A bit of history of Orcas Island in the San Juans here

[ImStillMags Mags]

We promised a post on the native inhabitant place names on Orcas Island. The San Juan Islands were very much transient hunting and fishing grounds for many of the Salish tribes, but the Lummi people, pictured here in traditional dress in the early 1900s, established villages on Orcas Island. Sources for this posting are many and we apologize in advance for any errors.

The Straits Salish peoples (Lummi, Saanich, Samish, Songish, Sooke, and Semiahmoo), particularly the Lummi tribe, inhabited Orcas Island for thousands of years. Salmon filled the waters around the island and the Lummi built large fish traps to supply the bulk of their diet. Communal longhouses -- mainly used in the winter months -- were built in Eastsound, Rosario, and Olga. 

The area in what today is Eastsound was called Chelqeseng, Olga was called Qltacht, and Rosario was called Mekuelnich (muh-KWUHL-neech). The Lummi that inhabited these villages were called Swél̕əx̣ (SWEH-luhkh), the name given to the eastern half of Orcas Island. Mount Constitution was called ŚepeliḰ (SHU-pully-yoak).

Contact with Spanish and British explorers came in the 1790s and a first wave of smallpox swept over the region. At the same time, intensified raiding by northern tribes began a decline for the Lummi tribe and other Coast Salish peoples in the nineteenth century. These raids by Northern tribes climaxed in a devastating raid by the Haida tribe which wiped out a Lummi village at a place on Orcas Island now known as Massacre Bay at the head of West Sound.

In 1843, the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Victoria at the southeast end of Vancouver Island, just west of the San Juan Islands, which led to French Canadian fur trappers canvassing the San Juan Islands, including Orcas. Within a few years, over-trapping eliminated the beaver from Orcas. Although the fur trade had declined, other business boomed, especially with the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the Fraser River Rush of 1858, which brought new prospectors to the region. The Treaty of Oregon was signed between the United States and Great Britain in 1846, establishing the U.S. and British North America (Canada) border at the 49th parallel.

In 1855, Lummi Chief Chow’it’sut and other tribal leaders in Washington Territory signed the Treaty of Point Elliott, which ceded most of the tribe’s aboriginal lands to the United States in exchange for a 15,000-acre reservation on a peninsula between Bellingham Bay and Lummi Bay, the location of the Lummi’s main year-round village.

From the Lummi Nation website:

"We are the Lhaq'temish, The Lummi People. We are the original inhabitants of Washington's northernmost coast and southern British Columbia. For thousands of years, we worked, struggled and celebrated life on the shores and waters of Puget Sound.

We are fishers, hunters, gatherers, and harvesters of nature's abundance. We envision our homeland as a place where we enjoy an abundant, safe, and healthy life in mind, body, society, environment, space, time and spirituality; where all are encouraged to succeed and none are left behind."