Nooksack

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Traditional Nooksack territory and today's reserve

The Nooksack , officially the Nooksack Indian Tribe , are an Indian tribe living in the northwest of the US state of Washington , who culturally and linguistically belong to the coastal Salish of the northwest coast culture of the Pacific , whose residential area extends as far as Oregon .

The name Nooksack is an Anglicized their own name as Noxws'áʔaq or Nuxwsá7aq ( "always bracken fern roots" - "place where there is always roots of bracken are"), the name of Anderson Creek, a tributary of the Baker River and its estuary. The bracken was an important source of food for the Nooksack and neighboring tribes.

Their language, ɬəčələsəm / ɬəčælosəm or Lhéchelesem / Lhéchalosem , belongs to the Central Coast Salish (Central Coast Salish) of Salishan languages and is closely related to the Squamish / Skwxwu7mesh or Sḵwxwú7mesh snichim of Squamish (Skwxwu7mesh) and the Halkomelem . the Sháshíshálh / She Sháshíshálhem (šášíšáɬəm) the Sechelt (Shishalh) .

The reservation of today's Nooksack Indian Tribe covers 284.53 acres and is located near the town of Deming in western Whatcom County in northwest Washington. The number of tribesmen was 1,658 in 2007, today they count around 2,000 registered tribesmen according to their own information.

history

At least five millennia ago, the ancestors of the nooksack laid shallow nets in the river to catch Chinook , Coho and Chum salmon . For this they used spoon-nosed canoes made from Western Red Cedar .

About 450 Nooksack Indians, spread over 27 villages, lived in the valley of the Nooksack River. The largest villages were near today's Lynden (Squ-ha-lish) and Everson (Pop-a-homy and Kisk-a-well) at the fork of the river. The early nooksack built earth huts about four to four feet deep, over which they erected bark tipis. In the winter villages, however, long houses made of wooden planks dominated. Of the 28 ethnographically identifiable sites, only two have survived, one of which showed relics of whites.

During the spring and autumn fishing season, ten to twelve families shared a smokehouse on the river bank at the fishing sites. Phoebe Judson , founder of Lynden, wrote that the Nooksack believed "the spirit of the fish dwelt in its tail bones and returned to the salt water to lure the other salmon to their fishing grounds".

They hunted the mountain goats for their meat and fur and picked berries in mountain meadows. But mostly they ate fish, roots and bracken. The Nootsack also grew wild carrots (sbugmack) and were the first Indians in the area to cultivate potatoes, which they probably got from trappers from the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC).

Their main trading partners were the Sumas , Chilliwack and Matsqua . But they also traded with the Lummi and Semiahmoo people and the Skagit River tribes.

Contacts with fur traders and gold prospectors

The HBC had been dominant in what would later be Washington area since the 1820s. She set up several trading posts as central exchange points for the fur trade . A small post arose on Ten Mile Creek, on the Nooksack River. With the demarcation of the border in 1846 along the 49th parallel just north of the Nooksack, the area came to the USA, the HBC shifted its focus to Victoria on Vancouver Island .

Chief Jim Yellakanim, around 1898. He died in April 1911

In 1857 construction began on the Whatcom Trail , which followed a route called Nook-Sack Road and connected Bellingham with Everson. In 1858 gold diggers looked for the Nooksack and the Nooksack River on the way to the Fraser River in the east, but most of them moved on via Vancouver to the Fraser gold field . They were soon followed by settlers, first under the leadership of Colonel William Patterson, then in 1871 Holden and Phoebe Judson from Ohio came to Lynden, Phoebe named the place. A group of Nooksack lived where Lyndens Stadtpark is now. There they also taught some of the Indian children in a rudimentary school, initially in their home. In 1886, the Northwest Normal School was established , the predecessor of Western Washington University . Steam boats were already operating on the river in 1881. Holden Judson became the first mayor of the settlement, which was promoted to town in 1889. Around 1900 a wave of Dutch immigrants came to the area.

An incident in 1884 shows how tense the atmosphere at the border was. On February 24, an angry mob from Washington crossed the Canadian border and lynched 14-year-old Louie Sam, a member of the Stó: lō . He had been suspected of murdering shopkeeper James Bell in Nooksack (later Whatcom) County. The Sto: lo had handed the boy over to the police in good faith. The Deputy of British Columbia could not stop, hang him on a tree on the border of the mob. A Canadian investigation team found that he was innocent and that two of the lynchers themselves murdered the shopkeeper.

Reserve policy and tribe recognition

The Nooksack never signed a deal with Washington, nor were they ever asked. So they weren't even considered tribe . In 1873 an attempt was made to move the Nooksack to the Lummi reservation . But since there were no linguistic or family ties, the tribesmen gradually moved back to their old areas. In the mid-1930s, the tribe voted on the adoption of the Wheeler-Howard Act , which provided for the establishment of a tribal constitution. But the Nooksack were not recognized as a tribe by the Bureau of Indian Affairs because they had no land ownership. Even so, they received redress of exactly $ 1,858 for their expropriation in 1958 . In 1971 it was finally recognized as a tribe.

At the end of the 19th century, the Nooksack River flowed in the estuary through the channel of the short Lummi River into Lummi Bay, located in the northwest of Bellingham Bay. Around 1900 driftwood (probably the logging company) clogged the canal to Lummi Bay, so that the river had to move its bed. This created today's delta, which formed a new coastline.

Around this time the children of the tribe were forced to attend a boarding school where they were forbidden from using their language.

The struggle for land rights

In 1973 the tribe acquired an area of ​​exactly 1.23 acres (4,977 m²). Gradually he was able to enlarge the reserve to around 10 km².

The Deputy Minister of the Interior approved the Nooksack Constitution on September 24, 1973. The original land ownership consisted of numerous individual land grants. Most families are dispersed across the country, although there is a small community on the outskirts of Everson town. The Nooksack tribe has continuously resided in the current area, which has been granted public domain.

The tribal area was proclaimed their reservation by the Secretary of Indian Affairs on November 20, 1984 . This added an additional acre to the reservation. Today the tribe owns a land base of 2,744 acres (approx. 11.1 km² - leased or as trust land ) and two urban properties near Deming. The actual reserve is 284.53 acres .

Like many Indian tribes in the USA, the Nooksack also operate a casino , the Nooksack River Casino . There is also a supermarket . In 2007 Northwood Casino opened on East Badger Road in Lynden.

Current situation

Brent Galloway has been working on a dictionary of the Nooksack language, which is one of the Salish languages, since 1974. But it has been extinct since around 1988. Galloway co-founded the Halkomelem Language Program at the Coqualeetza Education Training Center in Sardis ( Chilliwack ), British Columbia.

A monthly newsletter has been published since 2004, which also contains a small number of words.

Since 2007 the tribe has been pushing a salmonid recovery plan to restore the fish habitats and their surroundings.

The Nooksack Housing Authority manages 140 cooperative and 7 rental apartments. There are also some tribesmen who work as fishermen and lumberjacks. The Northwest Indian College has set up a branch office. The Nooksack medical and dental clinic and a pharmacy take care of the tribe members.

In 2000, 547 people lived in the Nooksack reservation, of which 373 were traced back to Native American ancestors. In 2007 there were exactly 1,658 members.

literature

  • Wayne Suttles (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Volume 7: Northwest Coast. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1990 ISBN 0-87474-187-4
  • Richard W. Emmons: An Archaeological Survey in the Lower Nooksack Valley. Anthropology of British Columbia 3 (1952), pp. 49-50.
  • Robert H. Ruby, John A. Brown: A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1992, pp. 152-154.

Web links

See also

Remarks

  1. ^ "Whatcom" is the twisted version of the name of a Nooksack chief.
  2. ↑ To: An American mob crosses the Canadian border and lynches 14-year-old Louie Sam, a member of the Sto: lo tribe, on February 24, 1884 , HistoryLink.org .
  3. ↑ According to their own information here .