Sinkiuse

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The Sinkiuse (also Sinkiuse-Columbia or Middle Columbia Salish , as James Teit called them) are an Indian tribe in Washington . You live on the eponymous Columbia .

The Sinkiuse are culturally part of the inland Salish . Her closest relatives are the Wenatchi and Methow . They called themselves .tskowa'xtsEnux or .skowa'xtsEnEx or Sinkiuse. The latter should mean "between peoples".

history

The Sinkiuse lived on the east bank of the Columbia between Fort Okanogan and Point Eaton. They later lived on the Columbia Reservation .

James Mooney estimated their number to be around 800 in 1780, but suggested they, along with the Pisquow , numbered up to 10,000 before the first smallpox epidemics .

Teits distinguishes between three sub-tribes, the .nkee'us or .s.nkeie'usox in the Umatilla Valley , the Stata'ketux ​​around White Bluffs on Columbia, and the .tskowa'xtsEnux or .skowa'xtsFnEx, also Moses-Columbia or Moses Band called.

The first French traders called the Sinkiuse of Rock Island near Wenatchee "Isles des Pierres". They called themselves Kawatchens, "people from the banks". Another village was near Beverly.

According to the tradition of the Moses-Sinkiuse, their ancestors came from the north. Their tail region extended north to the Badger Mountains south of today's Waterville and east of Columbia, and north-east to what is now Grand Coulee Dam and from there south to Soap Lake, Ephrata and Moses Lake, from there to the Beverly area.

In July 1811, David Thompson , fur trader of the North West Company , met the Sinkiuse-Kawachen on Rock Island, whom he called "Sinkowarsin". Their leader was Sulktalthscosum or Half-Sun (half sun). He died in a fight with prairie Indians on the bison hunt around 1850. In 1851 the number of Sinkiuse was estimated at 300. Sulktalthscosum's son Quiltenenock or Quiltomee, who was killed in 1858 by white gold prospectors near the mouth of the Wenatchee , followed as chief. He was followed by his brother Moses, who got his biblical name from the missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission . They were sitting at Lapwai's in Idaho .

Moses, who initially fought the white settlers, kept his men from hostility and at the same time took over the leadership of several tribes that had not signed a treaty with the United States. The number of tribesmen has now been estimated at around 1000. On April 19, 1879, this confederation received a reservation called the Moses Reservation . On May 6, 1880, it was expanded southward and now reached from Lake Chelan to the Canadian border and from the Cascade Range to the Okanogan River . Under pressure from the settlers, a strip was cut off in the north, then the reserve was further reduced, and finally dissolved on July 7, 1883. On May 1, 1886, it was again public property. 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.

Around 1900 the number of Sinkiuses was estimated at 300 to 400, in 1910 only 52 were counted. In 1959 there were 94 “thoroughbred” Sinkiuses within the reservation, and 52 more outside. A small group can still be traced back to the Moses group today.

literature

  • Robert H. Ruby / John A. Brown: A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest , University of Oklahoma Press 1992, pp. 204-206.

Web links

See also

Remarks

  1. ↑ James Alexander Teit and Franz Boas: The Middle Columbia Salish , Seattle: University of Washington Press 1928
  2. ↑ On the smallpox epidemics, cf. Eugene S. Hunn, "N'CHI-WANA" (The Big River), Mid-Columbia Indians and Their Land , University of Washington Press, Seattle 1990, pp. 28-30.
  3. ↑ A photo can be found here .