Swinomish
The Swinomish are an American Indian tribe living in Washington State . Their original residential area was at the mouth of the Skagit River and on the northern part of Whidbey Island . Today the tribe is made up of descendants of the Samish , Kikyalus , Lower Skagit and their own tribe. Its reserve is about 100 kilometers north of Seattle and covers almost 32 km². When crossing the bridges to Whidbey Island you pass the northern border of the reserve. In 2000 it had 2,664 inhabitants, of which, however, more than three quarters did not belong to the tribe.
The Swinomish speak a dialect of the southwestern coastal Salish , the Lushootseed .
history
Like all coastal Salish , the Swinomish carried out seasonal migrations depending on salmon, game and vegetation cycles. This meant that permanent houses, known as plank houses, were only moved into in winter. With their canoes they traded along the coasts, but through this trade they also brought in European diseases such as smallpox .
Like their neighbors on Puget Sound and Juan de Fuca Street , the Swinomish kept white and black-brown dogs as wool suppliers, which were even kept separate from the other dogs on an island. They developed weaving frames and their own weaving technology between 800 and 1500 AD at the latest. The dog also plays an important role in mythology . The dog of a chief's son and shaman became the mother of the people through spiritual transformation, which in turn was created by sowing stones on the earth.
The area of the Swinomish, which the Europeans counted to the Lower Skagit , included the mouth of the Skagit and the central and northern part of Whidbey Island. In addition, there was the east of Fidalgo Island and the mainland around Swinomish Slough , possibly Camano Island as an area of the Lower Skagit, probably the Snohomish. All the islands in Similk Bay and Skagit Bay belonged to the traditional Swinomish area, including Hope, Skagit, Kiket, Goat and Ika, as well as Smith Island off the west coast of Whidbey Island and Hat Island in Padilla Bay . The Squinomish living in the delta and in the estuary of the Skagit formed a kind of buffer zone to the Lower Skagit.
Europeans
With the arrival of the Europeans, wool production, which did not compete with the machine-woven fabrics, collapsed. With this, one of the products that were important for large-scale trade also disappeared.
Whidbey Island was named by George Vancouver after Joseph Whidbey , who was the first to visit Whidbey and Camano Island . He told Vancouver about the residents of Penn Cove: “At every point in the harbor ... was an abandoned village; in one of them we found several tombs, just like a sentry box ”. Vancouver estimated that the island's population exceeded the total number of residents sighted to date. The rest of the Puget Sound was nowhere near as densely populated. The island probably had well over 1,500 inhabitants.
In 1844, Father Blanchet, who was traveling as a Catholic missionary in the area, reported about the cultivation of potatoes that the inhabitants of the island had taken over from the Europeans. He met the Skagit chief Snakelum in Penn Cove. In 1845, as part of a US research expedition , Charles Wilkes confirmed the large number of inhabitants, as well as the cultivation of potatoes on 3 to 4 acres , and that of beans. There were also Camassia quamash and bracken (bracken fern). He also describes a palisade against the slave hunters coming from the north, probably the Haida , Kwakwaka'wakw and Tlingit .
reserve
With the Donation Land Law of 1850, with which every new settler in the Oregon Territory was offered land, settlers came to the area of the Skagit or Swinomish. Within three years, Central Whidbey was divided. One of the first settlers called the island "almost a paradise of nature". But as early as 1857 he fell victim to one of the attacks by the northern slave hunters - in revenge for the killing of one of their chiefs.
A reservation was made in the Treaty of Point Elliott of January 22, 1855. In the contract, the name of the signing chief is the "sub-chief" "S'kwai-kwi", who is now called Squi Qui and who lived from 1816 to around 1874. At that time, only around 150 to 200 Swinomish were expected. The northern border defined an Executive Order of September 9, 1873. It should be used by the Suiattle , Skagit and Kikiallus and is known as the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community . The reservation is located in Skagit County and covers about 16 km² on a peninsula of Fidalgo Island in Puget Sound near the city of La Conner.
In 1884 whites burned down a village with eight large Sauk-Suiattle longhouses . Many of them then came to the Swinomish reservation.
The struggle for recognition and land rights
In 1884 three quarters of the reserve residents lived from agriculture and the timber industry, only a quarter followed the traditional lifestyle based on hunting and gathering. In 1909 there were 268 Swinomish, in 1937 there were 285. In 1985 there were 624 again.
Until 1934 the government pursued a program of dissolving the tribes into individuals, and a complete adaptation to the American way of life and the prevailing culture until the 1960s. That began to change in 1934. The tribe was organized under the Indian Reorganization Act . The state bylaws, constitution, and tribal laws were adopted by the tribe in 1935 and approved by the home secretary in 1936. The government has since consisted of the eleven-member Swinomish Indian Senate , whose members are elected every five years.
An important milestone in the revival of the Swinomish culture was the establishment of a tribal center, which was completed in August 1964. In addition, efforts were made from 1976 through the Skagit System Cooperation to protect and expand the fish stocks. This resulted in a particularly close collaboration with the Skagit and Sauk-Suiattle.
On July 6, 1972, the Swinomish received $ 29,000 in compensation because the treaty of 1855 stipulated far too low compensation for the abandoned area. In 1974 the Swinomish were granted their contractual fishing rights through the Boldt judgment - in contrast to the Samish, Duwamish , Snohomish and Steilacoom, which were not yet recognized as a tribe at the time .
Current situation
By 2000 there were 778 enrolled tribal members and the Native American population in or near the reservation was approximately 1,000, plus a large number of non-Native Americans. The Indian inhabitants consider themselves to be descendants of the Swinomish, but also the Skagit and the Samish .
The reserve is on a small peninsula on Upper Puget Sound . Most of the reserve residents live in a small community on the Swinomish Slough, a narrow stream that forms the reserve's eastern border. The land is partly in trust, partly with restricted status. Other parts belong to the tribe or are leased by non-Indians. Today the Swinomish Tribe owns around 4% of the reserve area and around 2,900 acres of the tidal flats. 50% of the land is owned by Indians, of which 20% are leased to non-Indians.
Some of the land has been cleared and the remainder is woodland with recent growth. The tribe is the most important employer in the reserve and operates a fish farm. The largest companies are a casino , the Northern Lights Casino , a fish processing facility (including a cold store) and its own waterworks, plus a gas station. A marina is to be built in the north of the reserve, near Highway 20.
The tribal administration employs nearly 100 people (including social services and property management). The Northwest Indian College offers classes via satellite and Internet for tribesmen, and the tribe has also its own training program. Together with the Upper Skagit, a hospital and a dental clinic for tribesmen are operated (Swinomish-Upper Skagit Health and Dental Clinic).
In addition to cultural activities ( Gathering of Wisdom ), the tribe also takes part in the salmon rescue program on the Skagit River. A cultural center and a museum are still being planned. There is now Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve , which deals with archaeological exploration in addition to natural history. Penn Cove has the largest find to date.
As early as 1901 and 1907, three clam mountains (shell middens) and two burial sites (cairn sites) were recognized on the island. But it was not until the early 1950s that Alan Bryan of the University of Washington carried out the first archaeological excavations, followed by campaigns in Penn Cove in the late 1970s. After the turn of the millennium, an excavation followed at Oak Harbor. In the meantime, 35 important sites are known at the Historical Resort, 34 of them at Penn Cove. In 1977 and 1980 the planned construction of a marina and the expansion of a road (State Route 20) forced emergency excavations. The drier hinterland shows few finds so far, but has hardly been explored. Accidental finds and private collections nevertheless indicate intensive use.
literature
- Robert H. Ruby / John A. Brown: A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest , University of Oklahoma Press 1992, p. 230f., Or to p. 233
- Wayne Suttles (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Volume 7: Northwest Coast. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1990. ISBN 0-87474-187-4
See also
Web links
- Swinomish Indian Tribal Community
- Swinomish Northern Lights Casino
- The Swinomish Experience. Past, Present, and Future
Remarks
- ↑ Swinomish Indian loom piece discovered in 1985, in: Skagit River Journal, digital: [1] .
- ^ George Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World , Vol. 2, London 1801, 167.
- ↑ At the end of 2009 the city council of Coupeville discussed whether a new ferry should be named after him. From 2010 a ferry from Coupeville, which will be called Chetzemoka , will operate according to another Indian leader ( Keystone-Port Townsend's newest ferry: The 'Squi Qui'?, In: Whidbey News-Times, November 30, 2009 ( memento of the original dated Sept. December 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ).
- ^ Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve The Land, The People, The Place: An Introduction to the Inventory .
