An Atlas of Indigenous Seattle

Coll Thrush and Nile Thompson; Maps by Amir Sheikh

Historical Introduction by Coll Thrush

ANSWERING THE QUESTION What happened here? requires asking another: What was here before? In Seattle, as in most cities, the pre-urban landscape has been transformed almost beyond recognition. Tracing the course of the Duwamish River as it was in 1851, for example, can be a daunting task. Understanding the ways in which Indigenous people inhabited that landscape, meanwhile, can be even more difficult. In short, there is virtually nothing left to see—earlier generations of Seattleites made sure of that—and so comprehending the city’s indigenous geography involves peeling back decades of development and imagining the possibilities. Even then, the risk remains that we will imagine only what we expected to see all along—noble savages, empty wilderness, totem poles—rather than what might have actually once been there. Seattle’s Native pasts have been full of such imaginings. Luckily, through the work of two men and the Indian people who collaborated with them, we have a rare opportunity to envision in specific, concrete ways the places that would eventually become Seattle. In the 1910s, both men collected information about traditional Indigenous geographies of the Seattle area, working both with Duwamish men and women living in and around the city and with Muckleshoot and Suquamish informants from area reservations.

The first of these researchers was Thomas Talbot Waterman (1885–1936). A student of Franz Boas, Waterman taught anthropology and sociology at the University of Washington in the early twentieth century. Although he lived in Seattle for only a handful of years, the city held a special fascination for him. “The actual topography is very interesting,” he noted, “and the spot is doubly interesting because of the great city which has grown up there.” Even better, though, the urban landscape that had grown up on central Puget Sound was still populated by Indian people. Some of them, like Seetoowathl in his float house, shared their knowledge with him from within the city limits. Others, like Jennie Davis and Amelia Sneatlum from Suquamish and Betsy Whatcom from Muckleshoot, educated him in their reservation homes. The resulting manuscript, entitled “Puget Sound Geography,” includes the names of hundreds of places, from the Cascade Mountains in the east to the western shores of Puget Sound and from Whidbey Island in the north to the many-armed southern reach of the Sound. The names speak about the everyday practices of life here: places where fish were caught, places where canoes could be portaged, places where games were played. They tell of the landscape’s intellectual elements: the connections between bodies, houses, and the earth; ways of measuring the land and moving on the waters; spirit forces that gave life meaning. Most importantly, they are proof of the profound “inhabitedness” of this first country: the towns, the trails, the stories from deep time.¹

Waterman’s work did have its problems. He often misunderstood the elders and sometimes failed to obtain the meanings of the placenames he was offered, and his maps are consistently bad. His greatest error, though, was in the attitude he brought to his research. Noting, for example, that indigenous people on Puget Sound might have twenty names for places along a river but no name for the river as a whole, Waterman commented that “from our own standpoint, the Indian’s conception of the size of the world is startlingly inadequate.” Waterman saw Indigenous people as his intellectual inferiors, inhabiting a lower rung on the ladder between Savagery and Civilization. To strengthen this point, Waterman compared, for example, place-naming practices among the peoples of the Pacific: some Polynesian societies had names only for small places, while others, like the Samoans, had achieved a “national and archipelagic designation.” It was clear which societies Waterman found to be more civilized. While his work is a testament to the richness of indigenous inhabitance in Seattle and Puget Sound, it is also an example of the kind of thinking that placed Indians in the category of “primitive”—and that justified their dispossession.²

For all its biases, the biggest problem with “Puget Sound Geography” has been its inaccessibility. Available for decades only in the Bancroft Library, Berkeley, a photocopy of the unfinished manuscript was obtained by the University of Washington in the 1980s. Despite its poor quality, outdated and inconsistent orthography, and chaotic strike-throughs and marginalia, the University of Washington copy has been a boon both to archaeologists and to historians but has remained inaccessible and unusable to all but the most intrepid or formally educated researchers. In the 1990s, Upper Skagit tribal member Vi Hilbert, anthropologist Jay Miller, and amateur linguist Zalmai Zahir edited the manuscript, putting the elders’ words into modern orthography, translating a number of place-names that Waterman had not, and, most importantly, linking the work to present-day efforts to reawaken the indigenous language of the region. Even though their edition was published in 2001, the information remained relatively inaccessible because the limited printing run of this latest incarnation of Waterman’s research meant that it was expensive and difficult to find.³ The present atlas builds on the work of Hilbert and her colleagues but also returns to the original Waterman manuscript in an effort to expand the number of translations and to correct past mistranslations.

In addition to the material gathered by Waterman, this atlas makes use of certain field notes of John Peabody Harrington (1884–1961). Heavily influenced while at Stanford University by the work of the renowned anthropologist A. L. Kroeber, Harrington began graduate studies in Germany but soon dropped out to become a high school teacher in California, using his summers off to conduct fieldwork. In 1910, he came to Seattle to teach summer courses in linguistics and Northwest Coast ethnology at the University of Washington, as well as to conduct a series of public lectures entitled “The Siberian Origin of the American Indian.” During the summer of 1910, he conducted fieldwork with Duwamish people, including hereditary Duwamish chief William Rogers, on the Suquamish Reservation. Rogers, an Indian man named Moore, and the informant and interpreter Edward Percival joined Harrington on visits to the Seattle and Renton area, contributing the place-names included in this atlas. This research, along with his more extensive work on the last speakers of several California languages, brought Harrington to the attention of the Bureau of American Ethnology, which hired him as an ethnographer in 1915.

Over the next four decades, Harrington went on to collect materials on more than a hundred additional Indigenous languages of North America and became a pioneer of linguistic recordings. Reclusive and eccentric, Harrington received little academic recognition during his life, but after his death, his colleagues discovered enormous amounts of field notes, squirreled away in garages and storage units up and down the West Coast. These field notes have supplied subsequent generations of scholars with remarkable insights into languages and cultural practices that are now lost. (Also, unlike Waterman, Harrington rarely made explicit written judgments about Native societies but appears to have had a deep appreciation for the sophistication of Indian languages, technologies, and cultures.)⁴

Except where noted, the information in this atlas comes from the original Waterman and Harrington materials, the field notes and plat maps of the General Land Office’s cadastral survey conducted in the 1850s, a list of villages and longhouses that was an exhibit in a 1920s land claims case, and Erna Gunther’s classic Ethnobotany of Western Washington. Unless noted otherwise, archaeological data come from the database held and maintained by the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. In many cases, additional information about the history of specific sites can be found within the main text of the book.⁵ We have chosen somewhat arbitrarily to limit the scope of the atlas to Seattle’s current boundaries, with a handful of exceptions in which a site immediately outside the city limits was important to understanding places within Seattle (e.g., entries 82–89) or where a site spoke directly to the broader themes of this book (e.g., entry 127).

The concerns of present-day tribal peoples dictate how this atlas should be used. Despite the tumult of regrades and ship canals, artifacts of Seattle’s indigenous past surely remain undisturbed throughout the city. With that in mind, the maps have been created at a scale that prevents the specific location of individual sites. We have also withheld mention of ancestral burial sites or of Indigenous remains that have been found in the city. But should a reader inadvertently unearth something (or someone) while digging a basement or clearing brush, a call to the tribes or to the Burke Museum should be the first response—not just because it is the right thing to do but because it is in keeping with any number of state and federal laws. Finally, although many elders once said that sacred sites in Seattle had lost their power due to urban development, some are being used again today and should be treated with respect. Just as this is not a pot hunter’s or grave robber’s guide to Seattle, it is also not a primer for playing Indian in the city.

Maps are risky things. Publishing this information lays bare traditional knowledge, and in doing so, risks intrusion upon the intellectual and cultural rights of modern tribal people. But there is also another kind of risk: getting the history wrong. The tighter the geographical focus, the less clear the information tends to be; the result is an atlas that includes conjecture, speculation, and goings-out on various limbs in the interest of imagining the possibilities. Of course, the simple fact that in many cases this geography is speculative—the untranslatable words, the mysterious meanings, the unclear uses of places—is a result of the history described in this book; it is part of the historical silence created by epidemics, dispossession, and forced assimilation.

Waterman himself fretted about how much had already been lost when he was collecting the place-names nearly a century ago: “On Puget Sound alone, there seem to have been in the neighborhood of ten thousand proper names. I have secured about half this number, the remainder having passed out of memory. I am continually warned by Indians that they give me for my maps only a small part of the total number which once was used. The rest they have either forgotten or never heard. ‘The old people could have told you all’ is the remark most commonly heard.”⁶ The math is off—Waterman and his students collected less than 10 percent of the names he claimed must have existed—but the point stands. So much was lost prior to the 1910s that we are bereft: the view offered by Waterman’s informants looks out on only a tiny fraction of the richness that was once here. Considering the power of what we do have, the reality must have been staggering. Instead of just over ten dozen names for Seattle, we might have had a thousand if only history had worked out differently. That said, the maps that follow are not intended as a complete or comprehensive survey of Seattle’s Indigenous geography; rather, they are mere glimpses of what was here before.

The final risk of maps such as these is that they might give the impression that such geographies were static and unchanging. This was surely not the case, especially in a geologically, ecologically, and culturally dynamic place such as Puget Sound. Even before the arrival of the Denny Party and others, the Indigenous maps of this place surely changed over time as sites and their uses changed. Instead of a stable “zero datum” on which the rest of Seattle’s history takes place, it is perhaps more accurate to think of this atlas as merely a partial snapshot of the Indigenous world just prior to white settlement. It is also useful to consider the other maps that could be made to represent Seattle’s diverse Native pasts: the locations of mixed-race and Indian families in Seattle’s neighborhoods, the installations of totem poles in the city, and the geographies of Skid Road. Each of these landscapes could—and perhaps should—be mapped as well and interleaved with the maps presented here for an even fuller accounting of the erasures, ironies, and persistences that make up the palimpsest that is Seattle’s history. I hope these maps are a step in that direction.

Introduction to the Revised Atlas by Coll Thrush

Much of the work reflected in the following atlas is that of linguist Nile Thompson, who worked closely with me on the first edition of Native Seattle. Drawing on the earlier research of ethnographers like Thomas Talbot Waterman and John Peabody Harrington, and on the scholars who collaborated with Upper Skagit elder and linguist Vi taqšəblu Hilbert, Nile produced new translations for many of the place names in Seattle whose meanings had largely been lost. The result captures the richness of the landscape, the creativity of the people who lived there, and in some cases the persistence of place names across the decades since the arrival of colonists.

As Nile wrote in his introduction to the first edition’s atlas,

The place names of Puget Sound Salish peoples have a wide range of reference, from myth to human activity, from spirit power to animal species, and from natural resource to natural landmark. A site could be named in isolation or it could be contrasted with other like features. The place-names themselves can refer to broad expanses or areas or to specific sandspits or rocks. Along the coastline, places were generally named from the perspective of looking toward the shore from Puget Sound.

Nile also made note of the deep connections between bodies, landscapes, and material cultural belongings in Coast Salish society. Whulshootseed is known for using something called lexical suffixes that link place names to living bodies and to the things of everyday life. For example, the suffix –us could refer both to a face or a bluff; –aqs could refer to a nose, a point, or a pointed object; and the –ootseed of Whulshootseed refers to the human or animal mouth, the mouths of waterways, and language itself. Each of these suffixes, so central to many of the place names included herein, speak to the integrated world of Duwamish and other Coast Salish peoples.

Thankful as always for the profound insights of Nile’s translation work, I have chosen to make one significant change to the atlas. While working on the original edition in 2005 and 2006, Nile developed a spelling system intended to make the reading and pronunciation of Whulshootseed words easier for readers and speakers of English. In the years since, however, none of the local tribes have chosen to take up that spelling system, and so I have transliterated Nile’s system into that used by most tribes in the region today, which is based on the International Phonetic Alphabet. While some of the characters are perhaps a bit intimidating to non-speakers, they are designed to accurately represent the sounds of Whulshootseed. Use the following pronunciation key, based on 1994’s Lushootseed Dictionary by Dawn Bates, Thom Hess, and Vi Hilbert, to guide your learning along with the approximate pronunciations following each place name. Remember, too, that the English translations are powerful windows into historical Seattle landscapes, even as it is critical that Whulshootseed, which is today experiencing a resurgence, continues to be spoken in a city that, after all, carries a Coast Salish name.

The best work is always collaborative, and the genealogy of this atlas stretches from Nile and me back to our teachers, to the others living and dead who have worked on creating a formal written form for the language, to earlier scholars like Harrington and Waterman, and most importantly to those Duwamish and other Indigenous men and women who chose to share the names of their world with newcomers. I respectfully thank all of them.

Map 1: Northwest

The four European compass points were not necessarily the most important directions in Puget Sound indigenous life. While Indigenous people recognized east and west as the places the sun rose and set, and north and south as places that sent different kinds of weather, orientations such as landward, seaward, downriver, and upriver were just as important, if not more so. Similarly, early settlers on Puget Sound had a sense of direction quite different from that of modern residents. Like Indigenous people, the first generation of settlers experienced this region from the water, and so, for them, traveling south to Olympia meant going up the Sound, while returning to the north meant going down-Sound. Imagine, then, that we are on a landward journey up the Sound, visiting first the territory of the Shilshole people and then moving into the outlying lands and waters of the Duwamish proper.

Place Names with Pronunciation

1     Salt Water   x̌ʷəlč   hwultch

Theodore Winthrop’s 1862 travel narrative The Canoe and the Saddle used the anglicized form of this word to denote both “Indian Whulgeamish and Yankee Whulgers” who lived along the Sound. In the century and a half since, this word for Puget Sound, spelled in various ways, has occasionally resurfaced, most notably in the well-known series of guidebooks profiling hikes and other excursions around the Sound published by The Mountaineers.⁷

2     Blackcaps on the Sides   čálq^w adi   CHAL-qua-dee

This place-name refers to the blackcap (Rubus leucodermis), a native fruit whose berries and shoots were harvested around the shores of this small lake. Now known as Bitter Lake, Blackcaps on the Sides was also a refuge for the Shilshole people during raids by northern slavers.

3     Calmed Down a Little   sisáɬtəb   see-SATHL-tub

Haller Lake’s original name likely refers to its role as another refuge during slave raids. Projectile points have been found nearby, suggesting that the lake was also a hunting site. Trails likely connected Calmed Down a Little to other upland sites like 110 and 123 below.

4     Sharp Rocks   x̌ʷíx̌ʷəcíls   HWEE-hwut-seels

Like many Whulshootseed place-names, this name for the sharp bluffs just south of Spring Beach is straightforward and descriptive, aiding travelers on the Sound in identifying the landmark. Like many other rocks along the coastline, these may have been blasted away.

5     Dropped Down   q^wátəb   QUAH-tub

Piper’s Creek runs through a deep canyon here in an otherwise gently sloping landscape, which may explain the name. Once the site of large salmon runs, the creek has been restored after decades of neglect.

6     Canoe   qílbid   QEEL-beed

Most likely, Meadow Point (today’s Golden Gardens Park) was used as a storage area for saltwater canoes since at low tide there was not enough water for the people of the nearby Shilshole (today’s Salmon Bay) to have access to or from their village.⁸

7     Lying Curled Up   čə́tqidəd   CHUT-kay-dud (lit. ‘tip brought up to the head’)

Waterman’s informant described this small sandspit at the site of the Shilshole Marina as “lying curled like a pillow” and noted that it was well known as a place for gathering fine clams.

8     Hanging on the Shoulder   k̓iɬalabəd   keethl-al-a-bud

Like many of the place-names around Seattle and throughout Puget Sound, this one, for the knoll at the north end of the railroad crossing of Salmon Bay, uses language of the body to describe the land.

9     Mouth of Shilshole   šəlšúlucid   shul-SHOOL-oot-seed

The narrow mouth of Salmon Bay takes its name from the Indigenous community at entry 10. One of Waterman’s informants described the passage through here as “like shoving a thread through a bead.” This statement probably reflects the lack of navigable water; longtime Ballard families report that prior to the building of the locks, one could wade through the water at the mouth of Salmon Bay at low tide.⁹

10   Tucked Away Inside   šəlšúl   shul-SHOOL

This large village was the home of the Shilshoolabsh, or Shilshole people, who had two large longhouses here, each 60 by 120 feet, and an even greater “potlatch house.” Devastating raids by North Coast tribes in the early nineteenth century may explain both the name (which Harrington described as “going way inland”) and the village’s location inside Salmon Bay. Despite settlement by non-Indians, some Shilshole people remained here until the construction of the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in the early twentieth century, while others became part of the community of Ballard or moved to area reservations. Relatively little is known about this settlement, as construction of the locks destroyed most of it in the 1910s. In the 1920s, however, archaeologist A. G. Colley conducted an excavation of the western part of the site, where the wakes of canal-bound boats had been wearing away several feet of shoreline every year. He found tools made of antler, stone, bone, and even iron.

11   Spirit Canoe Power   bətədáqt   buh-tuh-DAHQT

The power that resided in this creek allowed indigenous doctors to reach the world of the dead to recover the souls of ailing or troubled people. Doctor Jim, who hung himself on Salmon Bay in 1880, likely was connected with the creek, which by then had been befouled by cattle belonging to Ballard’s farmers.

12   Serviceberry   q̓ʷəlástab   qwuh-LAH-stahb

Waterman’s “small bush with white flowers and black berries” is a clear reference to serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia), whose wood was used for gaming pieces and whose berries were eaten either fresh or dried.

13   Outlet   gʷáx̌ʷap   GWAH-hwahp (lit. ‘leak [at] bottom end’)

This was the outlet of a stream, known to settlers as Ross Creek, that emptied Lake Union into Salmon Bay and was the passageway of several runs of salmon (chum, pink, chinook, and coho).

14   Small Lake   x̌áx̌əʔču   HA-huh-choo (lit. ‘small great-amount-of-water’)

This is the diminutive form of the word used to denote Lake Washington (see entry 90), in keeping with the lakes’ relative sizes.

15   Thrashed Water   sč̓axʷʔálqu   s-tchahw-AHL-qoo

or

Covered Water   sč̓uxʷʔálqu   s-tchoohw-AHL-qoo

People drove fish into this narrow, brushy stream by thrashing the water with sticks. The stream now flows in a pipe somewhere under the streets of the Fremont neighborhood.

16   Extended from the Ridge   stáčič   STAH-cheech

Now the site of Gas Works Park, this point was described by Waterman’s informants as leaning against the slope of the Wallingford neighborhood like a prop used to hold up part of a house.

17   Prairie   báq^wab   BAH-quahb

This was one of several small prairies maintained in what is now Seattle; as such, it was likely an important site for cultivating and gathering roots and other foods that Indigenous people propagated through burning and transplanting. The right to dig and burn on prairies typically passed down through women; the rights to this prairie likely belonged to women from entry 10 above and/or entry 108 below. Ancient tools made from obsidian have been found here; the raw material for the tools likely came from central Washington or perhaps as far away as central Oregon.

18   Croaking   waq̓íq̓ab   wah-KAY-qahb (lit. ‘doing like a frog’)

Perhaps this small creek on the north side of Portage Bay was known for its amphibious inhabitants, or perhaps it burbled in a way that reminded local people of frogs. The site might also have had religious significance; Frog was a minor spirit power that helped even the most common folk sing during winter ceremonies. A man named Dzakwoos, or “Indian Jim Zackuse,” whose descendants include many members of the modern Snoqualmie Tribe, had a homestead here until the 1880s.¹⁰

19   Lowered Promontory   sk^wíc̓aqs   SKWEE-tsahqs

The “top” of Lake Union seems an odd place for a “low” name, but the word for this place most likely refers to the point’s relationship to the surrounding, and much higher, landscape. Long before white settlers envisioned a canal linking Lake Washington and Lake Union, Indigenous people used this corridor to travel between the backcountry and the Sound.

20   Marsh   spáɬax̌ad   SPATHL-ah-hahd

The wetlands on the south shore of Portage Bay must have been a fine place for hunting waterfowl. Chesheeahud, or “Lake Union John,” owned several acres here from at least 1880 until 1906, a fact commemorated in a “pocket park” at the foot of Shelby Street by a plaque and depictions of salmon by an artist of the Puyallup Tribe.

21   Jumping over Driftwood   sax^wabábac   sah-hwab-AHB-ahts (lit.‘jump over tree trunk’)

The Lake Union shoreline was thick with logs here. A similar place-name, Jumping Down (sax^wsax^wáp), was used for a Suquamish gaming site on Sinclair Inlet across Puget Sound; that name refers to a contest in which participants vied to see who could jump the farthest off a five-foot-high rock.¹¹

22   Deep   sƛə́p   s-tluhp

This is a typically no-nonsense description of the place where the steep slope of Capitol Hill descends into the waters of Lake Union.

23   Trail to the Beach   sčákʷšəd   s-CHAHKW-shud (lit. ‘the foot end of the beach’)

A trail from Little (or Large) Prairie (entry 33) ended here. An elderly Indigenous man named Tsetseguis, a close acquaintance of the David Denny family, lived here with his family in Seattle’s early years, when the south end of Lake Union was dominated by Denny’s sawmill.¹²

24   Deep for Canoes   ƛ̕əpílʔwiɫ   ftapílíwil tluh-PEEL-weethl

Although this name is similar to Deep (entry 22), the difference matters. Such distinctions were critical to correct navigation and the sharing of information. According to the maps created by the General Land Office in the 1850s, there was a trail near here that skirted the southern slope of Queen Anne Hill on its way to Elliott Bay.

25   Lots of Water   hiwáyq^w   hee-WHY-qw

This creek in the Lawtonwood neighborhood, now known as Kiwanis Creek and the site of a large heron rookery, was a reliable source of freshwater in all seasons.

26   Brush Spread on the Water   paq̓ácaɬču   paq-AHTS-athl-choo

Excavations for the West Point sewage treatment plant in the 1990s uncovered a history of settlement here that stretched back more than four millennia. Even as landslides, earthquakes, and rising sea levels transformed the point, Indigenous people continued to use it to process fish and shellfish. Of particular importance are the trade items found here: petrified wood from the Columbia River, obsidian from the arid interior, and carved stone jewelry from British Columbia, all attesting to far-reaching networks of commerce. Although this deep-time settlement seems to have been forgotten by Waterman’s twentieth-century informants, during the nineteenth century the site served as home to dispossessed Duwamish Indians. Waterman was told that the name described the act of pushing or thrusting one’s way through brush, or the opening of leaf buds—apt similes for the way the point emerges from the thickly wooded bluffs that overhang it.¹³

27   Spring   búlac   BOO-lahts

Harrington collected this name for waters that emerged from the Magnolia Bluffs. Springs like these, arising where water sinks through sand and soil and then reaches nearly impermeable clay, help lubricate the landslides that have destroyed a number of homes near here.

28   Cold Creek   ƛ̕ux̌ʷáɬqu   tloo-HWAHL-qoo   (lit. ‘cold freshwater’)

This is a small creek flowing off the Magnolia Bluffs that may have been a reliable source of freshwater for travelers on the Sound. There is some disagreement between Waterman and Harrington regarding this site and that of entry 30 below; Waterman seems to have confused meanings and words, transposing this name to the other site but giving it that site’s meaning. Such discrepancies attest to the imperfect nature of the process by which the two ethnographers gathered their data.

29   Covered by Covering   líplipaɬax^w   LEEP-leep-athl-ahw

and

Rock   čə́ƛ̕a   TCHUH-tlah

Now known as Four Mile Rock, this massive glacial erratic sits at the foot of Magnolia Bluffs. The meaning of one of its names appears to refer to a story about the boulder. According to oral tradition, a hero named Stakoob once took a huge net woven of cedar and hazel and cast it over this rock from the far side of the Sound. The other name is purely descriptive, like the use of the word for ‘spring’ for various sites.

30   River Otter Creek   q̓aƛ̕áɬqu   qahtl-ATHL-qoo

The intermittent stream in today’s Magnolia Park was probably once inhabited by Lutra canadensis; it now is mostly covered by a road descending into the park.

31   Mouth along the Side   siláq^wucid   see-LAH-qwoot-seed

When Dr. Henry A. Smith, the man who would eventually pen the first written version of Seeathl’s famous speech, moved here in the 1850s, several Indigenous families still lived in this place. The slopes above the salt marshes between Smith Cove and Salmon Bay were refuges during slave raids, but a large shell midden excavated nearby in 1913 suggests their importance during times of peace and prosperity as well.

32    Aerial Duck Net   túqap   TOO-qahp (lit. ‘blocked at bottom’)

This is a common place-name in Puget Sound, referring to nets that were strung between tall poles and used to catch waterfowl. This unique technology mystified British explorer George Vancouver, who wrote that it was “undoubtedly, intended to answer some particular purpose; but whether of a religious, civil, or military nature, must be left to some future investigation.”¹⁴ Waterman was told that the ducks would be “started up” at Lake Union, then caught in the net here. One of Harrington’s informants, Percival, had camped here regularly before the site was urbanized and recalled that a small creek ran year-round at the site. This place-name can also describe someone who is constipated.

33    Little Prairie   babáq^wab   bah-BAH-qwahb

or

Large Prairie   báq^wbaq^wab   BAHQW-bahqw-ahb

Indian witnesses in a land claims case in the 1920s identified this place as the site of two longhouses, each 48 by 96 feet. The residents of these houses would have made good use of the large patches of salal (Gaultheria shallon) that could be found here, either eating the fruit fresh or drying it into cakes for the winter. Middens found along the shoreline here attest to the area’s importance as a shellfish-processing site as well. Settler William Bell staked his claim here, and until the early twentieth century, the Belltown shoreline was an important camping place for Native people, including migrants from Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington’s outer coast.

34   Sour Water   sčapaq^w   s-chah-pah-qw

Harrington collected this name for a hole in the sand that could be seen at low tide, about two blocks north of the foot of Pike Street. His informants told him that the hole was believed to connect via an underground channel to Lake Union. Young whales were said to have swum through the tunnel to the lake. A similar story is told about entry 116, and in fact, stories of such subterranean waterways abound throughout the region.¹⁵

35   Spring   búlac   BOO-lahts

This spring, located on what would become Arthur Denny’s homestead, was likely a less important source of freshwater for indigenous people, since it had the same unadorned designation as entry 27. Had it been more significant, it likely would have had a name like those for 58 and 99. This spring and others inspired the names of Spring Street and the Spring Hill Water Company, Seattle’s first municipal water supply, which was organized in 1881.¹⁶

36   Grounds of the Leader’s Camp   q̓əlx̌áqabix^w   quhl-HAH-qah-bee-hw

This place-name is said by Harrington to be the ‘chief place’ and another name for ‘Seattle’. Most likely this was the name for a camp of a man known as either Kelly or Seattle Curley (Soowalt), who was the headman of the Duwamish village in what is now downtown Seattle. He was a brother of Seeathl. His camp was located between Columbia and Cherry streets and First and Second avenues by one source but closer to Seneca or Spring by others. This camp also appears in the Phelps map of the Battle of Seattle, reproduced elsewhere in this book.¹⁷

37   Little Crossing-Over Place   sdzídzəlʔalič   s-dzee-dzuhl-ahl-eetch (lit. ‘little crossing of the back’)

The name refers to a small portage. Up to eight longhouses once existed here; only the ruins of one remained when Seattle was founded in 1852. Waterman penned his informant’s description of the site as follows: “In the vicinity of the present King Street Station in the city of Seattle, there was formerly a little promontory with a lagoon behind it. On the promontory were a few trees. Behind this clump of trees a trail led from the beach over to the lagoon, which gave rise to the name. There was an Indian village on each side of this promontory. Flounders were plentiful in the lagoon. This [the tidal marsh] is exactly where the King Street Station now stands.”¹⁸ According to other informants who worked with amateur ethnographer Arthur Ballard, this village was located at the foot of Yesler Way. If that were the case, the name would refer to the trail that crossed over the hill to Lake Washington in what is now the Leschi neighborhood.

Pioneer daughter Sophie Frye Bass described a second trail that came down to the Sound here: from the Renton area, it “straggled on to Rainier Valley and approximately along Rainier Avenue, then zigzagged across Jackson, Main, and King Streets to salt chuck (water).”¹⁹

Until at least the Second World War, Whulshootseed speakers used this name when referring to the modern city of Seattle.

38   Greenish-Yellow Spine   q^wátsíč   QWAH-tseech

This name for Beacon Hill may refer to the color of the hillsides; General Land Office survey field notes from the 1850s show that many maples, alders, and other deciduous trees grew here.

Map 2: Southwest

This time we arrive from the south (from up the Sound), following the West Seattle coastline and curving around into the estuary of the Duwamish River. These waters connected the Duwamish people with not only other Puget Sound Salish tribes such as the Suquamish and Snohomish but also more distant Coast Salish groups like the Twana of Hood Canal. Then we enter the lower valley of the Duwamish River, where the intensity of environmental transformation is matched by the intensity and density of Indigenous inhabitance. The farther upriver we go, the closer we get to the core territories of the Duwamish proper. Beyond them lay the lands of the Stkamish, a group that became part of the present-day Muckleshoot Tribe.

39   Place of Scorched Bluff   dxwk̓ʷásus   duhw-KWAH-soos

The bluffs here had black markings, hence the name. Such descriptive terms were critical for travelers on the Sound, who typically described and conducted long voyages in terms of the number of points that were passed during the journey rather than time or a consistent unit of measurement.²⁰

40   It Has Changes-Its-Face   basʔayáhus   bahs-eye-AH-hoos Brace Point is one of two places in Seattle that was inhabited by a horned snake, one of the most powerful spirits used by Indigenous healers. (The other site is 100.) The large red boulder on the shoreline here was also associated with the spirit power; some people believed the boulder could change its shape and that anyone who looked at it would be twisted into a knot.

41   Tight Bluff   čəx̌áydus   tchuh-HIGH-doos

This former name of Point Williams describes the dense plant growth on this headland and helped distinguish it from other points in the promontory-based system of measurement described at entry 39. It is now the site of Lincoln Park.

42   Capsized   g^wəl   gwuhl

This inauspiciously named creek enters Puget Sound at the north end of Lincoln Park. The old name might be a warning about the offshore potential for the tipping of a canoe.

43   Rids the Cold   tə́sbəd   TUSS-buhd (lit. ‘implement for ridding cold’)

While the name of this site may be a reference to the battle of the winds described at entries 82–88, since the fleeing North Wind was known to have alighted briefly at other places along the Sound, it is more likely a reference to the bricks that were made out of clay here by settlers very early in Seattle’s development. Native people would certainly have been aware of the insulating properties of brick, even if they could rarely afford to build their houses out of the new material.

44   Wealth Spirit   tiyúɬbax   tee-YOOTHL-bakh

Jacob Wahalchoo, a signatory of the Treaty of Point Elliott, dove beneath the waters of Puget Sound here in search of a spirit power that lived in a huge underwater longhouse. This power brought wealth and generosity to those who held it. It could cause neighboring families to offer their daughters in marriage without asking a bride-price or could make game drop dead at its holder’s door during winter dances.²¹

45   Prairie Point   sbaq^wábaqs   sbah-QWAH-bahqs

An island connected to the mainland by two sandspits—a double tombolo—this windswept place remains the birthplace of Seattle in popular memory but was an Indigenous place and point of colonial reconnaissance well before 1851. Prairies here were almost certainly maintained through seasonal burning by indigenous cultivators. Pressings of plants from this prairie, most now extirpated from Seattle, can be found in the University of Washington’s botanical collections.

46   Place That Became Wet   dx^wq^wútub   duhw-QWOO-tub

or

Place for Reeds   dx^wkútʔi   duhw-KOOT-ee

Waterman and Harrington collected two different versions of the name for this place. Luckily, they seem to corroborate each other in terms of what kind of place it was: a wetland rich with resources such as highbush cranberries (Vaccinium oxycoccus), which were eaten fresh and dried, and cattails (Typha latifolia), which were used in fabricating mats. Many of Seattle’s upland areas, especially the West Seattle peninsula and the Greenwood neighborhood, were filled with wetlands and bogs. One such bog is currently being restored near this site, at Roxbury Park at the headwaters of Longfellow Creek.

47   Low Point   sg^wədaqs   sgwuh-dahqs

This ancient name for Duwamish Head can also mean ‘base of the point’. This beach was an important fishing site; it was here that Captain Robert Fay tried to establish a commercial fishery employing men recruited by Seeathl. According to Duwamish elder Alice Cross, there was once a large boulder covered with petroglyphs on the beach near here, each carving symbolizing a spirit power employed by local shamans.²²

48   Place of Waterfalls   dx^wcə́tx̌ud   duh-TSUHT-hood (lit. ‘where water falls over a bank’)

Shell middens have been found all along the shoreline near this steep gully.

49   Caved-In   asliq̓^w   ahss-leeqw

As in many places around Seattle, the bluffs here are very unstable. In fact, this part of the West Seattle landscape continues to live up to its indigenous name, with elaborate restraints only partially able to keep the land from moving during small earthquakes or periods of heavy rain.

50   Smelt   tʔáwi   t-AH-wee

This is a local form of the word for smelt, Hypomesus pretiosus. The indigenous name for Longfellow Creek suggests a traditional fishery. Carbon dating of the remains of an old shellfish gathering and fishing campsite here shows it was in use as far back as the fourteenth century. Today, local residents are struggling to restore the creek and its salmon runs; despite their efforts in the upper watershed, the old estuary is still straddled by industrial development, most notably a busy foundry. Smelt, meanwhile, have largely disappeared from Elliott Bay: the shallow-sloped gravel beaches with freshwater seepage, upon which they depend for spawning, have almost all been destroyed by development.

51   Herring’s House   túʔulʔaltx^w   TOO-ool-ahlt-hw

This was an important town; it included at least four longhouses and an enormous potlatch house, and middens have been found throughout this area. Important figures residing here included a headman named Tsootsalptud and a shaman called Bookelatqw. Two sisters-in-law of Big John, an important informant and early fishing-rights advocate among the Skwupabsh (Green River People, who lived upriver from Auburn), came from this village as well. The burning of Herring’s House in 1893 is one of the few times when the destruction of Indigenous Puget Sound settlements by Americans appeared in the official historical record. Its name has since been applied to a city park along the Duwamish River, located at the site of entry 61.

52   Burned-Off Place   dx^wpáštəb   duhw-PAHSH-tub

This small spit at the foot of Beacon Hill was likely an ideal place for camping, and its name suggests there may have been a small cultivated prairie here as well. Billy and Ellen Phillips, a Duwamish Indian couple, managed to eke out a living at the foot of nearby Stacy Street until 1910.

53   Little-Bit-Straight Point   tutúɬaqs   too-TOO-thlahqs

Waterman recorded this small promontory on an island as the location of a small stockade and lookout, used to defend settlements farther upriver. During a land claims case in the 1920s, however, Duwamish and Muckleshoot elder Major Hamilton testified that three longhouses had also once been located here. Long buried under fill, the site is near the old Rainier Brewery along Interstate 5.²³

54   Canoe Opening   slúwiɬ   SLOO-weethl

This word, like its diminutive form (108), has two meanings. It can refer to the tiny holes made in canoes during carving to help measure hull thickness. Informants told Waterman with respect to this site that the name refers to channels, or ‘canoe-passes’, in the grassy marsh through which canoes can be pushed to effect a shortcut.

55   A Cut   x̌ʷəq̓   hwuhq

This was the widest of the several mouths of the Duwamish River, which once carried the commingled flows of the White, Green, Black, Cedar, and Sammamish rivers. Today, only the waters of the Green enter Elliott Bay.

56   Uprooted Trees   qəlqəládi   quhl-quhl-AH-dee

or

Bad Bank   qəlqəlíqad   quhl-quhl-EE-qahd

Waterman and Harrington recorded differing versions of the name for this site along the shore of x̌ʷəq̓ (55). Both of them agreed, however, that the name referred to the limited access to the site. The similarity in their pronunciation suggests that one of them, after being misheard or misremembered, could have easily shifted to the other. Together, however, they paint a vivid picture of this place, now somewhere in the middle of Seattle’s industrial harbor.

57   Tideflats   cə̓qas   TSUH-qahss (lit. ‘rotten or fermented flats’)

This is where Seetoowathl and his wife starved to death in their float house. Kellogg Island, a wildlife preserve on the lower Duwamish, is a remnant of an original, larger island.

58   Crying Face   x̌ax̌abus   ha-ha-boos

A small creek, likely fed by springs “weeping” from the face of the hillside, flowed across a small flat here. Tribal elders testified in the 1920s that three longhouses once stood here; the many middens found in the area are reminders of that lost settlement.

59   Cottonwood Trees   q̓ʷadq̓ʷadʔíq̓ʷac   qwahd-qwahd-EE-qwats

Black cottonwoods (Populus trichocarpa) were, and still are, relatively common in the Duwamish estuary. While cottonwood leaves and bark had some medicinal uses, this name has the suffix -ac, which actually refers to the whole, growing tree as opposed to its component parts.

60   Backwater   sqabqabap   sqah-qah-bahp (lit. ‘very still bottom’)

This quiet place in the river, on the south side of Kellogg Island, exists today as the last remaining bend of the Duwamish River’s original course.

61   Basketry Hat   yəlíq^wad   yull-EE-qwahd

Around a millennium ago, the Seattle Fault violently and suddenly slipped several meters, dramatically altering the nature of this place. Despite such catastrophes, excavations done here in the 1970s and 1980s show that indigenous people used this site for several centuries both before and after the earthquake. As early as the first century BCE, when the site was an open, wet terrace above the river, people camped here during the spring to harvest fish and roots. By the time of the earthquake the site was being used far more intensively: faunal remains from that period were overwhelmingly those of salmon but also included dogfish, cod, grebes, deer, seals, mussels, clams, octopuses, elderberry, and wild onions. After the earthquake, the site was higher and drier and became a permanent settlement surrounded by forest.

Muckleshoot informants in the 1920s recalled hearing of three houses located here on the west bank of the river, each 60 feet wide by 120 feet long, although the site appears to have been abandoned during the epidemics of the 1770s. The name refers to a type of woven hat worn by Yakama women, suggesting trade networks across the Cascades, while a clay-pot fragment found here may have come from the Columbia River. When the Port of Seattle uncovered the settlement in the 1970s, the resulting excavation provided the unrecognized Duwamish Tribe with a highly visible venue for their claims. This site is now Herring’s House Park, a name that has “migrated” upstream from the site of entry 51.²⁴

62   Giant Horsetail Place   x̌əbx̌əbáli   hub-hub-AHL-ee

This grassy, level, and very wet place was rich with giant horsetails (Equisetum telmateia), whose little black roots were peeled and eaten raw. As one of the first green plants to appear in the spring, these were an important source of food and nutrients after a long winter of preserved foods.

63   Aerial Duck Net Place   təqbáli   tuhq-BAL-ee

As at the site of entry 32, a large trap stood here along a river bend at the foot of the bluffs. Enormous flocks of waterfowl would have populated the rich estuary of the Duwamish, particularly during spring and autumn migrations, making nets like these hugely successful. By the early twentieth century, though, most of the birds were gone, and the imposing net structures were a largely forgotten technology.

64   Fish Drying Rack   t̕álič   TAHL-eech (lit. ‘covering for sliced [fish]’)

Wooden frames for drying fish were set up along the bank at what is now known as Puget Creek. One of the salmon runs that would have been harvested here, the Duwamish chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), is now listed under the Endangered Species Act.

65   Head of the Shortcut   taƛ̕qíd   tah-tl-QEED (lit.‘head of extension between two points’)

The river curled back on itself here, creating a convenient detour at high tide.

66   Little Bends at the Tail End   pupiʔálap   poo-pee-AHL-ahp

The name of this small creek which flows into the Duwamish River is actually a diminutive form of the name of the Puyallup River, which flows into Puget Sound at Tacoma. Both names describe the curves of a watercourse’s lower reaches.

67   Lots of Douglas Fir Bark   čɬčáčabid   ch-thl-CHAHCH-ah-beed (lit. ‘made [fire] increaser’)

Unlike entry 59, which refers to an entire tree, this name lacks the -ac suffix and thus refers only to the useful parts of the Douglas fir tree. Indigenous people used Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) primarily for firewood because of its easily collected bark, hence its name of ‘fire increaser’. Preferring drier soils, this species is uncommon in estuaries, but here along the base of Beacon Hill, ancient lahars (catastrophic mudflows) from Mount Rainier built up a higher, drier terrace with ideal growing conditions for the huge conifer. Tiny pieces of fir found by archaeologists at the site of entry 61 quite possibly came from this very place, which is now part of the Georgetown neighborhood.

68   Missing in the Middle   subʔídg^was   soob-EED-gwahss

The name refers to the middle section of the bank having caved in. It seems possible that this name and the following one in fact refer to the same place. This one was collected by Harrington; entry 69 was collected by Waterman.

69   Eroded Bank   biʔabtəb   bee-ahb-tub (lit.‘bank has been acted upon by usual means’)

At this place, sand and other debris constantly fell into the water as the river ate away at the lahar terrace on its eastern bank. When the King County Poor Farm was built here in the nineteenth century, its gardens benefited from the shell-enriched soil of ancient middens.

70   House Post   cq̓ʷálad   ts-QWAH-lahd

According to Waterman’s informants, the river curved here in a way reminiscent of the forked cedar posts used to hold up longhouse roofs.

71   House Beams   t̕aɬt̕aɬusad   tahthl-tahthl-oos-ahd

This site’s name refers to a house’s crossbeams. One of Harrington’s informants said that at one time there had been a village here, but that there was “nothing but sticks left” by the early twentieth century. The name may be a description of those ruins.

72   Hand Causing Ill Will   həč’sáči   huhch-SAH-chee

The original course of the river still exists here, in the form of a channel dead-ending among industrial buildings on East Marginal Way just south of Ellis Street. Indian people who worked with Waterman called this a “bad place” because of its resident spirits. In deep time, the Changer came upon two men fighting here. He transformed one into a cottonwood on the west bank and the other into a white fir (Abies grandis) on the east bank, and bright sparks were said to fly between the two ancient enemies even in Waterman’s informants’ time.

The name of the site refers to a third spirit, which lived in the river itself, occasionally rising above the water in the form of a hand missing its fingers. Such a hand was known to other Coast Salish groups as well. There was a “bad hand” in Maggie Lake in Duhlelap Twana territory on Hood Canal. In Steilacoom territory south of Tacoma, a “large human hand, opened flat with the fingers close together,” was a feature of American Lake. Native people believed that if “the hand slowly disappeared again into the water the beholder was sure of a near death.”²⁵

73   Abandoned   ɬəwáɬb   thluh-WATHL-uhb

This place-name refers to a former river channel that, having become an oxbow lake, was no longer used by travelers. The oxbow saw a renaissance of sorts in the early twentieth century when it was dredged to create the Duwamish Waterway.

74   Place of the Fish Spear   dxwqwíƛ̕əd   duhw-QWEE-tluhd

This site was situated on a large flat in a bend of the Duwamish River. Waterman mistook his informant’s description of this town’s site (“a large open space; a plain”) for the meaning of its name. Sam Tecumseh, whose ancestors once lived here, said in the 1920s that the town included two large longhouses and several acres of potatoes. The villagers are said to have been described as “proud or confident people.” Once the site of the Georgetown race track, it now lies under the north end of Boeing Field. The author of a 1949 Seattle Business article offered a powerful description of this place’s history, writing that the area was once “just reed-grown duck marsh” but was now inhabited by “mechanical birds for test and flight.”²⁶

75   Rafter Support Post   təč’ʔwas   tutch-wahss (lit. ‘sticks into the rib’)

An old trail, likely from the vicinity of entry 94, came down to the river here. A landslide had buried the trail, and Waterman posited that some of the trees that had slipped with the earth might have looked like braces used to support a house’s rafters, thus inspiring the name.

76   High on the Neck   cəqálapsəb   tsuh-QAHL-ahp-sub

This narrow, necklike isthmus was the site of a small prairie where the nutritious bulbs of the camas lily (Camassia quamash), and surely other plant resources, were cultivated and gathered.

77   Lift It Over   x^wápičad   HWAH-pee-chahd

This was a wide flat at the southern end of the abandoned river channel. While Waterman did not understand the name’s meaning, it likely refers to the portaging of canoes.

78   Beach Worm’s Throat   q̓iyawálapsəb   qee-yah-WAHL-ahp-sub

The creature after which this site—an expansive flat containing three hills in the present-day South Park neighborhood—is named was identified by local informants in two ways: as an eel or as a long, green beach worm that inhabits driftwood and can be used as bait. The confusion may stem either from the superficial resemblance between the two animals or from an informant’s not knowing the precise English term for an organism he of course knew well. The solution is found in a Suquamish place-name, sq̓əyáwəb, which is based on q̓əyáw ‘long green grubs’ that are found in old logs. Candidate species include blennies of various genera and nereid worms (Nereis spp.).²⁷

79   Much Paddle-Wood   x̌ubx̌ubtay   hoob-hoob-tie

According to General Land Office surveys of the 1850s (as well as tribal informants), a grove of Oregon ash (Fraxinus latifolia) grew on this flat in a bend of the river. It was the favored wood for paddles among many of the Northwest’s Indigenous peoples.

80   Hollers after Eating   c̓ic̓q̓dib   tseets-q-deeb

“Hollers after eating’ is the name of a small, active shorebird that bobs up and down and has a loud cry, possibly the lesser yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca) or the spotted sandpiper (Actitus macularia).

81   Sweat House   gwə́x̌ʷʔaltxw   GWUHW-ahlt-hw

This is the name of a small creek entering the Duwamish River. The Southern Puget Sound Salish, including the Duwamish, used sweat bathing for bodily cleanliness and to aid physical well-being, but not as a cure to any serious ailment. This contrasts with the Northern Puget Sound Salish, who used it in preparation for spirit questing.²⁸

82   Meanie   sx̌ayák̓ʷ   s-high-AHKW

Three hills (82, 85, and 87) sit near each other in this part of the Duwamish Valley. Once islands in an arm of Puget Sound, they remained largely unchanged as catastrophic lahars created the valley floor around them in the millennia since the last ice age. Not surprisingly, they are landmarks in Indigenous tradition, being the site of an epic battle between great forces of nature. Although this hill’s name was translated by Waterman as ‘beaver’, the name he recorded is actually the diminutive form of the word for a mean person, a fitting description given the story recounted below.

In addition to their cultural significance, the hills here served a more practical purpose as places to keep watch for friends and enemies. Muckleshoot elder Dosie Wynn recalled that her grandmother had told her “they climbed up on them rocks. And they had scouts, Indian scouts, and they could look out [from] there.” Today, the Boeing Access Road exit from Interstate 5 crosses over part of this hill, and Airport Way cuts deep through its core in what must have been a very expensive off-ramp.²⁹

83   North Wind   stúbəlʔu   STOO-buhl-oo

There are many versions of the epic associated with this part of the Duwamish Valley. Most, however, focus on a great battle between North Wind, a force of cold and betrayal (and the ‘meanie’ of entry 82), and Storm Wind, who ultimately vanquished North Wind and helped establish the present-day climate. This place, located on the hillside to the west of the river, was the site of North Wind’s ancient village. The epic suggests the persistence of deeply held memories stretching back to the retreat of the great ice sheets.³⁰

84   Barrier   qəláx̌ad   quh-LAH-hahd

A ridge of stone in the riverbed, visible at low tide from the footbridge at South 112th Street, is all that remains of North Wind’s ice weir, which had once kept salmon from swimming upstream to Storm Wind’s people. According to one version of the story, the Barrier also served as a demarcation of territory during deep time, when trespassers were hanged. After North Wind fled the area, the portion of his fish weir that was not washed away in a flood was turned to stone. In the postcontact period, the same word by which this site was known was used for ‘fence’ or ‘stockade’.³¹

85   Beaver   stəqáx^w   stuh-QAH-hw (lit. ‘dammer’)

This second hill is associated both with the story of the winds, described above, and a story about beavers, given below. Local Indian people have maintained the memory of these hills and their stories despite dramatic changes to the landscape. Also known locally as Poverty Hill, the site has recently been preserved; eventually, interpretive signs and restored native plantings will highlight the valley’s rich history and ecology.

86   Little North Wind stútublə STOO-too-bluh

This was a small rock on the west side of the river above 84 and downhill from 85. It was usually submerged, but during low tide it was out of the water. This tidal fluctuation mimics that portion of the story in which North Wind kept setting his daughter by the river. Every time he did so, the water would rise because her icy earrings would melt.³²

87   Caused to Be Burnt or Blackened   sq̓ʷəlʔads   sqwuhl-ahds

The name of this place refers to dark striations on the hill. In the epic story associated with this region, Raven, the slave of North Wind, perched above South Wind’s grandmother, whose house was on this stone mountain, and defecated down on her. The paintlike marks on the hillside represented her face covered with the filth of Raven and her own frozen tears.

This hill and Beaver (85) also feature in a story about a battle between Beaver and five brothers, one of them imbued with Thunder power, which split a single eminence into these two hills. Indigenous people also claimed that splashing a canoe paddle in the river here or pouring water against the hillside would bring rain.

Today, the north end of the hill has been quarried away and replaced with an office park, while a new housing development covers its southern slope and Highway 599 separates the hill from the river. Muckleshoot elder Bena Williams told an interviewer that “when they started having a quarry there, then I don’t think anybody goes there anymore.”³³

88   Unclean Rock   sqəlíls   squh-LEELS

Described as ‘unclean’ in the sense of impure or bad rather than simply unwashed, this location just a hundred yards upstream from Beaver (85) is almost certainly connected to the story of the winds and most likely refers to the befouling that South Wind’s grandmother was forced to endure at the hands of the ‘meanie’ North Wind and his birds.

89   Inside Place   dx^wdəw   d-hw-doo

The region farther upstream, away from the open saltwater, was known as “inside” for its location inland off Puget Sound. This word is the base of the term “Duwamish.” The valley where the Black, Cedar, and White-Green rivers came together to form the Duwamish was a center of Indigenous settlement. There were towns here named Meeting of the Rivers, Crags, Little Cedar River, and Confluence, and the area also became an important refuge for local Native people during Seattle’s urban development. Today, only the Green River flows through this area, becoming the Duwamish below the former confluence with the Black, which disappeared with the lowering of Lake Washington in 1916. (The Cedar was rerouted north to Lake Washington, and the White was sent south to Tacoma.)

Map 3: Southeast

Leaving the Inside Place, we enter the homelands of the Lake People. The richness of the place-names along the Seattle side of Lake Washington is mirrored by that on its eastern shores and around the edges of Mercer Island.

90   Lake   x̌ačʔu   hahtch-oo (lit. ‘great amount of water’)

A generic term for large bodies of freshwater, x̌ačʔu gave its name to the Hachooabsh, or Lake Indians, a branch of the Duwamish proper who lived around the shores of Lake Washington. On some early maps of the area, this lake appears as “Lake Duwamish.”

91   Swimming Hole   sx^wt̕íčib   s-hw-TEE-tseeb (lit. ‘usual place to swim or wade’)

This town, located in what is now the Bryn Mawr neighborhood, was reputedly the birthplace of Chesheeahud. It is unclear how many houses were located here.

92   Ducklings   cípcip   TSEEP-tseep

This onomatopoetic place-name has been replaced by the name “Taylor Creek,” which flows through Dead Horse Canyon on Seattle’s southeastern boundary. It may in fact be the name of a particular unidentified species of small duck.

93   Loon Place   dx^wúq^wib   d-HWOO-q^weeb

Loons would have found the Lake Washington shoreline an ideal habitat, and this marshy area would have been a particularly good spot. Prominent in Puget Sound tradition, Loon was a powerful spirit for warriors, hunters, and the owners of slaves. This place-name is a little puzzling in that the ending is -ib instead of the expected -ad.³⁴

94   Small Island   ƛ´əƛ̕acas   TLUH-tlah-tsahss

This is perhaps one of the best places to see the results of the lowering of Lake Washington. Prior to the completion of the ship canal, there had been a small island here, parallel to the shoreline and separated by a marsh where, according to Harrington’s informant, one “could pull canoes through except for [the] reeds.” Today, “Pritchard’s Island” is now firmly attached to the mainland, although the former marsh is still a relatively wet area and is undergoing ecological restoration. A trail beginning near here went west over the hills to the Duwamish River.

95  Taboo Container   x̌ax̌aʔúlč   ha-ha-OOLCH

Some kind of malevolent power or spirit being resided at this place, now the site of Martha Washington Park. A Suquamish site near Manette with a name based on the same root was called x̌ax̌a ‘to be taboo’ and signified the location of canoe burials in trees. (There is no evidence, however, of such a use for this location.) The term x̌ax̌a has a wide range of meanings, from ‘taboo’ and ‘forbidden’ to ‘holy’ and ‘sacred’ and also ‘ritually impure’.

96   High on the Neck   caqálapsəb   tsuh-QAHL-ahp-sub

Indigenous people were most likely responsible for burning the open, oak-dotted prairie slopes found near this isthmus by General Land Office surveyors in the 1850s.

97   Noses   sqəbáqst   squh-BAHQST

Jutting out into Lake Washington, the Bailey Peninsula is home to Seward Park and some of Seattle’s oldest trees. The name likely refers to the fact that the peninsula, which would have almost been an island before the lowering of the lake, has points at both its north and south ends.

98   Cooking Fish on a Stick   scak’ácid   s-tsahk-AHT-seed

Low-lying Genesee Park was once Wetmore Slough, which reached nearly to Columbia City’s business district. It mouth was blocked up by logs and other debris that provided shelter for a large run of silver (coho) salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch). The name of the place refers to one traditional method of cooking fish, still practiced today: the whole fish is opened lengthwise, splayed on sticks, and leaned over an open fire. A hop yard stood here in the nineteenth century, gathering in the fruit of Native labor from the fields of Puget Sound country.

99   Breast, Nipple, Breast Milk   sqə́bʔu   SQUHB-oo

The reason behind this name for a spring near Wetmore Slough has been forgotten; it may be a reference to milky, mineral-laden waters or simply to its nourishing qualities.

100  Changes-Its-Face   sʔayáʔus   s-eye-AH-oos

Leschi Park, named after the Nisqually warrior who led the assault on Seattle in 1856, was once the home of a supernatural horned snake, similar to the one at the site of entry 40. One of the most powerful spirits available to Puget Sound shamans, Changes-Its-Face was enormous, had retractable horns that resembled an elk’s antlers, could also live in the sky, and could see in all directions. Young people were warned to reject this spirit if at all possible, perhaps because of the heavy punishments meted out against healers who failed to cure their patients, but also because it could cause its holder to do malevolent things. One of Harrington’s informants told him that the serpent that resided here departed during the early years of urban expansion.³⁵

101  Saw-Grass Point   x^wq^wíyaq^wayaqs   hw-QWEE-yahqw-eye-ahqs

This site was a place for gathering tules, or bulrushes (Scirpus acutus), which were woven into everyday household mats and screens. It was also the eastern end of a trail from Little Crossing-Over Place (37);

as such, it served as the departure point for Leschi’s attack on Seattle. Settlers used the trail as well, and the beach here became a popular “wilderness” destination during the city’s early years and eventually part of the city’s string of public spaces along the Lake Washington shoreline.

Map 4: Northeast

Besides being home to the Lake People, Lake Washington was also a transition to the Duwamish backcountry. The people living near the headwaters of the Sammamish watershed (the Sammamish River enters Lake Washington from the northeast) were often regarded as lower class by their neighbors, in part because they had direct access neither to the riches of Puget Sound nor to trade routes across the Cascades. Nothing captures this sense of “backwoodsness” more than the phrase used by coastal people to admonish an ill-bred child or an adult with bad taste by referring to a poor town in the remote hinterland: “diɫiɫčəx̌w ə tiʔiɫ tulʔál sq̓ʷax̌” (This person is like someone from Issaquah).³⁶

102  It Has Wolves   bastiqíyu   bah-stee-QEE-yoo

Wolves once hunted throughout what is now Seattle but had been extirpated by the time white settlement reached the shores of Lake Washington.

103  Chopped   x̌iƛ̕   heetl

or

Gnawed   x̌iƛ̕íl   heetl-EEL

Two slightly different names were collected for the shoreline south of Madison Park. Waterman’s name, Chopped, probably refers to dense forest that would have provided fine timber for canoes and house posts. Harrington’s version, however, refers to things that have been gnawed, and his informant figured that there must have been beavers here. Prior to the excesses of the fur trade, beavers shaped the landscape nearly as much as their Indigenous human neighbors by creating ponds and wetlands.

104  It Has Skate Fish   bask^wík^wiʔɬ   bah-SKWEE-kwee-thl

Skates, as a saltwater species, did not live in Lake Washington; this name more likely refers to the low, flat shape of the land here at what is now Madison Park.

105  Little Island   stítči   steet-chee

Now the southern half of Foster Island in the Washington Park Arboretum, this was a cultural site associated with entry 108.

106  Baby Fathom   stáɬaɬ   stahthl-ah-thl

The fathom, or more correctly the width of an adult’s outstretched arms, was a common unit of measurement in Puget Sound Indigenous life. This diminutive version of ‘fathom’ could also mean ‘niece’ or ‘nephew’.

107  Carry a Canoe   sx^wácadwiɬ   s-HWAH-tsahd-weethl

In 1854, pioneer leader Thomas Mercer visited Lake Union and envisioned a canal that would someday link the lake to Puget Sound and Lake Washington. In the 1860s, a settler named John Pike began digging a canal here by hand, and for a time there was a small log flume that connected the two lakes. Indigenous people had been crossing this isthmus for centuries, either carrying their canoes or shoving them along an intermittent creek that appeared when Lake Washington overflowed. General Land Office surveys from the 1850s show a well-worn “Indian trail” just north of here, approximately where the Burke-Gilman Trail is now, and oral tradition cites another trail to the south. With all this traffic, then, one wonders if the idea of the “union” of lakes and Sound was really Thomas Mercer’s after all.

108  Little Canoe Channel   sɬuwíɬ   s-thloo-weethl (lit. ‘little canoe hole’)

Bearing the diminutive form of the name of entry 54, this was an important town with at least five longhouses and a large fishing weir on Ravenna Creek. The remains of that weir were exposed when Lake Washington was lowered in 1916; any evidence of the town itself has long been obscured by development around today’s University Village shopping mall.

109  [Unknown]   dx^wƛ̕əš   duhw-tluhsh

Green Lake must have been a fine fishing spot, surrounded by deep woods and close to the town at Little Canoe Channel (108). In addition to the salmon run in the lake’s outlet, which we now call Ravenna Creek, the lake was known for suckers (Catostomus sp.) and perch (Perca sp.), the latter, interestingly enough, an introduced species, suggesting that Native fishermen visited this place well after resettlement by non-Indians.

110  Red Paint   líqtəd   LEEQ-tud

Licton Springs bears one of Seattle’s few modern place-names derived directly from Whulshootseed. People came here to gather clay, which was baked and mixed with tallow to create a red paint.³⁷ The area was one of David Denny’s properties, then a health spa, and finally a streetcar suburb. The rust-red springs are still visible today in Licton Springs Park.

111  Dear Me!   ádid   AH-deed

This small cove was an important place to gather to play sləhal, the bone game; its name is an exclamation that must have echoed out over the water during many a session. Waterman’s informant said that this place was “set aside” as a camping spot for Indians. This was most likely during the 1870s, when Henry Yesler operated a sawmill on the cove and would have needed all the workers he could get. The bone game sessions surely continued after a hard day’s work in the mill.

112  Drying House   šabʔaltx^w   shahb-ahlt-hw

Exposed to the sun and to winds off the lake, this point would have been an ideal place for drying salmon in open frame structures. Waterman noted that his Indian informants also referred to this place as Whiskey Point, perhaps a reference to the liquor obtained via the cash and contacts made at Yesler’s mill.³⁸

113  Place of Whitened Clay   dx^wc̓áx^wəb   duhw-TSAH-hwub

White clay was found here at the base of steep, forested cliffs. Mixed with grease, earth pigments like those from here and Licton Springs (110) are still used in important ceremonies.

114  Minnows, or Shiners   ƛ̕ils   tleels

Lake Washington was home to many kinds of fish, from the huge sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus) and the prolific sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) to smaller species like those caught at what is now the private Windermere Park.

115  Small Prairie Point   babq^wábaqs   bahb-QWAH-bahqs

To Indigenous foragers, the similar, but slightly different, prairie names around Seattle likely each signaled a different suite of plant resources.

Some might have had particularly good camas, while others were better for salal or rice-root lily. In other words, the subtle diversity of names for similar kinds of places likely mirrored subtle forms of ecological diversity.

116  Digging in the Water   čaʔáɬqu   chah-ATHL-qoo

Lakes throughout the region were thought to be connected to Puget Sound. In this case, a hunter was dragged into Lake Washington by an elk he had wounded, and the bodies of both were found a month later on the shore of Puget Sound at Richmond Beach, north of Seattle. (Compare entry 34.) The name of this outlet to a small pond at today’s Sand Point, however, is almost certainly a reference to the gathering of wapato (Sagittaria latifolia), a starch-rich aquatic tuber that once grew prolifically in the 4,000 acres or so of wetlands around the shores of Lake Washington.³⁹

117  Sand People   wistalbabš   wee-stahl-bahbsh

Before it was filled by the navy, this pond at Sand Point was known for a short time as Mud Lake. Efforts are under way to restore some of the marshes here.

118  Fog   sq^wsəb   s-qw-sub

This is the name for Sand Point, an extensive, flat promontory. Fog is a feature of the lakefront here during certain times of the year.

119  Snowberry   t̕udáx^wdi   too-DAHW-dee

Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) was used to disinfect festering sores, and its inedible fruit was used as an indicator of the size of a given year’s run of dog salmon (Oncorhynchus keta): the more plentiful the berries, which were referred to as the salmon’s eye, the more plentiful the run. Snowberry thickets have been replaced here by the massive buildings of the former naval air station.

120  Much Inner Cedar Bark   slag^wlag^wac   s-lahgw-lahgw-ahts

Pontiac Bay, once a stop on the Seattle, Lakeshore, and Eastern Railway, was before that a place for gathering the bark used in everything from baskets to diapers.

121  Hunt by Looking at the Water   x^wix^wíyaq^wayas   hwee-HWEE-yahqw-eye-ahs

The fact that this name refers to hunting, rather than fishing, suggests that hunters would seek deer or other animals that came down to the shore here.

122  Silenced (or Quieted) Place   dxwx̌úbəd   duhw-HOO-bud

There was at least one longhouse here at the mouth of Thornton Creek. Stone tools and an adze have been found in the watershed between here and site 123. Farther up the watershed, on the 7200 block of Twenty-eighth Avenue Northeast, is a huge boulder that according to local lore was an Indigenous gathering place located at a junction of the upland trail system.⁴⁰

123  Bald (or Peeled) Head   ɬuq̓ʷqid   thlooqw-qeed

Remnants of this upland marsh can still be seen at North Seattle Community College, but a sense of the larger sweep of Bald Head can be gained by driving on Interstate 5 and noticing the “bowl” in which the college and Northgate Mall now sit. One of the sources of Thornton Creek, these wetlands would have been an ideal place for gathering highbush cranberries, marsh tea (Ledum groenlandicum), and other resources.

124  Osprey’s House   c̓ix̌c̓ix̌ʔaltx^w   tseekh-tseekh-ahlt-hw

Waterman incorrectly identified the large nest here as belonging to an eagle. Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) continue to nest around the shores of Lake Washington.

125  Thunderbird’s House   x̌^wiq^wádiʔaltx^w   hwee-QWAH-dee-ahlt-hw

In Puget Sound Salish religion, Thunderbird is one of the most powerful spirits, offering skills of oratory, wealth, bravery, and health to those, including Seeathl, who have held it. Thunderbird’s child is Thrush (Catharus spp.), who brought languages to the various human peoples. According to some elders, Thunderbird was a small, pure-white bird, about the size of a gull. But for most, it was a giant bird (probably the condor, Gymnogyps californianus). In either case, it threw off pieces of flint, or lightning, from its open mouth as it flew, while the sound of thunder came from the beating of its wings. Thunderbird was thought to live here on the lakeshore at the edge of this tall bluff. At least some of the Puget Sound Salish believed that the Thunderbird made its home in a rock (note nearby boulders at 122 and 127).⁴¹

126  Deep Point   sƛ̕ə́paqs    STLUHP-ahqs

According to Waterman’s informants, people who swam here on the edge of the lake were often taken away by “something.”

127  It Has a Rock   basč’íƛ̕a   bahs-TCHEE-tlah

This tiny stream, which runs in a deep ravine just north of the Seattle city line, is now officially known as Bsche’tla Creek thanks to a group of neighbors who asked the Lake Forest Park City Council to restore its original name. A large glacial erratic sits near the creek’s mouth.