Upper Skagit
The Upper Skagit are an Indian tribe living in the northwest of the US state Washington . Their original residential area was on the upper Skagit River and included ten villages. The name Skagit ("People Who Hide" - "people who hide") for the closely related Upper Skagit and Lower Skagit (Whidbey Island Skagit) stems from the fact that they repeatedly protect themselves from slave hunts by the mighty Haida upstream along the Skagit River from the north or the Klallam (S'Klallam) from the other side of Puget Sound. In total they formed 11 groups, which are sometimes referred to as bands . In 2000 there were 504 registered tribal members. Most of them live in the Upper Skagit Reservation . The tribe now includes four of the eleven tribes on the Skagit River.
Their traditional residential area was the area between today's Newhalem and the river mouth. The meaning of the name is unclear.
language
The Upper Skagit speak a dialect of the southwestern coastal Salish , the Lushootseed . Two linguistic groups adjoin each other on the Skagit River, on the one hand the North Straits Salish - including the Klallam , Lummi , Samish and Semiahmoo - and on the other hand the Lushootseed , which includes the Lower Skagit , Snohomish , Snoqualmie , Swinomish and the Upper Skagit.
The Lushootseed is one of the polysynthetic languages . It is rich in consonants and has one and a half as many sounds as a European language.
history
As early as 6500 BC Chr. Human life can be proven on the Skagit River, more precisely in today's Ross Lake National Recreation Area. In this protected area, many trees have escaped logging, so that so-called Culturally Modified Trees , i.e. trees that have been modified by human activity, can be identified that show indigenous traces of use. In 1989 IC Franck found a tree with traces of this kind dating from 1853 and a storage area at a height of approx. 1800 m.
Like all coastal salish , the Upper Skagit 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 .
The Lower Nlaka'pamux tribe (formerly known as Thompson ) lived in their neighborhood between the Newhalem Gorge as far as British Columbia . Close ties also existed with the Sauk and Suiattle ( Sauk-Suiattle ). Relations with the groups that lived on the lower Skagit River were less close. Eastward there were also relations with the groups on the other side of the coastal mountains.
reserve
Through the Donation Land Law of 1850, European settlers who had been offered land to cultivate in the Oregon Territory came to the Upper Skagit area.
Today's reserve, the Upper Skagit Reservation , was assigned to the then 300 Upper Skagit in the Point-Elliot Treaty of January 22, 1855. Chiefs of the Upper Skagit tribe were among the signatories of the treaty. The government claimed, however, that the Upper Skagit were not a cohesive group, but consisted only of individual villages. This denied them recognition as a tribe.
The religious leader and prophet Slaybebtkud , who had come from the east side of the coastal mountains, did not sign the Point Elliot Treaty. He had followers in about ten villages and maintained good contacts with Catholic missionaries who were being baptized for the first time.
Northern Pacific Railroad surveyors crossed Upper Skagit land in 1870. Like many other tribes, the Upper Skagit came into conflict with the settlers when they wanted to protect their ancestral burial sites. Settlers burned down a village with eight longhouses. In addition, diseases were brought in and the Upper Skagit were challenged with hunting and fishing rights. Until 1877, a huge jamlog , a jam of tree trunks, around 16 km above the mouth of the Skagit River, prevented shipping. It took three years for loggers to loosen the tree trunks and make the river navigable. This finally opened the gate to settlement. In 1889 the tribe was struck by a smallpox epidemic that was so severe that numerous dead were left unburied. Since 1923, three dams have also been built on the Skagit, which primarily supply electricity for the city of Seattle .
The struggle for recognition and land rights
Since 1887, the government pursued a program of privatization and individualization of collective land ownership ( Dawes Act ), which was intended to bring about a complete adaptation to the American way of life and the prevailing culture. This policy of forced assimilation was not ended until 1934 when the tribe was given its own administrative structure under the Indian Reorganization Act . But this was only possible after the Upper Skagit were able to enforce their recognition as a tribe, citing a compensation payment from 1913 for abandoned land (a cemetery).
In January 1951, the tribe filed a lawsuit for higher compensation for the land ceded to the United States because they felt the earlier was far too low. A final judgment was passed on September 23, 1968, awarding the tribe $ 385,471.42. In 1958 the tribe changed its name from Skagit Tribe of Indians to Upper Skagit Tribe of Indians .
In 1974 the Upper Skagit were granted their contractual fishing rights through the Boldt judgment - which the then not yet recognized tribes of the Samish , Duwamish , Snohomish and Steilacoom have not yet achieved. Since then, the Upper Skagit have been subject to their own tribal laws and a constitution that was adopted on December 4, 1974. They have since been ruled by a seven-member elected tribal council. The council members have a staggered three-year term of office.
Together with the Swinomish and the Sauk-Suiattle, the Upper Skagit have been managing the Skagit area since 1976 as part of the Skagit System Cooperative .
The tribe owns trust land in Skagit County , which it shares with the Sauk-Suiattle . Since the privatization of collective land ownership at the end of the 19th century, tribal members have also lived on publicly allocated land, which consists of countless scattered individual pieces of land. On September 10, 1981, the Upper Skagit were granted reserve status for 99 acres (400,653 m²) of land. Today the tribe owns approximately 600 acres , including 74 acres on Helmick Road (acquired in 1981, east of Sedro-Woolley ) and 25 acres on Bow Hill North at the tribe's former headquarters in Burlington . In 1984 there were 223 Upper Skagit.
Current situation
The Upper Skagit Reservation comprises land east of Sedro-Woolley in the foothills of the Cascade Range . An additional undeveloped industrial area is located on Interstate 5 near the city of Alger . In 2000 there were exactly 504 registered tribal members. The Native American population in or near the reserve was 457. 238 people were considered to be Upper Skagit or reserve residents.
The tribe maintains a tribal office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development's 50 HUD homes , 45 of which are free and 5 are rented out. 26 rental houses were completed in 1999. In 2004, the tribe received $ 1,369,611 to build additional residential buildings as part of social housing.
Most of the income comes from the casino , which opened in 1995 , the Skagit Valley Casino Resort . In 2001 a 103-bed hotel was added. The tribe employs a total of 370 people, 250 in the casino and 80 in administration. Then there is the Timberland Services Program , in which firewood is felled and sold commercially, but which is also responsible for reforestation and fire protection.
In cooperation with the Northwest Indian College program, school classes of the tribe can be reached via satellite. Pre-school classes are also offered. Tribal members can also use the general medical care and the dental clinic of the Swinomish-Upper Skagit, which is located in the Swinomish reservation.
literature
- June M. Collins: Valley of the Spirits: The Upper Skagit Indians of Western Washington , Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press 1974
- Hartmut Krech (ed.): The Skagit, hunters and fishermen of the north-west coast . In: IndianerLeben, Indian women and men tell their lives . Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2009, page 217-250, ISBN 978-3-8391-1047-8
- Robert H. Ruby / John A. Brown: A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest , Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press 1992, pp. 252f.
- Wayne Suttles (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Volume 7: Northwest Coast , Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press 1990. ISBN 0-87474-187-4
See also
Web links
Remarks
- ^ Ian Christian Franck, An Archeological Investigation of the Galene Lakes Area in the Skagit Range of the North Cascade Mountains, Skagit Valley Park, British Columbia, BA University of Alberta 1989, pp. 67, 78f.