Mythologies of the Nisqually Tribe
Nisqually Tribe
4820 She-Nah-Num Drive S.E.
Olympia, WA 98513
Phone: (360) 456-5221
Toll free: (877) 768-8886
The Nisqually /nɪsˈkwɔːliː/ is a Lushootseed-speaking Native American tribe in western Washington state in the United States. They are a Southern Coast Salish people. They are federally recognized as the Nisqually Indian Tribe, formerly known as the Nisqually Indian Tribe of the Nisqually Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. The tribe lives on a reservation in the Nisqually River valley near the river delta. The Nisqually Indian Reservation, at 47°01′12″N 122°39′27″W, comprises 20.602 km² (7.955 sq mi) of land area on both sides of the river, in western Pierce County and eastern Thurston County. In the 2000 census, it had a resident population of 588 persons, all in the Thurston County portion, on the southwest side of the Nisqually River. The tribe moved onto their reservation east of Olympia, Washington, in late 1854 with the signing of the Medicine Creek Treaty. As reaction to the unfairness of the treaty, many members of the tribe led by Chief Leschi engaged and were eventually defeated by the US Army in the conflict known as the Puget Sound War in 1855–56.
The Nisqually Tribe is an American Indian nation in western Washington State. The tribe resides on a reservation in the Nisqually River valley near the river delta. The reservation is adjacent to the Fort Lewis Military Reserve and situated on the lower Nisqually River east of Olympia. The Lushootseed language, which is the traditional tongue of the Nisqually and neighboring tribes, is a subgroup of the Salishan family of Native American languages. For millennia, the traditional territory of the Nisqually bands was the Nisqually River drainage. Their forebears ranged from the waters of Puget Sound, (Whulge) to the woodlands of Mount Rainier(Tacobet). A legend holds that precursors of the present-day Nisqually Indian Tribe, the Squalli-absch, which means "people of the grass country," trekked north from the Great Basin and traversed the Cascade Mountains. They founded a settlement in a hollow presently called Skate Creek, outside the southern boundary of the Nisqually River watershed. Nisqually culture was based on the natural environment, in particular species of salmon and the red cedar. They harvested shellfish from the sound, dug the starchy camas root, gathered berries, grasses and bark on the prairies between Whulge and Tacobet. They also hunted, and raised horses. They reverenced living things in ceremonies and rituals. Land-hungry settlers began to encroach upon the area in the 1840s. In ensuing years their numbers increased, which created tension between the cultures. However, the Nisqually remained peaceful. When other Western Washington tribes advocated a war against the growing number of white settlers, Nisqually tribal leaders dismissed the notion. In 1853, Washington territorial governor and Indian agent Isaac Stevens terminated Indian land rights, leaving only reserved land that was held in common by extended families. Under coercion, area tribes relinquished nearly all of Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula — some 2,240,000 acres — to the government according to terms of Treaty of Medicine Creek of 1854. Nisqually chiefs Leschi, and his brother Quiemuth, declined to ink the treaty because of its meager provisions. While American settlers were being issued 160 acres of land per person, Stevens' treaty gave Indians roughly four acres per individual. He also assigned the Nisqually to a small parcel of scrubland at a considerable remove from their life-giving river. The Puget Sound Indian War, in which Nisqually warriors participated, erupted in 1855. The Indians fought courageously, but they ran short of supplies and were heavily outnumbered. They gave up the fight in 1856. Quiemuth was apprehended by white soldiers and stabbed to death under custody. Leschi was hanged in 1858. Some blame the war partly on Stevens' policies. U.S. government authorities were persuaded that he had botched the state of affairs and saw to it that the natives were provided more suitable reservation acreage. Stevens was relieved of his duties as the Indian agent. Consequently, the Nisqually were assigned a new reservation on the river, which was three times the dimensions of the original parcel. However, survival became a bitter struggle for South Sound Indians. Restricted to their reservations, they were deprived of outside resources to fend for themselves.
This became especially true for the Nisqually in 1917, when the U.S. military confiscated 3,370 acres of their reservation to create the Fort Lewis Military Reserve. Tribal members began to cut themselves off from their cultural roots and seek homes elsewhere. In the early 1900s and up to the 1940s, the U.S. government forbade the tribes from controlling their children's formal education. Youngsters were packed off to boarding schools, where Indian languages were proscribed in a domineering spirit of assimilating them into the dominant society. The Nisqually Tribe adopted a constitution in 1946, according to provisions of the relatively liberal 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. By the 1950s, however, only a few hardy families, whose homes lacked electricity and plumbing, subsisted on the Nisqually reservation. The 1960s and 1970s ushered in a change when tribal members began to press for their fishing rights as stipulated in the 1854 Medicine Creek Treaty. The treaty had guaranteed that Indians could continue to hunt and fish in their traditional tribal areas, no matter if those areas were off reservation lands. However, modern Indians were being harassed and apprehended for fishing off their reservations. Highly publicized "fish-ins" won the Nisqually and Puyallup tribes national notoriety, and the federal government took legal action against the State of Washington for ignoring its own treaty. In 1974, federal judge George Boldt handed down a decision stating that Washington tribes were entitled to half the salmon and steelhead from their traditional fishing grounds. The ruling led to legal rights, resources, and revenue for the tribes that had been lacking for 120 years.
Nisqually (pronounced Nis-KWALL-ee) comes from the word squalli, meaning “prairie grass.” The Nisqually call themselves s’qwali? abš or Squalli-Absch, which means “people of the grass country” in the Salish language. The Nisqually’s traditional lands were the entire Nisqually River basin in western Washington state. They inhabited the coastal regions and woodlands from Puget Sound (Whulge) to Mount Rainer (Tacobet). Today they live on the Nisqually Reservation located by the Nisqually River in Thurston County. It lies on a 1-mile-wide (1.6-kilometer-wide) strip surrounded on both sides by America’s second-largest military base, Fort Lewis. Over the past 25 years, the tribe has acquired more than 1,000 additional acres on or near the reservation. The Nisqually thrived for thousands of years on the natural resources their vast tribal lands provided, sharing berry and hunting grounds with nearby tribes. They roamed the woodlands and coastal waters from Mt. Rainier to the Puget Sound. Their lives were ordered by finding food, feasting, and special rituals. Before the 1970s lack of electricity and other modern resources on the reservation caused most Nisqually to move from their tribal lands. Since then electricity has been introduced, and new buildings have gone up. Hundreds of Nisqually have come back to rebuild their culture and community.
The Nisqually, living on a reservation in Nisqually River valley in western Washington State, is a Native American tribe that speaks the Lushootseed language, a subgroup belonging to the Salishan family of Native Indian Languages. The tribe on settling in the watershed, called the grasses of the vast prairies “squalli.” Then, following their habitual norm of calling a village by its natural or geographical identification, they named the river as “squalli” and themselves, Squalli-Absch, meaning “people of the grass.” Legend holds that the tribe’s first village was established in a basin (now called Skate Creek) by their ancestors, the Squalli-absch, all of whom migrated from the Great Basin to overcome problems, such as the land’s dryness and tremors. These people then went on to set up winter villages at Elbe and Mashel and slowly occupied the entire watershed. Here they lived peacefully for about 10,000 years, but life changed with the advent of European settlers in 1840.
The Nisqually tribe is a Native American tribe living in western Washington state at the Nisqually Indian Reservation, in the Nisqually River valley. The Nisqually tribe has over 650 enrolled members, most of whom live on the reservation. The Nisqually tribe originally lived on the coast and in the interior woodlands, ranging from Puget sound to Mount Ranier, and their lifestyle focused on salmon fishing and the red cedar, like other indigenous people of the Northwest Coast. The Nisqually tribe traditionally harvested shellfish and gathered camas root, berries, grasses, and bark to supplement their salmon fishing. They also raised horses and hunted wildlife. The first white settlement in Puget Sound was Fort Nisqally, established in 1833. The Nisqually remained peaceful with white settlers through the 1840s, even when other tribes of the area were advocating war.
For thousands of years before the first European explorers arrived in the Northwest, the Nisqually Tribe had lived in the Nisqually River valley, including the area near present-day Dupont. Native legend places the tribe's origins east of the Cascade Mountains, to a group known as the Squalli-absch, or "people of the grass country." The name Nisqually is derived from this older form. The Squalli-absch first settled near Skate Creek, outside the southern boundary of the Nisqually River watershed, and spoke Lushootseed, a subgroup of the Salishan family of Native American languages. The Nisquallies ranged from the shores of Puget Sound to the foothills of Mount Rainier, which they called "Tacobud." Their diet consisted primarily of salmon, supplemented by some hunting and the gathering of shellfish, berries, camas root, grasses, and bark. They were also known for raising horses, and a member's wealth was often measured by the number of horses he owned. The Nisquallies were a settled tribe, and although they would move seasonally from the lowlands to the foothills and back, they did not wander far from their ancestral grounds. Those grounds were also very attractive to white people. By the first decade of the nineteenth century, trappers and traders were making incursions, and many others with more permanent intentions were to follow.
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