Inland Salish
The inland Salish , a group of Native American ethnic groups in North America, belong to the Salish language family , but culturally belong to the groups of the hinterland of British Columbia , Washington , Oregon , Idaho and Montana . This distinguishes them from the coastal Salish , who belong to the same language family, but have a completely different traditional way of life.
The four main groups of the inland Salish are the St'at'imc , the Nlaka'pamux (formerly Thompson), the Okanagan - Colville and the Secwepemc , who live on the plateau , one of the North American cultural areas . These are the high plateaus of the Fraser and Columbia Rivers .
The Salish were named after the incorrectly referred to as the flat head Indians in the narrower sense of the word. This designation extended to the groups related to them linguistically and kinship.
history
The inland Salish followed annual migration cycles to get their staple foods according to availability. They lived on the fish of the rivers, on berries and game, but also moved upstream to the plateau, where they mainly found roots. Most inland Salish were sedentary in winter, living in houses sunk into the ground called pit houses . The most important fishing spot was the Kettle Falls , where numerous groups of the Salish gathered every year to use the spawning trains of the salmon for fishing.
Some groups took over the horse as early as the 18th century and transformed themselves into equestrian nomads , whose tail area reached into the grasslands east of the Rocky Mountains . As a result, they came into conflict with the Blackfoot , who also hunted bison .
Early history
In the west it was probably at least until 9000 BC. Settlement dating back to BC was superimposed by the early plateau culture . It is unclear whether it was immigration via the Fraser River or from inland - a corpse from Gore Creek (valley of the Southern Thompson River not far from Kamloops ), about 8,500 years old, indicates this, because it has characteristics of the typical diet there. In Winthrop in Washington found human remains dating from around 7000 v. BC, as their descendants are the later Methow . Establishing cultural links to these early discoveries is difficult, however. The Drynock Slide Site may show traces of salmon fishing (c. 5500 BC). Immigration from the coast may have started around 4250 BC. A.
The Middle Plateau Culture , to which today's Salish can be related, developed around 2500 BC. The Pit House , a kind of pit house . It enabled a more extensive and better secured stockpiling. The diet increasingly shifted to salmon. The most important cultural change is the transition from being sedentary to being semi-sedentary. Around 2000 BC Fixed winter villages and summer hiking cycles arose, according to the hunting and collecting requirements, as well as the touching of points with high ritual significance. The Vallican Heritage Site , a large village with a burial site in the northern area of the Sinixt, proves the early existence of complex societies as early as 3000 BC. The houses had a diameter of up to 20 m.
The late plateau culture was characterized by its small size. Supplies were laid out in holes in the ground, hot stones were used to prepare food by boiling, and salmon now provided most of the nutritional value. Zoomorphic carvings appear to have increased. Trade with the coastal peoples was mainly carried out through the middle Fraser and Thompson, as well as the Columbia. The population increased, and some of the large villages were continuously inhabited for over a thousand years (e.g. Keatly Creek Site ).
The bow and arrow appeared very late. A society developed based on family associations, cross-tribal relationships and hierarchization, but less strictly than on the coast. Access to resources depended on reputation, which was becoming increasingly hereditary.
Across the rivers and along the coast, the western tribes, such as the Chelan , took part in the trade with the coastal tribes, which was expanded by the appearance of the Europeans from around 1811. Some tribes even preferred to move closer to the coast in order to be able to participate preferentially in the trade around the forts of the European trading companies.
Conflicts with other equestrian nomads
The Flathead may have come into conflict with bison hunters in the 18th century while migrating east of the Rocky Mountains . The Blackfoot , or Blackfeet as they are called in the US, drove them back across the mountain range to western Montana (others attribute this to a smallpox epidemic ). It is certain that their chief Cheleskayimi ("Three Eagles") met the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1805. The two Americans noted that the Flathead had around 500 horses. The horses had probably taken over from the Shoshone .
The Flathead succeeded not only in taking over and developing horse breeding from the Plains Indians, but also in maintaining a kind of buffer zone between the Salish tribes in the west and the equestrian nomads in the east. They acted as dealers and intermediaries.
The Blackfoot launched massive attacks in the 1850s, including west of the Rocky Mountains, which reduced the number of Flathead to 300 to 400. At the same time, the Sinixt came under pressure from their neighbors, the Kutenai or Ktunaxa, who in turn were pushed westward by the Blackfoot. After lengthy fighting, the tribes of Sinixt, Kalispel , Flathead , Coeur d'Alene , Spokane , Nez Perce and others formed an alliance against the Blackfoot.
Epidemics
However, it was not these battles that caused the region's populations to collapse. It was epidemics that hit the southernmost and easternmost Salish groups first. This was especially true of smallpox . The first contact of the southernmost group, the Tillamook , occurred perhaps in 1788, although iron knives and pockmarks indicated an even earlier encounter, perhaps in 1775, when a severe pox epidemic broke out on the Pacific coast .
In 1781 the first smallpox epidemic (possibly two) broke out, from which the Sinixt further east were particularly hard hit. It may have killed 80% of the tribe. The cartographer David Thompson noted yet in 1811, numerous pockmarks. There were an estimated 5,000 Coeur d'Alene before the first epidemics, but in 1827 John Warren Dease (1783–1829), an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company , estimated the number to be only 400. The Flathead, Spokane, and Coeur d ' Alene suffered a "major illness" from 1807 to 1808, but it was not until the epidemic of 1853 that it was possible to say with certainty that it was smallpox.
Epidemics such as measles , syphilis , smallpox and other diseases, but also weapons and alcohol, drastically reduced the Tillamook population in the 1830s. In 1806 Lewis and Clark had estimated their number at 2,200, in 1841 there were around 400 of them.
Researchers, cartographers, traders
With the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1805, the first news came from the Indian tribes in the extreme northwest to the capital Washington .
Despite the recurring epidemics, most groups returned to trade with the Europeans. As with the neighboring groups, the Flathead acted with the whites. They were mainly interested in furs . To this end, the North West Company built a trading post called Saleesh House in 1809 , later the Flathead Post (until around 1855). The British fur traders tried to prevent the Flathead from trading with the Americans coming from the east. Shortly before Saleesh House , Kullyspell House was built on Lake Pend Oreille in what is now northern Idaho for the same purpose .
The first Hudson's Bay Company employee to appear in what is now Spokane's area was David Thompson in 1807 . In the years that followed, the fur trade was very profitable, with the Company buying pounds worth 11,000 pounds of skins from the Fort Colville area alone . Fort Colville quickly became the shopping center for furs offered by the Indians, in accordance with the HBC's everywhere trade strategy. Around 1840 the fort was trading around 18,000 pelts a year.
Missionaries
Missionaries came to the inland Salish even before the fur traders. Iroquois played an important role in this. Shining Shirt, possibly an Iroquois, came to the Flathead as a missionary in the 18th century - apparently even before they had horses. Several Iroquois followed and they announced the arrival of white teachers in black dresses. They stayed because they did not want to return to their homeland after 1815 as agents of the British. Under their leader, Old Ignace La Mousse, a group of two dozen Iroquois came to the Flathead in 1820, and they gained considerable influence. In the 1830s, under the leadership of these Iroquois, already strongly assimilated to the Flathead, several delegations asked to send missionaries to St. Louis . The Jesuit Pierre-Jean De Smet came to them in 1841 and founded a mission station in the lower Bitterroot Valley . At the same time they proselytized among the enemy, the Blackfoot. In doing so, however, they disappointed the Flathead, who viewed the missionaries' religion as a kind of medicine against their enemies when hunting bison.
In 1837 the first Jesuit missionaries came to Kettle Falls and in 1845 they built a mission station with the help of the Sinixt and Colville . In 1842, De Smet and two other missionaries built a first church among the Coeur d'Alene.
Protestant missionaries arrived in Lapwai , Idaho around 1838 under Reverend Henry Spalding of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions . This organization was founded as the first foreign mission of the USA in 1812 and campaigned against the expulsion of the Indians from the areas east of the Mississippi (see Path of Tears ). After the Whitman massacre of 1847, the Protestant missionary efforts were initially broken off. From the Kettle Falls, the missionaries extended their missionary work to the Sanpoil from 1853 and vaccinated them against smallpox. However, one of the missionary groups from the Kettle Falls brought the smallpox up the Columbia, whereupon the Sanpoil renounced the baptism and no longer went to the mission station at the waterfalls.
The denominations later had an impact on the composition of the reservation residents. Methow , some Spokane and Sanpoil professed the Protestant denomination and should therefore get a reservation separate from the Catholic tribes. In addition, the missionaries did not tolerate mixed confessional marriages, so that kinship lines were torn along the confessional lines.
Border between British territory and the USA (from 1846)
With the Border Treaty of 1846, with which the 49th parallel became the border between the USA and the British part of North America , the Hudson's Bay Company withdrew to Victoria and gave up Fort Vancouver . At the same time, some tribal areas were cut up by the new border. In many cases, important goals of the annual hiking cycles were difficult to achieve. The Sinixt immediately decided to stay at the Kettle Falls and not wander far into Canada. State and denominational boundaries endangered the extensive family relationship.
Gold finds in Canada (from 1858) and in the USA, wars
The Fraser Canyon gold rush had catastrophic consequences for the Indians in the region from 1858 onwards. Thousands of prospectors moved north and brought in smallpox again in 1862 . Entire villages between Washington and Alaska died as a result. During the Fraser Canyon War , the Sinixt allied themselves with the Nlaka'pamux . The Xaxl'ip negotiated in Lillooet in 1865 with representatives of the British colonial government. Oral agreements were made ( “one third” agreement ). This "one-third agreement" was intended to grant each of the warring parties involved the right to claim one third of the area's resources.
In 1884 the Cayoosh Gold Rush followed , which got its name from the site near Lillooet. These areas were soon exploited by larger exploration companies such as the Bralorne Pioneer Gold Mine , Canada's richest gold mine (operated from 1887 to 1971).
After the end of the California gold rush , the immigration of white settlers in US territory to the Spokane area increased sharply before 1860. The Coeur d'Alene and their neighboring tribes formed a defense alliance with the Spokane, smaller groups of Yakama , Kalispel and Palouse ( Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Paloos War , Yakima-War , also Spokane War and Coeur d'Alene War ). In May 1858, around 1,000 Coeur d'Alene, Spokane, Yakama, Palouse and Northern Paiute attacked 164 soldiers of the US Army. A larger force of 600 soldiers and some Nez Perce - Scouts defeated on 1 September 1858, the barely 500 Indians ( Battle of Four Lakes ). Not a single soldier lost his life in the process.
Eclectic religions
A preacher named Slaybebtkud had first preached after 1850 against the smallpox and evil that the whites would bring. Another, also a member of the Upper Skagit, named Haheibalth, preached in the 1960s and 1970s. Similar to the Indian Shaker Church of John Slocum among the coastal Salish, a Christian-Indian mixed religion, the Dreamer religion , developed from 1872 to 1889 primarily through a preacher named Skolaskin . Skolaskin believed in the near end of the world and taught a new ethic, especially among the San Poil and Nespelem. He banned dance, fought alcohol consumption, gambling and all expressions of vanity. The faces were not allowed to be painted on Sundays. He trained missionaries and traveled down the Columbia himself. He claimed to have traveled to the hereafter and to have been saved by God. (see also: "Prophet's Dance" of the plateau cultures )
Reserves and treaty policy (until 1874 and 1883)
The United States had a different Indian policy than Canada. They were less guided by the construction of firmly established Indian tribes, each of which was assigned a reservation, but often brought together different groups, even if they were neither culturally nor linguistically related, in large reservations away from the settlements of the white Americans. The resettlements primarily served the interests of the settlers.
The Washington Territory was established in 1853 and the War Department decided in 1859 to build a military post northeast of what is now Colville. In 1854, a reservation was established for the Colville and other tribes in the region. The government wanted to ensure that enough land for the expected settlers was free. This immigration culminated in the Yakima War from 1856 to 1859. On April 9, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant ordered the establishment of a reservation, the Colville Indian Reservation .
Another major attempt was the so-called Moses Reservation . On Rock Island around 1811 the Sinkiuse -Kawachen sat under Sulktalthscosum. He died fighting bison hunting around 1850. His son Quiltenenock, who was killed in 1858 by gold prospectors near the mouth of the Wenatchee , followed as chief . He was followed by his Protestant brother Moses. After initial fighting he kept his men from hostility and took over the leadership of several tribes that had not signed a treaty with the United States. Their number was estimated at around 1000. On April 19, 1879, this confederation received a reservation called the Moses Reservation . In 1880 it reached from Lake Chelan to the Canadian border and from the Cascade Range to the Okanogan River . However, under pressure from the settlers, the reserve was dissolved on July 7, 1883. During the whole time the Moses group did not live in the reservation, but lived in the Colville reservation and only received taxes from the white settlers.
The Confederate Tribes of the Colville today as Confederate Tribes of the Colville Reserve Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation called, were formally recognized in 1872 as a tribe. Within a few decades, the originally combined groups, such as the Sinixt or the Chelan, disappeared in the new large association.
Other treaties were signed, such as the Hell Gate Treaty, but in 1874 Congress ended its treaty policy. The General Allotment Act of 1887 was intended to privatize the reserved land , which had previously been the common property of the tribes.
The summary of the Indians served the overarching goal of "civilizing" the "savages". The settlement and extermination of the bison had destroyed important foundations of their culture in order to make them farmers and ranchers. They should be integrated into western culture. This also applied to the reserves, which were dissolved and sold privately over decades in a complicated process. The fact that the mostly small tribes, which were very impoverished, gradually sold their property in the process, was due to the systematics of the economic system that was unfamiliar to them.
Obstruction and destruction of traditional ways of life
But the Indians stuck to their traditions, even if their livelihoods were increasingly narrowed and destroyed. With the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam from 1933, the Kettle Falls as the central fishing ground of the inland Salish were finally destroyed.
The Canadian Salish fared similarly. The British Columbia Game Act , a hunting law, banned the tribes from hunting in 1898. In 1960 the Bridge River was dammed and its water was diverted to Seton Lake (Tsal'álh). With this, the salmon population essential for the St'at'imc collapsed. In 1975 officials from the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans destroyed numerous fishing nets and 53 Lil'wat were arrested. In 1913 the Pacific Great Eastern Railway was built right through the St'át'imc area. Where the Shalalth and Seton Portage live today, the best land was confiscated.
The Indians were just as little involved in the profits from the raw materials as in those from energy production. In 1917, for example, the Sekw'el'was chief Jean Baptiste demanded compensation and tried to enforce this in court with the help of lawyers. But in 1927 the Canadian government forbade all indigenous peoples to spend money on legal representation. In 1927, the Bridge River Power Project began , now operated by BC Hydro . It is one of the largest Canadian projects and consists of three reservoirs.
resistance
In 1915, Xaxl'ip chief Thomas Adolph wrote to the Department of Indian Affairs that the railroad was destroying their country, and he asked for compensation and protection. In 1916 a first delegation of the newly formed Indian Rights Association traveled to Ottawa to bring legal action against the alienation, as Joe Capilano had done ten years earlier when he had traveled to London . It was not until 1979 that the Indians' fishing rights were recognized by a court. In the same year, the Indians were able to prevent a deforestation on Mount Currie by the Canadian Forest Products Company .
Continuing their call for independence and self-government, the St'át'imc Chiefs Council founded the Lillooet Tribal Peacekeepers Commission and the Lillooet Tribal Peacekeepers Force in 1988 . That same year, Chief Leonard Andrew traveled to New Zealand to dissuade the Fletcher Challenge Company from deforestation in the Stein Valley . In 1990 another 63 people were arrested during road blockades against land expropriation. In solidarity with the Mohawk ( Oka crisis ), a hundred St'át'imc blocked the railroad at Seton Portage for a hundred days . Around 100 Indians were arrested here. In February 1991 they blocked another road, this time against logging by International Forest Products Ltd. As is so often the case with forest areas, it was also about holy places and rock drawings ( petroglyphs ). The tribe protested at the International Court of Justice against the government's actions . In 1993 the Lil'wat and Nlaka'pamux had their first success, because the later Stein Valley Nlaka'pamux Heritage Park was placed under protection.
The Delgamuukw Decision recognized in principle the right of the indigenous people to have a say , with which the Supreme Court of Canada decided at the same time that for British Columbia, even with the annexation to Canada in 1871, the rights of the indigenous people had never been extinguished, and they therefore continue to exist. In addition, several court rulings held that the indigenous people have the right to introduce their children to their particular culture, of which the territory is an integral part. Therefore, every decision that affects this country must be consulted with the tribe concerned. In 1997 the Supreme Court ruled that rights relate to rights to land, resources and the right to cultural traditions and political autonomy.
Todays situation
The inland Salish moved closer together and coordinated their resistance. They blocked the cross-border expansion plans on Melvin Creek through the Cayoosh Ski Resort project. These expansion plans were related to the 2010 Winter Olympics . The operators were already in bitter disputes with the Secwepemc about a 70 million dollar expansion of the Sun Peaks Ski Resort near Kamloops . In 2002 the Indians officially complained to the International Olympic Committee .
In 2004, the Lillooet set up their own land use plan, in which not only economic, but also ecological and historical-cultural aspects are taken into account.
The Lost Valley (Slala'xen) is 10,000 hectares, the largest, never deforested area in the Cayoosh Range . There are numerous Culturally Modified Trees on an around 20 km long old trade route , trees that show signs of processing from the past centuries. They represent a kind of historical archive of the written epochs. In 2005, the British Columbia government nevertheless allowed the deforestation of extensive areas by BC Timber Sales without having even made contact with the Indians.
The tribes on the American side increasingly rely on the media public. With rezKast , the Coeur d'Alene launched a website in 2008 that is based on YouTube , but specializes in Indian content. In 2009, the operation of a radio station (KWIS FM 88.3) was approved and started. In 2009 it was one of 33 Indian stations in the USA.
literature
- Charles Hill-Tout : The Salish People , 4 volumes, Talonbooks, Vancouver 1978, ISBN 0-88922-148-0 , (of which on the inland Salish: Volume 1: The Thompson and the Okanagan , Volume 2: The Squamish and the Lillooet (Hill-Tout, 1858-1944, prepared his four-volume study of the Salish 1885-1911)).
- Arthur E. Pickford: Interior Salish , Province of British Columbia, Department of Education, Division of Curriculum, Victoria 1971 ( British Columbia heritage series : Series 1: Our native peoples 3, Social studies bulletin ).
Web links
- Interior Salish ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
See also
- History of the Coastal Salish
- History of Washington
- History of British Columbia
- History of Alberta
- United States Indian Policy
- List of Indian tribes recognized in Canada
Remarks
- ↑ This designation haunts non-ethnological literature to this day and is particularly widespread in popular depictions of the Wild West, including Lucky Luke . It can often be found in older German-language specialist literature.
- ↑ Guy E. Gibbon, Kenneth M. Ames: Archeology of prehistoric native America: an encyclopedia , Taylor & Francis, 1998, p. 118 and E. James Dixon: Bones, boats & bison: archeology and the first colonization of western North America , University of New Mexico 1999, 119f.
- ^ Nathan B. Goodale, William C. Prentiss, Ian Kuijt: Cultural Complexity: A New Chronology of the Upper Columbia Drainage Area , Complex Hunters-Gatherers. Evolution and Organization of Prehistoric Communities on the Plateau of Northwestern North America, University of Utah Press 2003.
- ↑ S. Table Central Columbia River Plateau Epidemic History
- ↑ On his journey see: Unit II: David Thompson's Columbia River Voyage , Pacific Northwest Journeys of Discovery, North Central Educational Service District's Pacific Northwest Journeys of Discovery Curriculum ( Memento of the original from November 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was used automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ^ Bralorne-Pioneer: Their Past Lives Here , Bralorne Pioneer Museum Gold Bridge, British Columbia.
- ↑ US Army defeats Native Americans at Battle of Four Lakes on September 1, 1858.
- ^ Robert H. Ruby, John Arthur Brown: Dreamer-Prophets of the Columbia Plateau: Smohalla and Skolaskin , University of Oklahoma Press 2002, p. 154.
- ^ Robert H. Ruby, John Arthur Brown: Dreamer-Prophets of the Columbia Plateau: Smohalla and Skolaskin , University of Oklahoma Press 2002, pp. 154ff.
- ↑ The complaint can be found here (PDF, 1.1 MB): Official Complaint by the Elders, Land Users and Native Yoth of Sutikalh and Skwelkwek'welt to the International Olympic Committee (PDF; 1.2 MB)
- ↑ The plan can be found here (PDF, 860 kB): St'át'imc Preliminary Draft Land Use Plan (PDF; 880 kB)
- ↑ See rezKast A Native video & music sharing site .
- ^ Tribe gets OK for radio station , January 9, 2009
