholic missionaries arrive in Puget Sound around 1839–1840; interest diminished by 1843, and Methodist missionaries were in the area from 1840 to 1842 but had no success.
The Stevens Treaties were negotiated in 1854–55, but many tribes had reservations and did not participate; others dropped out of treaty negotiations. (See, for example, Treaty of Point Elliott#Native Americans and # Non-signatory tribes.) From 1850 to 1854, the Douglas Treaties were signed on Vancouver Island between various Coast Salish peoples around Victoria and Nanaimo, and also with two Kwakwaka'wakw groups on northern Vancouver Island. The Muckleshoot Reservation was established after the Puget Sound War of 1855–56.
Through the 1850s and 1860s, traditional resources became less and less available. Sawmill work and employment selling natural resources began; Native men worked as loggers, in the mills, and as commercial fishers. Women sold basketry and shellfish. Through the 1870s, agricultural work in hop yards of the east Sound river valley increased, including cultivation of mushrooms. The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic killed many, and commercial fisheries employment began to decline significantly through the 1880s.
After legislation amending the Indian Act was passed the previous year, in 1885 the potlatch was banned in Canada; it was banned in the US some years later. This suppression ended in the US in 1934, and in 1951 in Canada. Some potlatching became overt immediately.Cole & Chaikin (1990) A resurgence of tribal culture began in the 1960s; national Civil Rights movements engendered civil action for treaty rights.
Chief Dan George delivered a pivotal speech in 1967 on what had happened to his people. This riveted audiences at a Canadian Centennial ceremony in Vancouver's Empire Stadium and touched off public awareness and Native activism in BC and Canada. By this point, through the 1960s and 1970s, employment in commercial fisheries had greatly declined; employment in logging and lumber mills also declined significantly with automation, outsourcing, and the decline in available resources through the 1980s.
The Boldt Decision, passed in 1974 upheld by the Supreme Court in 1979 was, based on the Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855 and restored fisheries rights to federally recognized Puget Sound tribes.
Since the 1970s, many federally recognized tribes have developed 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. In British Columbia, 1970 marks the start of organized resistance to the "white paper" tabled by Jean Chrétien, then a cabinet minister in the government of Pierre Trudeau, which called for assimilation. In the wake of that, new terms such as Sto:lo, Shishalh and Snuneymuxw began to replace older-era names conferred by anthropologists, linguists and governments.
Population The first smallpox epidemic to hit the region was in the 1680s, with the disease travelling overland from Mexico by intertribal transmission. Among losses due to diseases, and a series of earlier epidemics that had wiped out many peoples entirely, e.g. the Snokomish in 1850, a smallpox epidemic broke out among the Northwest tribes in 1862, killing roughly half the affected Native people, in some cases up to 90% or more. The smallpox epidemic of 1862 started when an infected miner from San Francisco stopped in Victoria on his way to the Cariboo Gold Rush. As the epidemic spread, police, supported by gunboats, forced thousands of First Nations people living in encampments around Victoria to leave and many returned to their home villages which spread the epidemic. Some consider the decision to force First Nations people to leave their encampments an intentional act of genocide. Mean population decline 1774–1874 was about 66%. Though the Salish peoples together are less numerous than the Cherokee or Navajo, the numbers shown below represent a small fraction of the group.
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. 2013: an estimate of at least 56,590, made up of 28,406 Status Indians registered to Coast Salish bands in British Columbia, and 28,284 enrolled members of Coast Salish Tribes in Washington state.
Culture
Social organization
External Neighboring peoples, 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 were 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. Similarly in Canada there were ties between the Squamish people and Sto:lo with Interior Salish neighbors, i.e. the Lil'wat/St'at'imc, Nlaka'pamux and Syilx.
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 common enemies of all the Coast Salish for most of the first half of the 19th century were the Lekwiltok aka Southern Kwakiutl, commonly known in historical writings as the Euclataws or Yucultas. Regular raids by northern tribes, particularly warriors of an alliance among the Haida, Tongass, and one group of Tsimshian, are also notable. Having gained superiority by earlier access to European guns through the fur trade, these warriors raided the southern Salish tribes for slaves and loot. Their victims organized retaliatory raids several times, attacking the Lekwiltok.
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