Re: Peace and Native North America (north of Mexico)
xeno@austen.u.washington.edu
Mon, 9 Sep 1991 12:58:00 PDT
I learned on my vacation that some time in the 1800s the Chimacum (sp) tribe
which was located near present day Port Townsend in Washington state (40 miles
north by northwest of Seattle) was wiped out in a war with the tribe under
chief Seattle. Apparently this tribe, and those at Hoh and Quileute were the
only members of this language family, although that has nothing morally to do
with the fact that the eastern community was exterminated. I also learned on
my vacation that the local international language around this area (I live in
the Seattle/Puget Sound area) was something the anthropologists refer to as
Chinook jargon, which was a very morphous vocabulary, apparently subject to
the grammar of the speaker, which largely started out of the slave trade
between the Chinook and the Nootka tribes. The Chinooks went around capturing
people from the surrounding tribes, and sold them primarily to the Nootkas,
who payed the Chinooks in some kind of pretty seashells found on Vancouver
Island, which the Chinooks used as money. A curious matter in this regard,
the Chinooks, which before contact was apparently a dominant tribe in the
area, was one of the first to disappear after contact with the Europeans
(in fact maybe the only to really disappear, someone correct me on these
of I get the facts sideways). I think the former Chinook tribal areas were
largely taken over by the surrounding tribes, possibly most notably by the
Chehalis Salish, who I think now control the Shoalwater reservation on the
north shore of Willapa Bay.