Lower Skagit tribe

The Lower Skagit, even Whidbey Iceland Skagit or simply Skagit, are a living in the northwest of the State of Washington Indian tribe. Their traditional territory lay in the middle part of Whidbey Iceland and the northern tributary of the Chehalis.

Life and culture

Like all coastal Salish also led the Lower Skagit, seasonal migration by a function of vegetation cycles and increased volume of salmon and game. This change of location meant that only in winter permanent homes were purchased, which are known as plank houses. With their canoes they ran trade along the coasts, but on this trade they carried also European diseases such as smallpox.

John Work, an employee of the Hudson 's Bay Company, describes the Skagit before 1861 as a friendly, good-looking people who flattened their heads compared to the Chinook only very slightly. Also, they were just little clothed, usually in spring or fur clothing.

Relations with the groups who lived on the upper Skagit, were less closely, however, there were close relations with the Noo - wha -ha that are not recognized today as a tribe.

The traditional territory of the Lower Skagit comprised some 50,000 acres on Whidbey Iceland and another 6,000 acres on the mainland (together about 228 km ²), more precisely on the Skagit Bay from the mouth of Brown's Slough to the north of the mouth of the Skagit Nordarms.

Language

The Lower Skagit speak a dialect of the south-western coastal Salish, the Lushootseed. On the Skagit River two linguistic groups adjacent to each other, on the one hand the Straits Salish North - including the Klallam, Lummi, Samish and Semiahmoo - and on the other the Lushootseed, which include the Lower Skagit, Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Swinomish and Upper Skagit include the.

The Lushootseed is one of the polysynthetic languages. It is rich in consonants and has a half times as many sounds as a European language.

History

As early as 6500 BC can be human life at the Skagit River prove accurate in today's Ross Lake National Recreation Area. In this reserve trees are still numerous escaped the logging, so that so-called Culturally Modified Trees, so let through human intervention modified trees, prove, show the Indian wear. In about 1800 m altitude IC Franck in 1989 found a tree with such traces back to 1853, together with a storage bin.

In the 18th and in the first half of the 19th century suffered the Lower Skagit under raids of the northern tribes who came from the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska down, but quarreled with the Klallam to country.

When the British in 1827 established Fort Langley on the Fraser River as a trading post, and the Lower Skagit took the trade on with them. 1833 founded the Hudson 's Bay Company Fort Nisqually on the southern Puget Sound, which was located much closer to the Lower Skagit.

In the early 1840s, Catholic priests began the missionary work among the Skagit. When in 1853 their chief S'neet - lum died, so says the ethnologist George Gibbs, the Skagit had lost much of its former prestige.

Given the fact that the tribe had the rush of settlers oppose little, chief Goliah signed on January 22, 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott. The 300 tribal members were assigned to the Tulalip Agency and had to move to the Swinomish Reserve by executive order of September 9, 1873. The descendants of this group have been merged in the Swinomish Tribe.

The authorities referred to the various local groups (villages ) and tribes ( tribes ), although the boundaries were not as clear-cut as is often assumed. The many villages were on the one hand to each other in a close family relationship, such that individuals often belonged to two groups about their parents and. Above their grandparents correspondingly more groups On the other hand, they also formed lasting alliances under a common chief. One of them, Satbabutkin, led the combined Skagit and Samish in the area around the place Concrete. He was also the son of the Noo - wha -ha - chief Pateus whose trunk was probably destroyed by the first smallpox epidemic on the Pacific coast. Pateus again lived in Bay View to the east of the Padilla Bay opposite the town of Anacortes.

For the 1855 abandoned land of the tribe had originally received only $ 25,331.50. His former value was estimated 120 years later to $ 100,188. The difference was paid to the Skagit after a decision of the Indian Claims Commission of 13 October 1971.

The descendants of the Lower Skagit are now merged into the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community on the Swinomish Reservation in Washington State.