Mitchell Bay Band of San Juan Islands
The Mitchell Bay Band of San Juan Islands is one of the non- Indian tribe groups in Washington state that the United States government does not recognize . They are sometimes mistakenly recognized by the state, but according to the 2008 Governor's Office of Indian Affairs there are no state-recognized tribes.
The Mitchell Bay are descendants of coastal Salish groups who lived for generations on the San Juan Islands and mainland opposite Vancouver Island . The name appears for the first time in 1919 to designate a settlement on the bay of the same name on the island of San Juan Island in the northwest.
history
Oral tradition says that their village of Taleqamus goes back to Songhees ; it was to the west of San Juan Island. Other Songhish villages can be found archaeologically at Open Bay on Henry Island, at Garrison and Wescott Bay on San Juan Island. The remains of a village were also found on the latter island opposite Spieder Island.
The so-called Pig War ( Pig War ) to the exact boundary between the US and Canada was held 1859 to 1872 mainly due to the San Juan Islands. The Mitchell Bay stayed out of the conflict and dealt with representatives of both states. With the onset of the Fraser Canyon gold rush , more white people came to the island after 1858. Mitchell Bay's numbers fell to 181 by 1919, and to little more than 100 by 1980.
In 1919 Charles Roblin, who was commissioned by the Office of Indian Affairs from 1916 to 1918 to compile a survey of the scattered Indians in the region, named the residents of the bay for the first time as the Mitchell Bay Band .
Their livelihood has always been fishing. Therefore, they fight for state recognition, because the fish rights depend on it. In 1982 the Home Office recognized them as a "group" of Indians similar to the "San Juan Island Indians".
With Docket 214 she made an attempt to gain recognition in 1957, but the Indian Claims Commission rejected it on the grounds that most of them had ancestors of the Lummi and the Samish , so their proceedings were added to those of the two tribes.
The group exhibited a certain instability well into the 1980s, especially since Canadian coastal Salish were part of it.
literature
- Robert H. Ruby / John A. Brown: A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest , University of Oklahoma Press 1992, p. 133.
Web links
- Governors Office of Indian Affairs (Washington)
Remarks
- ^ For example, David E. Wilkins: American Indian Politics and the American Political System , Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2007, p. 27.