Puget Sound Native Art and Culture

Welcome | Salish Art and Culture | Overview of the Exhibition | About Native Teaching | Resource List | Acknowledgments

Tree People | Skokomish Basket | Song For the Moon | Bone Game

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The people and their land

The Puget Sound region is home to many distinct Native groups who speak variations of Salish languages, the Twana language, Chimakuan, Nooksack and Klallam languages. These languages were not “mutually intelligible” (understood one to the other), but in some cases there were enough similarities to communicate effectively.

The Salish language speakers include the Northern Lushootseed dialect spoken by the Samish, Sauk-Suiattle, Stillaguamish, Tulalip, Snohomish, Skagit and Swinomish —in a region which extended from about present day Marysville to just south of Bellingham. Southern Lushootseed is spoken by the Snoqualmie, Muckleshoot, Suquamish, Duwamish, Puyallup, Nisqually and Squaxin tribes, in the Seattle area and to the south as far as Olympia. Speakers of Twana language dialects live in the Hood Canal region and include the Skokomish, Quilcene and Duhlelap. The Quinault of coastal Washington around the town of Taholah, the Lower and Upper Chehalis of Grays Harbor and the immediate inland region, and the Cowlitz living in the drainage of the Cowlitz River, speak related dialects of the Salish language. The Quileute people living near La Push, Washington, speak a dialect of Chimakuan, an almost extinct language family. The Lummi of present day Bellingham area speak a Straits Salish language dialect, while the Nooksack and Klallam speak variations of Salish. Many current names for towns, rivers, mountains and other features come directly from Native language words, which described particular landforms of a place—such as Duwamish, which means “people of the inside,” referring to their riverine habitations.

There was extensive contact between peoples of the entire region and with peoples of the other side of the Cascade Mountains. Trading relationships and privileges were often cemented through inter-marriage. While each village group might have their own customs, there are enough commonalities in philosophical beliefs, economic conditions, and ceremonial practices to link them together. For the purposes of this introduction, we will consider the general region as a whole.

The Puget Sound region lies in a broad, hilly, lake-studded trench between the Olympic and Cascade Mountains; consequently, many types of dug-out cedar canoes were used to ply the various waterways. There was a lush mix of forests of Douglas fir, red alder, red cedar, fir, big-leaf maple and cottonwood. Plentiful game—deer, elk, mountain goat—as well as freshwater and saltwater fish, shellfish and waterfowl, provided an abundance of seasonal foods that were procured, preserved and stored for the winter months. There was a great quantity of edible plants (camas, fern, wapato, cow parsnip) and many kinds of berries. Hunting, fishing and harvesting sites were owned by families or family groups, and could be used by others with permission. There were places around the Sound and along the Columbia River where many tribes would congregate in the summer to fish, trade, find marriage partners, and play games such as bone game (see Bone Game Objects: Importance of Song module).

Native lifeways

Native life before the arrival of Euro-Americans revolved around a social organization based on house groupings within a village. Each village had one or more cedar plank houses containing extended families. 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. While there was little political organization, the highest-ranking male would assume the role of ceremonial leader.

Ceremonies and feasts occurred (and still do) for a number of reasons: to mark the coming of age of males and females, bestowing an ancestral name, at the time of marriage, and to attend to the dead. Because it was believed that each person had a life soul, it was a grave matter when a ritualist or Native doctor was called in to cure soul loss. Guardian spirits, the personal helper of a man or woman who had quested for such protection, were communally honored with songs and dances during the winter months. At the winter dance gatherings (which are intertribal) other business could be enacted as well, such as the passing down of family “heirlooms” (in the form of artworks, names, songs, etc.), the ritual cleansing of someone going through difficult times, or the “payback” from a spirit dancer to those who supported his or her initiation. In all cases, the ceremonies themselves are accompanied by feasting and gift-giving to acknowledge the importance of the visitors’ role as witnesses to the events.

Oral traditions

Important knowledge about all matters surrounding the past, present and future were transmitted via songs, stories and speeches, what we call “oral traditions.” [The terms story, myth or legend can be used synonymously, keeping in mind that there were many categories of these]. Unlike Euro-American culture that values objects or things as heirlooms, Puget Sound Native culture considered oral traditions its treasures and its wealth.

For some Puget Salish groups, it is believed that the song is the most primal of those traditions, and like the first cry of the newborn, is a linkage to a powerful primordial state. The song of the guardian spirit dancer invokes this elemental connection to the spirit world. Other types of songs were sung for social occasions or personal pleasure, such as welcome songs, table songs, canoe paddling songs, work songs, love songs and lullabies.

Origin stories are among the most cherished tribal possessions. They take place during a long-ago mythical age when beings had both human and animal qualities. This age came to an end with the coming of the Transformer (also called the Changer) who separated animals from humans and gave humans the rudiments of culture. Other types of myths tell of the origin of specific families and their ancestral villages and include references to still- recognizable landforms. Still other stories or legends present the histories of these specific tribes, and the important individuals and events that ensued over the ages, like our history books. Some origin stories and histories are epic in length and breadth, and would be told over the course of several days. The responsibility of remembering and preserving these was entrusted to tribal historians who kept all the stories within their memories. In addition, there are stories that impart knowledge about ethics, health and hygiene, proper behavior, ceremonial activities, and cultural philosophy. While there are individuals who were well-known for their story telling abilities, any adult could tell stories to their own children, within a larger social setting and, today, to large groups of non-Native people. However, there are restrictions about what stories can be told, and by whom, since some are considered private property. Bruce subiyay Miller has said that as a boy he would relish the visit of an elderly relative, arriving with their featherbed rolled up under their arm, coming to stay during the winter and tell stories by the firelight.

Native oratory and speech making is among the most eloquent of all the oral traditions, with some sought-after speakers being called upon to represent the host family during ceremonial activities. In general, speeches are not long soliloquies but rather carefully parsed and paced words that come from the heart. The best orators deliver the message directly, and with gestures and body movements that focus audience attention.

History

The prehistory of the Puget Sound region is still being understood but there is archaeological evidence for human occupation in the area nearly 10,000 years ago. Native legends locate the origin and existence of their tribes in specific places in the region, and not resulting from migrations across a Bering Sea land bridge. Recently, Natives have been involved in the archaeology and interpretation of items found in ancient sites and, in some cases, have developed tribal museums using these finds (http://www.squaxinisland.org/frames.html).

When one observes Native culture today, it is remarkable that beliefs and practices have endured the efforts to eradicate nearly all aspects of Native life. Two hundred years ago the ancestors of today’s Salish artists were carving monumental cedar house posts with images that made reference to the social and religious status of the families who lived within the house—their mythic beginnings, ancestral histories, spirit associations and ritual privileges. Ceremonial regalia, in the forms of masks, rattles, staffs and other special pieces, were visual manifestations of ideological and cosmological beliefs. At the same time, Salish women who specialized in the weaving of baskets and robes were transforming roots, grasses, bark and mountain goat wool into items of breathtaking richness and tangible wealth. The weavers’ penultimate skills and originality provided garments that protected new dance initiates, that formed marriage dowries for the high-ranking class, and that provided surplus wealth for the potlatch host to give as gifts, thus enlarging the family’s prestige for the duration of their lives and beyond. (A good source for art images and explanation is Robin Wright, ed. A Time of Gathering: Native Heritage in Washington State Seattle: Burke Museum and University of Washington Press, 1991.)

With the coming of the first outsiders, in 1792 when Captain George Vancouver entered the Puget Sound and Hood Canal, there was evidence that epidemic diseases had already arrived. Pre-epidemic population of the region has been estimated at more than 13,000, with counts in the 1850s of about 5,000 people—pointing up the devastating effects of contact. The first trading post was established in 1833, Fort Nisqually, followed closely by missionaries of various denominations. After the 1846 treaty that gave the region to the United States from Britain, American settlers arrived. Native-White conflicts over land and resources resulted in the ill-fated treaties of 1854 and 1855 which established several reservations and the loss of considerable Native land base from which to engage in subsistence activities of hunting, fishing and harvesting. Alongside these economic changes was the devastating oppression of language, art work, and ceremonies. By the 1850s most Puget Sound area Natives were involved in the non-Indian economy, selling firs, working in the hop fields, logging camps or canneries.

Beginning in the 1870s, Native children were sent to boarding schools in Washington and Oregon, to be reunited with their families only during the summer. The goal of the schools was to rid the children of connections to their culture and to assimilate them into mainstream, White-dominated society. The girls learned useful crafts such as knitting and sewing, while boys learned a trade. While some elders recall the good feelings of camaraderie with other Native children at the boarding schools, it is recognized that the boarding school era significantly compromised the understanding and transmission of age-old traditions. It has been said that the lowest point of Native culture was between the 1930s and 1960s after several generations had effectively been assimilated. After that time, cultural revitalization began to occur as a result of Native involvement in economic and political issues, such as the landmark fishing rights cases in the 1960s. Of course, some families and individuals held fast to traditions in spite of repression, and these have formed the wellspring from which current revivals of language, storytelling and art emanate.

Visual art

There is no word for “art” in the Salish language but the Lushootseed word xal (“to mark”) expresses the feeling of making a mark—of altering, changing or transforming what merely exists into something of sublime beauty and meaning. Some artists have said that the impetus “to make a mark” comes from the spirit and that they have to keep an open door to what the spirit wants them to share with the world. That is not to say that artists are merely agents of a higher power; their own ingenuity can be felt in the form of the work, in its contours, colors, designs, and in its overall expressive power.

Carvings and weavings were not experienced on their own in the past, and are not today. They are part of an ordered and comprehensive cultural totality, with enmeshed political, social, economic, and spiritual aspects. Visual arts are but one component of a web of creative expression that also includes oratory, dancing, singing and drama. One can certainly lament what has changed— and indeed, been lost—within the last two hundred years but the recent revivals of language, storytelling, canoe-making, carving and weaving, signal that this is indeed a time of rejuvenation.