The Coast Salish are a large, loose grouping of many nations with numerous distinct cultures and languages. Territory claimed by Coast Salish peoples span from the northern limit of the Salish Sea on the inside of Vancouver Island and covers most of southern Vancouver Island, all of the Lower Mainland and most of Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula (except for territories of the Chemakum people). Their traditional territories coincide with modern major metropolitan areas, namely Victoria, Vancouver, and Seattle. The Tillamook or Nehalem around Tillamook, Oregon are the southernmost of the Coast Salish peoples.
Coast Salish cultures differ considerably from those of their northern neighbours. They have a patrilineal and matrilinealkinship system, with inheritance and descent passed through the male and female line. According to a 2013 estimate, the population of Coast Salish numbers at least 56,590 people, made of 28,406 Status Indians registered to Coast Salish bands in British Columbia, and 28,284 enrolled members of federally recognized tribes of Coast Salish in Washington State.
Peoples
Below is a list of some, but not all, Coast Salish-speaking tribes and nations located in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.
The Cowichan designation is derived from the name of one of several groups forming the Cowichan Tribes band government, the Quwutsun. In the 19th century this term, or the variant "Cowidgin", was applied to all Halkomelem-speaking groups and certain others, such as the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Semiahmoo. On Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, other "Cowichan" groups include the Penelakut, Lyackson and Lamalcha.
The history of Coast Salish peoples presented here provides an overview from a primarily United States perspective. Coast Salish peoples in British Columbia have had similar economic experience, although their political and treaty experience has been different—occasionally dramatically so.
Evidence has been found from c. 3000 BCE of an established settlement at X̱á:ytem (Hatzic Rock) near Mission, British Columbia.[2] Early occupancy of c̓əsnaʔəm (Marpole Midden) is evident from c. 2000 BCE – 450 CE, and lasted at least until around the late 1800s, when smallpox and other diseases affected the inhabitants.[3][4] Other notable early settlements that record has been found of include prominent villages along the Duwamish River estuary dating back to the 6th century CE, which remained continuously inhabited until sometime in the later 18th century.[5] Boulder walls were constructed for defensive and other purposes along the Fraser Canyon[6] in the 15th century.
Early European contact with Coast Salish peoples dates back to exploration of the Strait of Georgia in 1791 by Juan Carrasco and José María Narváez,[7] as well as brief contact with the Vancouver expedition by the Squamish people in 1792. In 1808, Simon Fraser of the North West Company entered Coast Salish territories via the Fraser Canyon and met various groups until reaching tidewater on the Fraser's North Arm, where he was attacked and repelled by Musqueam warriors. Throughout the 1810s, coastal fur trade extended further with infrequent shipping.
From the 1810s through to the 1850s, Coast Salish groups of Georgia Strait and Puget Sound experienced raiding from northern peoples, particularly the Euclataws and Haida.
In 1827, HBC established Fort Langley east of present-day Vancouver, B.C. Whattlekainum, principal chief of the Kwantlen people, moved most of his people from Qiqayt (Brownsville) across the river from what was to become New Westminster to Kanaka Creek, near the Fort, for security and to dominate trade with the Fort. European contact and trade began accelerating significantly, primarily with the Fraser River Salish (Sto:lo).
Fort Nisqually and its farm were established in 1833 by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company a subsidiary of the HBC, between present-day Olympia and Tacoma, Washington. Contact and trade began accelerating significantly with the southern Coast Salish. Significant social change and change in social structures accelerates with increasing contact. Initiative remained with Native traders until catastrophic population decline. Native traders and Native economy were not particularly interested or dependent upon European trade or tools. Trade goods were primarily luxuries such as trade blankets, ornamentation, guns and ammunition. The HBC monopoly did not condone alcohol, but freebooter traders were under no compunction.[8]
Catholic missionaries arrive in Puget Sound around 1839–1840; interest diminished by 1843, and Methodist missionaries were in the area from 1840 to 1842 but had no success.
The Stevens Treaties were negotiated in 1854–55, but many tribes had reservations and did not participate; others dropped out of treaty negotiations. (See, for example, Treaty of Point Elliott#Native Americans and # Non-signatory tribes.) From 1850 to 1854, the Douglas Treaties were signed on Vancouver Island between various Coast Salish peoples around Victoria and Nanaimo, and also with two Kwakwaka'wakw groups on northern Vancouver Island. The Muckleshoot Reservation was established after the Puget Sound War of 1855–56.
Through the 1850s and 1860s, traditional resources became less and less available. Sawmill work and employment selling natural resources began; Native men worked as loggers, in the mills, and as commercial fishers. Women sold basketry and shellfish. Through the 1870s, agricultural work in hop yards of the east Sound river valley increased, including cultivation of mushrooms.[9] The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic killed many, and commercial fisheries employment began to decline significantly through the 1880s.
After legislation amending the Indian Act was passed the previous year, in 1885 the potlatch was banned in Canada; it was banned in the US some years later.[10] This suppression ended in the US in 1934, and in 1951 in Canada. Some potlatching became overt immediately.[11] A resurgence of tribal culture began in the 1960s; national Civil Rights movements engendered civil action for treaty rights.
Chief Dan Georges delivered a pivotal speech in 1967 on what had happened to his people. This riveted audiences at a Canadian Centennial ceremony in Vancouver's Empire Stadium and touched off public awareness and native activism in BC and Canada. By this point, through the 1960s and 1970s, employment in commercial fisheries had greatly declined; employment in logging and lumber mills also declined significantly with automation, outsourcing, and the decline in available resources through the 1980s.
The Boldt Decision, passed in 1974 upheld by the Supreme Court in 1979 was, based on the Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855 and restored fisheries rights to federally recognized Puget Sound tribes.
Since the 1970s, many federally recognized tribes have developed some economic autonomy with (initially strongly contested) tax-free tobacco retail, development of casino gambling, fisheries and stewardship of fisheries. Extant tribes not federally recognized continue ongoing legal proceedings and cultural development toward recognition.[12] In British Columbia, 1970 marks the start of organized resistance to the "white paper" tabled by Jean Chrétien, then a cabinet minister in the government of Pierre Trudeau, which called for assimilation. In the wake of that, new terms such as Sto:lo, Shishalh and Snuneymuxw began to replace older-era names conferred by anthropologists, linguists and governments.
Population
The first smallpox epidemic to hit the region was in the 1680s, with the disease travelling overland from Mexico by intertribal transmission.[13] Among losses due to diseases, and a series of earlier epidemics that had wiped out many peoples entirely, e.g. the Snokomish in 1850, a smallpoxepidemic broke out among the Northwest tribes in 1862, killing roughly half the affected native populations, in some cases up to 90% or more. The smallpox epidemic of 1862 started when an infected miner from San Francisco stopped in Victoria on his way to the Cariboo Gold Rush.[14] As the epidemic spread, police, supported by gunboats, forced thousands of First Nations people living in encampments around Victoria to leave and many returned to their home villages which spread the epidemic. Some consider the decision to force First Nations people to leave their encampments an intentional act of genocide.[15] Mean population decline 1774–1874 was about 66%.[16] Though the Salish peoples together are less numerous than the Cherokee or Navajo, the numbers shown below represent a small fraction of the group.
Pre-epidemics about 12,600; Lushootseed about 11,800, Twana about 800.
1850: about 5,000.
1885: less than 2,000, probably not including all the off-reservation populations.
1984: sum total about 18,000; Lushootseed census 15,963; Twana 1,029.[9]
2013: an estimate of at least 56,590, made up of 28,406 Status Indians registered to Coast Salish bands in British Columbia, and 28,284 enrolled members of Coast Salish Tribes in Washington state.
Culture
Social organization
External
Neighboring peoples, whether villages or adjacent tribes, were related by marriage, feasting, ceremonies, and common or shared territory. Ties were especially strong within the same waterway or watershed. There existed no breaks throughout the south Coast Salish culture area and beyond. There were no formal political institutions.[17]
There was little political organization.[18] No formal political office existed. Warfare for the southern Coast Salish was primarily defensive, with occasional raiding into territory where there were no relatives. No institutions existed for mobilizing or maintaining a standing force.
The common enemies of all the Coast Salish for most of the first half of the 19th century were the Lekwiltok aka Southern Kwakiutl, commonly known in historical writings as the Euclataws or Yucultas. Regular raids by northern tribes, particularly warriors of an alliance among the Haida, Tongass, and one group of Tsimshian, are also notable. Having gained superiority by earlier access to European guns through the fur trade, these warriors raided the southern Salish tribes for slaves and loot. Their victims organized retaliatory raids several times, attacking the Lekwiltok.[19]
Internal
The highest-ranking male assumed the role of ceremonial leader but rank could vary and was determined by different standards.[18] Villages were linked through intermarriage among members; the wife usually went to live at the husband's village, in a patrilocal pattern. Society was divided into upper class, lower class and slaves, all largely hereditary.[18] Nobility was based on genealogy, intertribal kinship, wise use of resources, and possession of esoteric knowledge about the workings of spirits and the world — making an effective marriage of class, secular, religious, and economic power. Many Coast Salish mothers altered the appearance of their free-born by carefully shaping the heads of their babies, binding them with cradle boards just long enough to produce a steep sloping forehead.[20]
Unlike hunter-gatherer societies widespread in North America, but similar to other Pacific Northwest coastal cultures, Coast Salish society was complex, hierarchical and oriented toward property and status.
Slavery was practiced, although its extent is a matter of debate.[21] The Coast Salish held slaves as simple property; they were not members of the tribe. The children of slaves were born into slavery.[22]
The staple of their diet was typically salmon, supplemented with a rich variety of other seafoods and forage. This was particularly the case for the southern Coast Salish, where the climate of their territories was even more temperate.[23]
Bilateral kinship within the Skagit people is the most important system being defined as a carefully knit, and sacred bond within the society. When both adult siblings die, their children would be brought under the protection of surviving brothers and sisters, out of fear of mistreatment by stepparents.[24]
The Salish Sea region of the Northwest coast has produced ancient pieces of art appearing by 4500 BP that feature various Salish styles recognizable in more recent historical works. A seated human feature bowl was used in a female puberty ritual in Secwépemc territory; it was believed to aid women in giving birth.[25]
Salish-made bowls in the Northwest have different artistic designs and features. Numerous bowls have basic designs with animal features on the surface. Similar bowls will have more decorations including a head, body, wings, and limbs. A seated figure bowl is more complex in design, depicting humans being intertwined with animals.[26]
For thousands of years, Northwest coast Salish people demonstrated valuing material possessions. They believe that material wealth included land, food resources, household items, and adornments. Material wealth not only improved one's life but it enhanced other qualities such as those needed to acquire high status. Wealth was required to enhance their status as elite born, or through practical skills, and ritual knowledge.[27] An individual could not buy status or power, but wealth could be used to enhance them. Wealth was not meant to be hidden. It has been publicly displayed through ceremony.
Recreation
Games often involved gambling on a sleight-of-hand game known as slahal, as well as athletic contests. Games that are similar to modern day lacrosse, rugby and forms of martial arts also existed.[28]
Beliefs
Belief in guardian spirits and shapeshifting or transformation between human and animal spirits were widely shared in many forms. The relations of soul or souls, and conceptions of the lands of the living and the dead were complex and mutable. Vision quest journeys involving other states of consciousness were varied and widely practised. The Duwamish had a soul recovery and journey ceremony.[19]
The Quileute Salish people near Port Townsend had their own beliefs about where souls of all living things go. The shamans of these people believed everything had five components to its spirit; the body, an inner and outer soul, its life force, and its ghost.[29]:106 They believed that an individual becomes ill when their soul is removed from their body and this is followed by death when the soul reaches the underworld. It is the job of the shaman to travel to the underworld to save the individual by recovering the soul while it is travelling between the two worlds.[29]:106
The shamans[clarification needed] believed that once an individual's body was dead it was able to connect with its soul and shade in the underworld. It is believed that the spirits are able to come back amongst the living and cause family members to die of sickness and join them in the afterlife. Living individuals were terrified of the intentions of spirits. who only appear at night, prompting Salish people to travel only during the day and stay close to others for protection.[29]:106 Coastal Salish beliefs describe the journey to the underworld as a two-day adventure. The individual must walk along a trail passing through bushes and a lake to reach a valley that is divided by a river where they will reside.[29]:107 Salish beliefs about the afterlife very closely resemble the past life they lived, and they often assign themselves to jobs to keep busy, hunt for animals and game, and live with their families.
Coastal Salish people believe that through dances, masks, or ceremonies they express themselve the spiritual powers that they are given. Spirit powers define a community's success through leadership, bravery, healing, or artistry. Spirit dancing ceremonies are common gatherings in the winter for members of the community to show their spirit powers through song, or dance.[30]:31 The powers they acquired were sought after individually after going through trials of isolation where their powers related to spirit animals such as a raven, woodpecker, bear, or seal. Oftentimes members of the community get together to show their powers on the longhouse floor, where the spiritual powers are for the individual alone for each member to share and display various songs.[30]:31
Architecture
Villages of the Coast Salish typically consisted of northwest coast longhouses made with western red cedar split planks and with an earthen floor. They provided habitation for forty or more people, usually a related extended family. Also used by many groups were pit-houses, known in the Chinook Jargon as kekuli (see quiggly holes). The villages were typically located near navigable water for easy transportation by dugout canoe. Houses that were part of the same village sometimes stretched for several miles along a river or watercourse.
The interior walls of longhouses were typically lined with sleeping platforms. Storage shelves above the platforms held baskets, tools, clothing, and other items. Firewood was stored below the platforms. Mattresses and cushions were constructed from woven reed mats and animals skins. Food was hung to dry from the ceiling. The larger houses included partitions to separate families, as well as interior fires with roof slats that functioned as chimneys.[citation needed]
The wealthy built extraordinarily large longhouses. The Suquamish Oleman House (Old Man House) at what became the Port Madison Reservation was 152 x 12–18 m (500 x 40–60ft), c. 1850. The gambrel roof was unique to Puget Sound Coast Salish.[31]
The Salish later took to constructing rock walls at strategic points near the Fraser River Canyon, along the Fraser River. These Salish Defensive Sites are rock wall features constructed by Coast Salish peoples.[32] One was excavated by Kisha Supernant in 2008 at Yale, British Columbia.[33] The functions of these features may have included defense, fishing platforms, and creation of house terraces. House pits and stone tools have been found in association with certain sites. Methods used include use of a total station for mapping the sites as well as the creation of simple test pits to probe for stratigraphy and artifacts.
Native groups along the Northwest coast have been using plants for making wood and fiber artifacts for over 10,500 years. Anthropologists are searching for aquifer wet sites that would contain ancient Salish villages. These sites are created by a series of waters running through the archaeological deposits creating an environment with no oxygen that preserves wood and fiber[34] The wet sites would typically contain perishable artifacts that were used as wedges, fishhooks, basketry, cordage, and nets.
Ethnobotany
The Coast Salish use over 100 species of plants.[35] Salal is the source of multiple tinctures and teas, and its berries are often eaten during feasts.[36] They use the leaves of Carex to make baskets and twine.[37]
Diet
Coast Salish peoples' had complex land management practices linked to ecosystem health and resilience. Forest gardens on Canada's northwest coast included crabapple, hazelnut, cranberry, wild plum, and wild cherry species.[38] There is also documentation of the cultivation of great camas, Indian carrot, and Columbia lily.[39]
Anthropogenic grasslands were maintained. The south Coast Salish may have had more vegetables and land game than people farther north or among other peoples on the outer coast. Salmon and other fish were staples; see Coast Salish people and salmon. There was kakanee, a freshwater fish in the Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish watersheds. Shellfish were abundant. Butter clams, horse clams, and cockles were dried for trade.
Hunting was specialized; professions were probably sea hunters, land hunters, fowlers. Water fowl were captured on moonless nights using strategic flares.
The managed grasslands not only provided game habitat, but vegetable sprouts, roots, bulbs, berries, and nuts were foraged from them as well as found wild. The most important were probably bracken and camas; wapato especially for the Duwamish. Many, many varieties of berries were foraged; some were harvested with comblike devices not reportedly used elsewhere. Acorns were relished but were not widely available. Regional tribes went in autumn to the Nisqually Flats (Nisqually plains) to harvest them.[23]
Salish groups such as Muckleshoot were heavily reliant on seasonal foods that included animals and plants. In January, they would gather along the river banks to catch salmon. By May, Salmonberry sprouts would be eaten with salmon eggs. Men would hunt deer and elk, while women gathered camas and clams from the prairies and beaches. By the summer, steelhead and king salmon appeared in masses along the rivers, and berries were abundant in the forests.[40] This harvesting cycle is referred to as the Seasonal Rounds.[41]
In literature and TV
Legends of Vancouver by Canadian author E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) is a collection of Coast Salish "as told-to" narratives, stemming from the author's relationship to Squamish Chief Joe Capilano. It first appeared in 1911, now available online from UPenn Digital Library.[42]
In the third episode of the first season of the 2017's Taboo, Tom Hardy's character James Delaney visits the grave of his mother, whose name is "Salish".[44]
In 2022, filmmaker Ryan Abrahamson of the Spokane Tribe created a supernatural thriller featuring the Coast Salish language.[45]
The use of the term Coast Salish, and its association with an attribute of nationhood, has increasingly become resisted, as that notion of a 'national' grouping is not a traditional part of the culture of Salish communities in this area, and as the term derives more from anthropology than community self-description. The phenomenon replacing this terminology is increasingly to indicate the specific tribe in question, or otherwise to use terms not given by non-Indigenous entities.[46]
↑ "C̓ƏSNAʔƏM". Musqueam: A Living Culture. Musqueam Indian Band. Archived from the original on December 7, 2013. Retrieved April 25, 2019. c̓əsnaʔəm (commonly known as the Eburne Site, Marpole Midden or Great Fraser Midden), located in the heart of Musqueam's Traditional and unceded Territory, is an ancient village and burial site of the Musqueam people, dating back at least 4,000 years. In the late 1700s and 1800s, smallpox and other diseases arrived on the Northwest Coast and affected our people at c̓əsnaʔəm.
↑ (1) Lange, Essay 5171) (2) Boyd (1999) (2.1) A smallpox vaccine was discovered in 1801. Russian Orthodox missionaries were an exception to general policy and vaccinated at-risk Native populations in what is now SE Alaska and NW British Columbia. [Boyd]
↑ Suttles, Wayne P.; Lane, Barbara (1990). "South Coast Salish: Northwest coast". In Sturtevant, William C. (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians. Vol.7. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. pp.486–7.
↑ Haeberlin, Hermann (1942). The Indians of Puget Sound(PDF). University of Washington Press. p.57. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved October 24, 2013.
↑ Jay, Miller, "Back to Basics: Chiefdoms in Puget Sound," Ethnohistory 44 (1997): 375-376.
↑ Rudy Reimer, Pierre Freile, Kenneth Fath, and John Clague, "Tales From the River Bank: An In Situ Stone Bowl Found Along the shores of the Salish Sea on the Southern Northwest Coast of British Columbia," Journal of Northwest Anthropology 49 (2016): 2
↑ Rudy Reimer, Pierre Freile, Kenneth Fath, and John Clague, "Tales From the River Bank: An In Situ Stone Bowl Found Along the shores of the Salish Sea on the Southern Northwest Coast of British Columbia," Journal of Northwest Anthropology 49 (2016): 3
↑ Gary Coupland, David Bilton, Terence Clark, Jerome S. Cybulski, Gay Frederick, Alyson Holland, Bryn Letham, and Gretchen Williams, "A Wealth of Beads: Evidence for Material Wealth-Based Inequality in the Salish Sea Region, 4000-3500 CAL BOP," American Antiquity 81 (2016):294.
↑ Pathways of the Past: A look at the history and organization of the Squamishie people. Community archive of the Sḵwxwú7mesh Pg. 4
1 2 5. Bill, Angelbeck, "localized Rituals and individual Spirit Powers: Discerning Regional Autonomy Through Religious Practices in the Coast Salish Past," Journal of Northwest Anthropology 50 (2016).
↑ Schaepe, D. (2006) Rock fortifications: Archaeological insights into precontact warfare and sociopolitical organization among the Stó :lō of the Lower Fraser River Canyon, B.C. American Antiquity 71(4): 671-706.
↑ 'Quantifying Defensiveness at Defended Sites on the Northwest Coast'. (unpublished)
↑ 1. Dale R. Cross and Kathleen L. Hawes, "Exploring Ancient Wood and Fiber Technologies along the Northwest coast of North America," Journal of Northwest Anthropology 47 (2013): 117.
↑ Turner, Nancy Chapman and Marcus A. M. Bell, 1971, The Ethnobotany of the Coast Salish Indians of Vancouver Island, I and II, Economic Botany 25(1):63-104, 335-339, page 73
↑ Heidi C. Bruce, "Muckleshoot Foods and Culture: Pre- 20th Century Stkamish, Skopamish, Smulkamish, and Allied Longhouses," Fourth World journal 16 (2017): 32.
Porter, Frank W. The Coast Salish Peoples. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989. ISBN1-55546-701-6
Pugh, Ellen, and Laszlo Kubinyi. The Adventures of Yoo-Lah-Teen: A Legend of the Salish Coastal Indians. New York: Dial Press, 1975. ISBN0-8037-6318-2
Suttles, Wayne, and Barbara Lane (1990). 'Southern Coast Salish.' In The Handbook of Northamerican Indians, Vol. 7. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
Thom, Brian David (2005). Coast Salish senses of place: Dwelling, meaning, power, property and territory in the Coast Salish world. Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University (Canada), Canada. Retrieved: http://hdl.handle.net/10613/32
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Coast Salish.
The Stillaguamish people are a Southern Coast Salish people Indigenous to the Stillaguamish River valley in northwestern Washington State in the United States, near the city of Arlington, Washington. The Stillaguamish speak Northern Lushootseed, a Coast Salish language. Although usage of the language has declined, there are ongoing revitalization efforts by the Stillaguamish Tribe.
The Duwamish are a Lushootseed-speaking Southern Coast Salish people in western Washington, and the Indigenous people of metropolitan Seattle.
The Swinomishpeople are a Lushootseed-speaking people Indigenous to western Washington state.
Lushootseed, historically known as Puget Salish, Puget Sound Salish, or Skagit-Nisqually, is a Central Coast Salish language of the Salishan language family. Lushootseed is the general name for the dialect continuum composed of two main dialects, Northern Lushootseed and Southern Lushootseed, which are further separated into smaller sub-dialects.
The Coast Salish languages, also known as the Central Salish languages, are a branch of the Salishan language family. These languages are spoken by First Nations or Native American peoples inhabiting the Pacific Northwest, in the territory that is now known as the southwest coast of British Columbia around the Strait of Georgia and Washington State around Puget Sound. The term "Coast Salish" also refers to the cultures in British Columbia and Washington who speak one of these languages or dialects.
The Snohomish people are a Lushootseed-speaking Southern Coast Salish people who are indigenous to the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Most Snohomish are enrolled in the Tulalip Tribes of Washington and reside on the reservation or nearby, although others are enrolled in other tribes, and some are members of the non-recognized Snohomish Tribe of Indians. Traditionally, the Snohomish occupied a wide area of land, including the Snohomish River, parts of Whidbey and Camano Islands, and the nearby coastline of Skagit Bay and Puget Sound. They had at least 25 permanent villages throughout their lands, but in 1855, signed the Treaty of Point Elliott and were relocated to the Tulalip Reservation. Although some moved to the reservation, the harsh conditions, lack of land, and oppressive policies of the United States government caused many to leave.
The Stó꞉lō, alternately written as Sto꞉lo, Stó꞉lô, or Stó꞉lõ, historically as Staulo, Stalo or Stahlo, and historically known and commonly referred to in ethnographic literature as the Fraser River Indians or Lower Fraser Salish, are a group of First Nations peoples inhabiting the Fraser Valley and lower Fraser Canyon of British Columbia, Canada, part of the loose grouping of Coast Salish nations. Stó꞉lō is the Halqemeylem word for "river", so the Stó꞉lō are the river people. The first documented reference to these people as "the Stó꞉lō" occurs in Catholic Oblate missionary records from the 1880s. Prior to this, references were primarily to individual tribal groups such as Matsqui, Ts’elxweyeqw, or Sumas.
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The History of the Coast Salish, a group of Native American ethnicities on the Pacific coast of North America bound by a common culture, kinship, and languages, dates back several millennia. Their artifacts show great uniformity early on, with a discernible continuity that in some places stretches back more than seven millennia.
The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic was a smallpox outbreak that started in Victoria on Vancouver Island and spread among the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and into the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau, killing a large portion of natives from the Puget Sound region to Southeast Alaska. Two-thirds of British Columbia natives died—around 20,000 people. The death rate was highest in southeast Alaska and Haida Gwaii—over 70% among the Haida and 60% among the Tlingit. Almost all native nations along the coast, and many in the interior, were devastated, with a death rate of over 50% for the entire coast from Puget Sound to Sitka, Alaska, part of Russian America at the time. In some areas the native population fell by as much as 90%. The disease was controlled among colonists in 1862 but it continued to spread among natives through 1863.
The first known smallpox epidemic to strike the native peoples of the coastal and interior Pacific Northwest arrived in the early 1770s, devastating large swathes of the population and causing significant demographic collapse – both from the disease itself and corresponding malnutrition from the deaths of hunters within tribes. Poorly attested due to a lack of consistent European presence during the period, it most likely originated from Bruno de Heceta and Bodega y Quadra's 1775 expedition to the Northwest Coast, spreading as far inland as the Bitterroot Salish territories in western Montana and as far north as the Tlingit at Sitka. Widespread pockmarks and scars among older native populations were recorded by European explorers for several decades afterwards, including Lewis and Clark and George Vancouver. Several additional smallpox epidemics would occur in the region over the following decades.
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