Regions with significant populations | |
---|---|
United States (Washington) | |
Languages | |
English, Salishan, Interior Salish | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Colville, Nespelem, Sanpoil, Sinixt, Palus, Wenatchi, Entiat, Methow, Southern Okanagan (Sinkaietk), Sinkiuse-Columbia, and the Nez Perce of Chief Joseph's band |
The Chelan (pronounced sha-lan) are an Interior Salish people speaking the Wenatchi dialect, though separate from that tribe. The name derives from the traditional Wenatchi name Tsi-Laan meaning "deep water".
The Chelan were historically located at the outlet of Lake Chelan in the U.S. state of Washington, where they spent the winter months. [1] The Chelan Native Americans are thought to have splintered off from the Wenatchi tribe.
Lake Chelan is 51.5 miles (82.9 km) long and .75 to 2.1 miles wide, and is the third-deepest freshwater lake in the United States and the ninth-deepest in the world with a maximum depth of 1,486 feet (453 m). Fed by streams from the Cascade Range, the lake flows into the Columbia River from the Chelan River.
During the salmon runs, they fished the outlet where the lake meets the river and also moved down to the Wenatshapam Fishery on the Columbia River to fish and trade with other tribes.
The Chelan tribe also had several permanent villages in the lower Chelan valley. One at Willow Point, near Manson, had up to 500 occupants. Another on Wapato Point was home to about 100 people. Many groups lived from Field's Point to the First Creek drain into the lake (now a WA State Park), the Watson's Resort, Granite Falls, Sunnybank drainage, Minneapolis Beach, Laferties Landing or Resort, and the area referred to as Lakeside. They were frequently on the move, traveling in and out of the mountains with the seasons, collecting plants, fishing small streams, and hunting game.
The watery highway of Lake Chelan provided a relatively easy transportation route from the Columbia River deep into the Cascades. Occasionally, to trade with or visit coastal relatives, the Chelans would canoe up to the head of the lake where they knew of a route that followed a swift stream between high peaks.
Crossing between the glaciers and cliffs on the crest of the mountains, they descended through the tall forests to the land of the Skagit tribes. The Chelan Indians often traded mountain goat wool for dried clams and salmon, or for seashells, which they used for future trade or ornamentation.
Their traditional allies were the kindred Wenatchi, Sinkiuse-Columbia, and Entiat. Their traditional enemies were Shoshone, Kwalhioqua (also known as Willapa who lived in the hills north of the lower Columbia River), the Blackfoot Confederacy, and Nez Perce at times, at others they were allies.
Territorial boundaries shifted frequently in the Plateau Region, as tribes competed for the best hunting grounds. After the arrival of the horse, Plateau tribes faced more competition from the Plains Indians and Indians from the Great Basin. Intertribal war in the area faded out as alliances were made to fight their common enemies.
By the 1860s, smallpox epidemics had virtually ended tribal warfare, due to the drastic decrease in population. From 1840 onward, the US government tried to move all Indians to reservations. The resulting wars between the 1840s to the 1870s were the final push to colonize these land.
The Chelan Indian tribe are members of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation , which is recognized by the United States of America as an American Indian Tribe. It is located on the Colville Indian Reservation in eastern Washington state. The Confederated Tribes have over 9,000 descendants from 12 aboriginal tribes. In addition to the Chelan, the tribes are known, in English, as the Colville, the Nespelem, the Sanpoil, the Sinixt (Arrow Lakes people), the Palus, the Wenatchi, the Entiat, the Methow, the Southern Okanagan (Sinkaietk), the Sinkiuse-Columbia (Moses-Columbia), the Nez Perce of Chief Joseph's band, and the Wapato's.
The Chelan speak English. The native language of the tribe is a Salishan language made up of several different dialects among the tribes. [2]
The Nez Perce are an Indigenous people of the Plateau who still live on a fraction of the lands on the southeastern Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest. This region has been occupied for at least 11,500 years.
The Yakama are a Native American tribe with nearly 10,851 members, based primarily in eastern Washington state.
Chinookan peoples include several groups of Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest in the United States who speak the Chinookan languages. Since at least 4000 BCE Chinookan peoples have resided along the upper and Middle Columbia River (Wimahl) from the river's gorge downstream (west) to the river's mouth, and along adjacent portions of the coasts, from Tillamook Head of present-day Oregon in the south, north to Willapa Bay in southwest Washington. In 1805 the Lewis and Clark Expedition encountered the Chinook Tribe on the lower Columbia.
The Cayuse are a Native American tribe in what is now the state of Oregon in the United States. The Cayuse tribe shares a reservation and government in northeastern Oregon with the Umatilla and the Walla Walla tribes as part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The reservation is located near Pendleton, Oregon, at the base of the Blue Mountains.
The Okanogan–Wenatchee National Forest is a U.S. National Forest located in Okanogan County in north-central Washington, United States.
The Colville Indian Reservation is an Indian reservation in the Northwestern United States, in north central Washington, inhabited and managed by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, which are federally recognized.
The Palouse are a Sahaptin tribe recognized in the Treaty of 1855 with the United States along with the Yakama. It was negotiated at the 1855 Walla Walla Council. A variant spelling is Palus. Today they are enrolled in the federally recognized Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation and some are also represented by the Colville Confederated Tribes, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Nez Perce Tribe.
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation is the federally recognized tribe that controls the Colville Indian Reservation, which is located in northeastern Washington, United States. It is the government for its people.
The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are the federally recognized confederations of three Sahaptin-speaking Native American tribes who traditionally inhabited the Columbia River Plateau region: the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla.
Kettle Falls was an ancient and important salmon fishing site on the upper reaches of the Columbia River, in what is today the U.S. state of Washington, near the Canada–US border. The falls consisted of a series of rapids and cascades where the river passed through quartzite rocks deposited by prehistoric floods on a substrate of Columbia River basalt. The river dropped nearly 50 feet (15 m), and the sound of the falls could be heard for miles away. Kettle Falls was inundated in 1940, as the waters of the reservoir Lake Roosevelt rose behind Grand Coulee Dam, permanently flooding the site.
Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau, also referred to by the phrase Indigenous peoples of the Plateau, and historically called the Plateau Indians are Indigenous peoples of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada, and the non-coastal regions of the Northwestern United States.
Kamiakin (Yakama) was a leader of the Yakama, Palouse, and Klickitat peoples east of the Cascade Mountains in what is now southeastern Washington state. In 1855, he was disturbed by threats of the Territorial Governor, Isaac Stevens, against the tribes of the Columbia Plateau. After being forced to sign a treaty of land cessions, Kamiakin organized alliances with 14 other tribes and leaders, and led the Yakima War of 1855–1858.
Chief Moses was a Native American chief of the Sinkiuse-Columbia, in what is now Washington state. The territory of his tribe extended approximately from Waterville to White Bluffs, in the Columbia Basin. They were often in the area around Moses Lake. The tribe numbered perhaps a few hundred individuals.
The Wenatchi people or Šnp̍əšqʷáw̉šəxʷi / Np̓əšqʷáw̓səxʷ are Native Americans who originally lived near the confluence of the Columbia and Wenatchee Rivers in Central Washington state. Their language is Interior Salish. Traditionally, they ate salmon, starchy roots like camas and biscuitroot, berries, deer, sheep and whatever else they could hunt or catch. The river that they lived on, the Wenatchee River, had one of the greatest runs of salmon in the world prior to numerous hydroelectric dams being put in on the downstream Columbia, pollution and other issues, and was their main food source.
The Entiat are a Native American tribe who exclusively used and occupied an area extending from the Columbia River to the Cascade Mountains along the drainage system of the Entiat River.
The Sinkiuse-Columbia are a Native American tribe so-called because of their former prominent association with the Columbia River. They belong to the inland division of the Salishan group, with their nearest relatives being the Wenatchis and Methows. The Sinkiuses call themselves .tskowa'xtsEnux, or .skowa'xtsEnEx, or Sinkiuse. They apply the name to other neighboring Interior Salish peoples, potentially originating from a band that once inhabited the Umatilla Valley.
Moses-Columbia, or Columbia-Wenatchi, is a extinct Southern Interior Salish language, also known as Nxaảmxcín. Speakers traditionally lived in the Colville Indian Reservation. The Columbia people were followers of Chief Moses.
The Colville people, are a Native American people of the Pacific Northwest. The name Colville comes from association with Fort Colville, named after Andrew Colvile of the Hudson's Bay Company. Earlier, outsiders often called them Scheulpi, Chualpay, or Swhy-ayl-puh; the French traders called them Les Chaudières in reference to Kettle Falls. The neighboring Coeur d'Alene called them Sqhwiyi̱'ɫpmsh and the Spokane knew them as Sxʷyelpetkʷ. Their name in nselxcin, sx̌ʷýʔłpx, refers to "sharp pointed trees".
The Columbia Plateau ecoregion is a Level III ecoregion designated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) encompassing approximately 32,100 square miles (83,139 km2) of land within the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The ecoregion extends across a wide swath of the Columbia River Basin from The Dalles, Oregon to Lewiston, Idaho to Okanogan, Washington near the Canada–U.S. border. It includes nearly 500 miles (800 km) of the Columbia River, as well as the lower reaches of major tributaries such as the Snake and Yakima rivers and the associated drainage basins. It is named for the Columbia Plateau, a flood basalt plateau formed by the Columbia River Basalt Group during the late Miocene and early Pliocene. The arid sagebrush steppe and grasslands of the region are flanked by moister, predominantly forested, mountainous ecoregions on all sides. The underlying basalt is up to 2 miles (3 km) thick and partially covered by thick loess deposits. Where precipitation amounts are sufficient, the deep loess soils have been extensively cultivated for wheat. Water from the Columbia River is subject to resource allocation debates involving fisheries, navigation, hydropower, recreation, and irrigation, and the Columbia Basin Project has dramatically converted much of the region to agricultural use.
Antoine v. Washington, 420 U.S. 194 (1975), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that treaties and laws must be construed in favor of Native Americans (Indians); that the Supremacy Clause precludes the application of state game laws to the tribe; that Congress showed no intent to subject the tribe to state jurisdiction for hunting; and while the state can regulate non-Indians in the ceded area, Indians must be exempted from such regulations.