The Samish are a
Native American people who live in the
U.S. state of
Washington. They are a Central
Coast Salish people. Through the years, they were assigned to reservations dominated by other Tribes, for instance, the
Swinomish Indians of the Swinomish Reservation of Washington and the
Tulalip Tribes of the Tulalip Reservation
The Tulalip Tribes of Washington (, lut, dxʷlilap), formerly known as the Tulalip Tribes of the Tulalip Reservation, is a federally recognized tribe of Duwamish, Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish people. Th ...
. They are also enrolled in the
Samish Indian Nation, formerly known as the
Samish Indian Tribe
The Samish Indian Nation is a Coast Salish nation and a signatory to the Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855. Samish has a government-to-government relationship with the United States of America. The Samish are a Northern Straits branch of Central Co ...
, which regained federal recognition in 1996.
Name
The Native American form of "Samish" is , from , "
nominalizer
In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a word that is not a noun (e.g., a verb, an adjective or an adverb) as a noun, or as the head of a noun phrase. This change in functional category can occur through morphological tra ...
", , "be there", and , "people".
History
Pre-Contact with Europeans
The Samish fished in the islands and channels off the coast of
Skagit County, Washington.
[Edson, Lelah Jackson. ''The Fourth Corner: Highlights From the Early Northwest'', Bellingham, WA: Whatcom Museum of History and Art, 1968.] The Samish had villages on
Samish,
Guemes, and
Fidalgo Islands,
and fished and harvested resources there and in the
San Juan Islands. In 1847, Samish had more than 2,000 members. Epidemics of
measles
Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than , cough, ...
,
smallpox, and
ague
Ague may refer to:
* Fever
* Malaria
* Agué, Benin
* Duck ague, a hunting term
See also
* Kan Ague, a residential area of Patikul, Sulu
Patikul, officially the Municipality of Patikul ( Tausūg: ''Kawman sin Patikul''; tl, Bayan ng Patikul ...
, and attacks from
Haida
Haida may refer to:
Places
* Haida, an old name for Nový Bor
* Haida Gwaii, meaning "Islands of the People", formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands
* Haida Islands, a different archipelago near Bella Bella, British Columbia
Ships
* , a 1 ...
and
Tsimshian from the north
diminished the population to approximately 150 members in one village
by 1855, at the time of the signing of the
Point Elliott Treaty. After the Treaty, some Samish moved to the Swinomish or Lummi reservations.
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Post-Contact with Europeans
Though 113 Samish were present at the treaty negotiations and signing, no Samish signed the Point Elliott Treaty. The Samish were attached to the treaty by the signature of the Lummi chief Chow-its-hoot. Lacking a reservation of their own, many Samish were sent to live on the reservations of the Lummi or the Swinomish
The Swinomish are an historically Lushootseed-speaking Native American people in western Washington state in the United States. The Tribe lives in the southeastern part of Fidalgo Island in northern Puget Sound, near the San Juan Islands, i ...
.
However, many Samish refused to go to the reservations and stayed in their traditional territory. They were often confused with the Skagit, and when they went to the Swinomish Reservation, they received only six household land allotments for the entire Tribe.
Many members went to Guemes Island to establish New Guemes (now referred to as "Potlatch Beach"), where they built a longhouse that housed more than 100 people. By 1912, the Samish had either moved onto the Swinomish Reservation or into other communities. They had been pushed off the island by white settlers, as the Samish had occupied the land with the only fresh water.US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
5,754.96 for lands taken by the Point Elliott Treaty. The judgment deemed that they had exclusively occupied of land at the time of the treaty.
Language
The Samish language is a dialect of the Northern Straits Salish (Lkungen) language; a close sister language is Southern Straits Salish (Clallam or Klallam. Both are in the Central Coast Salish branch of Coast Salish, itself a branch of the large Salish(an) language family (Tim Montler 1999: "Language and dialect variation in Straits Salishan". ''Anthropological Linguistics'' 41 (4): 462–502, Kuipers, Aert H. Salish Etymological Dictionary. Missoula, MT: Linguistics Laboratory, University of Montana, 2002. ) Coast Salish.Brent D. Galloway
Brent Douglas Galloway (8 April 1944 – 6 August 2014) was an Americans, American linguistics, linguist noted for his work with endangered Amerindian languages, specializing in several of the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. He completed h ...
(Canadian Ethnology Service, Mercury Series Paper #116). This is the first grammatical sketch and extensive word list for the Samish dialect; it was based on linguistic field work by Galloway with the last-known remaining speakers. Galloway's recorded tapes are on file with the Museum of Civilization and the Samish Nation. Three or four fluent or partially fluent speakers remain as of 2013.
See also
* Sammamish
Notes
External links
Samish Indian Nation
official website
{{authority control
Coast Salish
Native American tribes in Washington (state)