Pentlatch
The Pentlatch or Puntletch are one of the Canadian First Nations in the province of British Columbia . Like the Comox and the Sechelt, they belong to the northern coastal Salish group. Their original name is no longer known, the current form is the Anglicized version of the name given to them by their neighbors, the Comox and Sechelt. They lived on the east coast of Vancouver Island , along the Strait of Georgia , and on the islands of Denman and Hornby. Their language, a dialect of north-central Salish , is believed to have been extinct since the 1940s. It was closely related to the Comox, similar to the language of the Sechelt. The Puntledge River derives its name from the Pentlatch.
history
- see History of the Coastal Salish
Although took Vancouver , Dionisio Alcalá-Galiano on (1792) and other explorers contact with them, but they were for the fur trade for lack of otter pelts uninteresting.
Around 1800 they lived between Kye Bay in the north and what is now Parksville. They were absorbed by their northern neighbors, the Comox, after severe smallpox epidemics and attacks by the Lekwiltok (they belonged to the Kwakwaka'wakw ) who lived further north . Hornby Island (off the east coast of Vancouver Island, still east of Denman Island ) was probably deserted as early as 1850. Around 1860, the Cowichan intervened in their area to gain the fishing rights to the Qualicum . George Drabble, who visited the area in 1862 on behalf of the province, still recorded villages on the coast and the Pentlatch village on Tsolum in his maps.
Besides fish and after 1800 also potatoes, the life and culture of the Pentlatch was based on Camas ( Camassia quamash ). There was also trade in the large Camas fruits, for example with the Nuu-chah-nulth .
Shortly after 1862, settlers buying the land for a dollar an acre ousted the few remaining pentlatches. If one estimates their number at around 300 people around 1700 to 1800, then around 1900 there were still 50. Their language died out after 1940. In 2005, 81 people referred to themselves as Pentlatch. They are part of the Kwaguilth / Pentlatch, Qualicum Band .
In the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria there are two Pentlatch totem poles (RBCM 2355, 2356) that were acquired in Nanaimo in 1912 . They come from the Comox area.
Remarks
- ↑ For classification cf. Linguistic Lineage for “Pentlatch” on ethnologue.org.
literature
- Franz Boas: Comparative Vocabularies of eight Salishan languages , 1900
- Sharon Denise Keen: The Growth Rings of Clam Shells from Two Pentlatch Middens as Indicators of Seasonal Gathering , 1976
- William C. Sturtevant (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Volume 7: Wayne Suttles (Ed.): Northwest Coast . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1990, ISBN 0-87474-187-4 .