Territory claimed by Coast Salish peoples span from the northern limit of the Salish Sea on the inside of Vancouver Island and covers most of southern Vancouver Island, all of the Lower Mainland and most of Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula (except for territories of the Chemakum people).

Evidence has been found from c. 3000 BCE of an established settlement at X̱á:ytem (Hatzic Rock) near Mission, British Columbia.

[1] Early occupancy of c̓əsnaʔəm (Marpole Midden) is evident from c. 2000 BCE – 450 CE, and lasted at least until around the late 1800s, when smallpox and other diseases affected the inhabitants.

Parties from the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), led by John Work, travelled the length of the central and south Georgia Strait-Puget Sound.

From the 1810s through to the 1850s, Coast Salish groups of Georgia Strait and Puget Sound experienced raiding from northern peoples, particularly the Euclataws and Haida.

European contact and trade began accelerating significantly, primarily with the Fraser River Salish (Sto:lo).

Fort Nisqually and its farm were established in 1833 by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company a subsidiary of the HBC, between present-day Olympia and Tacoma, Washington.

Through the 1870s, agricultural work in hop yards of the east Sound river valley increased, including cultivation of mushrooms.

This riveted audiences at a Canadian Centennial ceremony in Vancouver's Empire Stadium and touched off public awareness and native activism in BC and Canada.

The Boldt Decision, passed in 1974 upheld by the Supreme Court in 1979 was, based on the Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855 and restored fisheries rights to federally recognized Puget Sound tribes.

[11] In British Columbia, 1970 marks the start of organized resistance to the "white paper" tabled by Jean Chrétien, then a cabinet minister in the government of Pierre Trudeau, which called for assimilation.

In the wake of that, new terms such as Sto:lo, Shishalh and Snuneymuxw began to replace older-era names conferred by anthropologists, linguists and governments.

The smallpox epidemic of 1862 started when an infected miner from San Francisco stopped in Victoria on his way to the Cariboo Gold Rush.

[15] Though the Salish peoples together are less numerous than the Cherokee or Navajo, the numbers shown below represent a small fraction of the group.

Neighboring peoples, whether villages or adjacent tribes, were related by marriage, feasting, ceremonies, and common or shared territory.

[16] External relations were extensive throughout most of the Puget Sound-Georgia Basin and east to the Sahaptin-speaking lands of Chelan, Kittitas and Yakama in what is now Eastern Washington.

Similarly in Canada there were ties between the Squamish people and Sto:lo with Interior Salish neighbours, i.e. the Lil'wat/St'at'imc, Nlaka'pamux and Syilx.

Having gained superiority by earlier access to European guns through the fur trade, these warriors raided the southern Salish tribes for slaves and loot.

[18] The highest-ranking male assumed the role of ceremonial leader but rank could vary and was determined by different standards.

[17] Nobility was based on genealogy, intertribal kinship, wise use of resources, and possession of esoteric knowledge about the workings of spirits and the world — making an effective marriage of class, secular, religious, and economic power.

Many Coast Salish mothers altered the appearance of their free-born by carefully shaping the heads of their babies, binding them with cradle boards just long enough to produce a steep sloping forehead.

[22] Bilateral kinship within the Skagit people is the most important system being defined as a carefully knit, and sacred bond within the society.

When both adult siblings die, their children would be brought under the protection of surviving brothers and sisters, out of fear of mistreatment by stepparents.

A seated human feature bowl was used in a female puberty ritual in Secwépemc territory; it was believed to aid women in giving birth.

The larger houses included partitions to separate families, as well as interior fires with roof slats that functioned as chimneys.

Methods used include use of a total station for mapping the sites as well as the creation of simple test pits to probe for stratigraphy and artifacts.

[36] Coast Salish peoples' had complex land management practices linked to ecosystem health and resilience.

The managed grasslands not only provided game habitat, but vegetable sprouts, roots, bulbs, berries, and nuts were foraged from them as well as found wild.

[42] In the third episode of the first season of the 2017's Taboo, Tom Hardy's character James Delaney visits the grave of his mother, whose name is "Salish".

[43] In 2022, filmmaker Ryan Abrahamson of the Spokane Tribe created a supernatural thriller featuring the Coast Salish language.