The Quinault ( or ) are a group of Native American peoples from western

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. They are a Southwestern

Coast Salish people The Coast Salish is a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak one of the Coa ...

and are enrolled in the federally recognized Quinault Tribe of the Quinault Reservation. The name "Quinault" is an anglicized version of /ˈkʷinajɬ/, the traditional name of a village at the mouth of the Quinault River, today called Taholah. The river, village, and people were given the anglicized name Quinault in 1787 by the

maritime fur trade The maritime fur trade was a ship-based fur trade system that focused on acquiring furs of sea otters and other animals from the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and natives of Alaska. The furs were mostly sold in China in exc ...

r Charles William Barkley. It is also possible that both names come from a French trapper from the Quinault family who visited the area.

Lands

The Quinault Indian Reservation, at , is located on the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

coast of Washington, primarily in northwestern

Grays Harbor County Grays Harbor County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 75,636. Its county seat is Montesano, and its largest city is Aberdeen. Grays Harbor County is included in the Aberdeen Micropolita ...

, with small parts extending north into southwestern Jefferson County. It has a land area of 819.294 km² (316.331 sq mi) and reported a resident population of 1,370 persons as of the 2000 census. The Quinault people settled onto reservation lands after signing the

Quinault Treaty The Quinault Treaty (also known as the Quinault River Treaty and the Treaty of Olympia) was a treaty agreement between the United States and the Native American Quinault and Quileute tribes located in the western Olympic Peninsula north of Gra ...

with the former

Washington Territory The Territory of Washington was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 2, 1853, until November 11, 1889, when the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Washington. It was created from the ...

in 1856. About 60% of the reservation's population lives in the community of Taholah, on the Pacific coast at the mouth of the

Quinault River Quinault may refer to: * Quinault people, an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast **Quinault Indian Nation The Quinault Indian Nation ( or ; QIN), formerly known as the Quinault Tribe of the Quinault Reservation, is a federally reco ...

. Motorists are cautioned that it is not possible to traverse the entire reservation on Highway 109, in spite of what some online mapping services indicate. Construction of the highway north from Taholah to

U.S. Highway 101 U.S. Route 101, or U.S. Highway 101 (US 101), is a north–south United States Numbered Highway that runs through the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, on the West Coast of the United States. It is also known as (The Royal Roa ...

was halted in the late 1960s. There is only limited access (for private property owners and tribe members) along the northern coast of the reservation. Currently, only enrolled members of the Quinault Indian Nation and their guests are allowed onto the beaches throughout the reservation without a pass. Guests can obtain access passes that allow them to use the beaches for the day issued.

Culture

Language

Related peoples

The mixture of members with ethnic ties to the modern Quinault tribe is made up of the Quinault, Hoh, Chehalis, Chinook,

Cowlitz Cowlitz may refer to: People * Cowlitz people, an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest ** Cowlitz language, member of the Tsamosan branch of the Coast Salish family of Salishan languages * Cowlitz Indian Tribe, a federally recognized tribe o ...

, Queets, and Quileute peoples. Linguistically, these groups belong to three language families:

Chimakuan The Chimakuan languages are a group of extinct languages that were spoken in northwestern Washington state, United States, on the Olympic Peninsula. They were spoken by Chimakum, Quileute and Hoh tribes. They are part of the Mosan sprachbund ...

(''Quileute'', ''Hoh''), Chinookan (''Chinook groups''), and Salishan (''Chehalis'', ''Cowlitz'', ''Queets'', and ''Quinault'').

Basketry and weaving

The Quinault people have been noted basket makers and weavers. Baskets were made from locally available materials such as reeds and grasses, spruce, maple and red cedar, and in many styles suited to the task at hand. For instance, burden baskets made for gathering oysters and other shellfish had an open weave to allow for drainage, and were made from water resistant materials like cedar bark. Archaeology has revealed some of the ways basketmaking evolved over time, and the

Ozette Indian Village Archeological Site The Ozette Native American Village Archeological Site is the site of an archaeological excavation on the Olympic Peninsula near Neah Bay, Washington, United States. The site was a village occupied by the Ozette Makah people until a mudslide inund ...

, about up the Pacific coast from the present-day Quinault reservation, has been an invaluable site that preserved objects subject to decay, such as baskets and blankets, in a mudslide. Quinault basket artifacts are in many museums in the Northwest and around the world. The following were notable basket weavers of the Quinault prior to 1960. *Anna Black of Queets *Beatrice Black b. 1886 of Taholah *Irene Charley (Shale) b. 1908 of Taholah *Lena Hebalakp Charley (Bastian) b. 1877 of Taholah *Maggie Charley (Kalama) b. 1870 of Hoquiam *Mary Chips b. 1857 of Puyallup and La Push *Emily Cleveland b. 1929 of Queets *Lilly Cliff or Clip (Ford) b. 1865 of Neah Bay *Agnes Garfield (Hudson) b. 1894 of Taholah *Frances James (Bowechop) (1905-1972) of Neah Bay *Maggie James (Wain)(Kelly) b. 1886 of Queets *Anna Jette (Jackson) b. 1889 of Taholah *Hannah Mason (Bowechop)(Saux)(Payne) (1895-1971) of Taholah *Blanche Mowitch b. 1908 of Quinault *Laura Obi (Sam) b. 1864 of Queets *Charlotte Penn (Kalama) (1924-2010) of Queets *Hazel Purdy (Underwood) b. 1908 of Taholah *Blanche Lila Shale (McBride) b. 1925 of Taholah *Ella Shileba Hobucket ''Wa-uc'' or ''Wa-bas-tub'' b. 1865 of La Push *Sarah or Sally Shileba/Shalber Legg (James)(Mason)(Freeman) b. 1865 of Lake Quinault and Taholah, wife of Chief Taholah *Joyce Simmons (Cheeka) b. 1901 of Neah Bay *Ida Strom (Law) b. 1898 of Taholah *Alice Taholah (Jackson) b. 1853 of Taholah, daughter of Chief Taholah *Maggie Ward (Harlow) ''Tso-ba-dook'' b. 1886 of Queets *Annie Williams (Waukenas) (1859-1951) of Taholah *Leta Williams (Shale) (Sailto) b. 1928 of Queets There has been some attempt to preserve traditional basketmaking techniques on the Quinault reservation, though the style has been intermixed with that of other tribes.

Economy

Many tribes within the Pacific Northwest receive per capita payments from their tribes but the Quinault Indian Nation currently does not. The economy for Quinault Indian Nation is mainly derived from the Quinault Beach Resort and Casino, timber, and various fishing entities ( Quinault Pride Seafood, etc.). Quinault Indian Nation is the largest employer within Grays Harbor County.

Communities

* Amanda Park * Queets * Qui-nai-elt Village *

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whos ...

* Taholah

References

;Sources * * **

External links

Quinault Indian Nation
official website

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20160303165952/http://www.foresthistory.org/ead/Quinault_Indian_Reservation.html Inventory of the Quinault Indian Reservation Collection, 1939–1977 in the

Forest History Society The Forest History Society is an American non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of forest and conservation history."Forest History Society." Echo Project. Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. http://echo.gmu. ...

Library and Archives, Durham, NC
Quinault artwork
collections of the National Museum of the American Indian {{authority control Native American tribes in Washington (state) Coast Salish Quinault