SKOKOMISH TRIBE Skokomish web site

This is the story of how the Dog Salmon people of the North Fork Skokomish River began.

In the time when the first human beings lived in the land and were learning how to survive,
they learned from the animals at the beginning of what we would call history.

The chief of the Dog Salmon now knew it was time for his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren to return to the land
of their mother's birth.

The killer whales are the guardians of the
great salt waters.

They escorted our ancestors,
the Dog Salmon People,
from the great salt water
that we call the land of foods,
all the way back to where Hood Canal
and the Skokomish River meet.

It was here they danced the dance
of the Salmon People.

Hands on their hips,
back and forth they danced,
out of the water on their tails.

When they reached the home of their mother, they danced from the water
on to the land.

Now they were humans.

And it was they who became
the ancestors of our Skokomish People.

And it was at this time that
our ancestors vowed to honor
the Dog Salmon People
with the first salmon ritual,
till the end of time."

Told by Sobiyax (Bruce Miller)
of the Skokomish Tribe

We are a group of native village communities in the Hood Canal area of Western Washington. Our people called themselves collectively tuwa'duxq, commonly anglicized as Twana, and we spoke a Salish language.
There were nine villages in our community and our people lived in longhouses along Hood Canal. The nine sites were Dabop, Quilcene, Dosewallips, and Duckabush (in the northern and lower Hood Canal area near Hoodsport), Skokomish, and Vance Creek
(near the mouth of the Skokomish River or in its drainage area), and Tahuya and Duhlelap (on the
upper, southern arm of Hood Canal).

The tuwa'duxq people were moved to the 3,840 acre reservation when they signed the Point-No-Point Treaty in January, 1855. An executive order on February 25, 1874 established the reservation boundaries and increased it to 4,986.97 acres.
At that time the tribe took the name Skokomish in place of the nine original village names. Many of the families of that day never moved to the reservation, however, deciding instead to take jobs as loggers, mill workers, and canoers.

There were three informants used to gather and document the pre-reservation lives of our people as well as the actual moving from homesite to reservation. Thanks to them, our culture will never die. Two of the three informants were closely related to me: my great-great grampa, Henry Allen, and his older brother, my uncle, Frank Allen. They worked with people such as Myron Eells. My Grampa Henry, also worked with Edward Curtis during his survey
of Northwest Coast tribes. Grampa was convinced of the importance of having "the old ways set down correctly." So, in my family, we are taught that we
all have a responsibility to practice and pass on the old ways.

The Skokomish Tribe is a proud community that continues to carry on the traditions passed down from grandparent to child to grandchild, and we will continue to do so until the end of time.