History

See also: History of the Duwamish tribe, History of Seattle before 1900 § Relations with the natives, and Coast Salish § History

Before white settlement

See also: History of Seattle before white settlement

What is now Seattle has been inhabited since the end of the last glacial period (c. 8000 BCE—10,000 years ago).^[5] Sites at West Point in Discovery Park (in Seattle's Magnolia district) date back at least 4,000 years. Villages at the then-mouth of the Duwamish River in what is now the Industrial District had been inhabited since the 6th century CE.^[6]
Thirteen prominent villages were in what is now the City of Seattle. The people living around Elliott Bay, the Duwamish, Black and Cedar Rivers were collectively known as the doo-AHBSH, "People of the Inside" (see below for more detailed discussion of this name). There were four prominent villages on Elliott Bay and the then-estuarial lower Duwamish River .^[7] Before civil engineering, the area had extensive tidelands, abundantly rich in seafoods.^[8]
The people living around Lake Washington were collectively known as the hah-choo-AHBSH, "People of the Large Lake" (see below for more detailed discussion of this name). Another group strong culturally associated with the "People of the Large Lake" are the Ha-achu-abshs / Ha-achu-AHBSH ("People of the Small Lake / People of the Little Lake") living around Lake Union.^[9] At the time of initial major European contact, these people considered themselves distinct from the related People of the Inside, with whom they are joined in today's Duwamish tribe. Prior to the construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in the 1910s, Lake Washington drained into the Black River in what is now Renton. The Black River joined the Cedar and White (now Green) rivers to become the Duwamish River and empty into southeast Elliott Bay.^[10] With ever-increasing European contact, the People of the Large Lake and the People of the Inside became unified under the rubric of the Duwamish Tribe.^[11][12]

Seasons

There were numerous villages in what would become the Seattle metropolitan area as well as the nearby Snoqualmie River valley.^[7] Common to Coast Salish, villages were diffuse: people dispersed in the spring, congregated for the salmon in the summer, and wintered in village longhouses.
In spring, salmonberry shoots and bracken fern fiddleheads were foraged, while men hunted deer or elk grazing on the skunk cabbage or the anthropogenic grasslands. Camas from nearby prairies would be gathered or traded. The grasslands encouraged berries, fern roots, bulbs and other useful plants. Garry oaks, whose thick bark helps them survive fires, are typically associated with prairies, and their presence at Seward Park and Martha Washington Parks suggests that anthropogenic grasslands extended between them. They may have been planted for their edible acorns.
In summer and fall, thimbleberries, salal, raspberries, salmonberries, trailing blackberries, serviceberries, strawberries, huckleberries, and others were foraged. The berries were eaten fresh, or dried and formed into cakes to preserve them for winter. Mixed with dried fish and oil in recipes, pemmican made hearty late winter fare or compact, hardy provision for travel. Women and children would gather important wetland plants such as cattails for mats and wapato ("Indian potatoes") for food. Crayfish and freshwater mussels were available in the lake.
Shellfish and tidal resources were available year round, limited only by red tide or similar infrequent closures. From midsummer through November, life revolved around the iconic salmon s√ʔuládxʷ^[13] and realization of its inspiring power and wealth, both corporeal and spiritual. Salmon returned to virtually every stream with enough flow; among these streams was sqa’ts1d (“blocked mouth”), now called Genesee Creek, which formerly drained the Rainier Valley. The name of the creek suggests that a fishing weir in place blocked the mouth of the stream during part of the spawning season. Such weirs were made from the willows that occur abundantly along the lake shore. Fish were dried on racks to preserve them for the winter months.
During the long wet winter and early spring, the diet of dried fish and berries was supplemented by hunting ducks, beaver, muskrat, raccoon, otter, and bear. Winters were for construction and repair, for the arts, socializing and ceremonies, and for stories in a rich oral tradition.^[5]
Life was, however, not quite idyllic. Northern Coast Salish and Wakashan from harder climates to the north were wont to raid. Food resources varied, and resources were not always sufficient to last through to spring. The size of the salmon run has always varied tremendously from year to year. Nutritional diseases were not very distant. There is evidence that an extensive trade and potlatch network evolved to help distribute resources to areas in need that varied year to year, and was potent and effective until European diseases arriving in the 1770s^[14] and ravished the region for more than a century.^[15]