History of Seattle before white settlement
[3] As European contact continued and increased, the hah-choo-AHBSH (Xacuabš) and doo-AHBSH, (Dkhw'Duw'Absh) became identified as the people represented by the Duwamish tribe.
tohl-AHL-too ("herring house") and later hah-AH-poos ("where there are horse clams") was on the west bank of the Duwamish River near its former estuarial mouth on Elliott Bay, located around what is now south Harbor Island.
The Duwamish was a bountiful estuary, a powerful meandering river with extensive tidal flats and wildlife, when pioneer John Pike officially bought the land from the U.S. government in 1860, soon after the Treaty of Point Elliott, 1855.
The site was being cleared of buildings to construct a marine terminal when archaeological discoveries in 1977 halted further development.
In season, the park has hundreds of juvenile fish, and migrating salmon which attract harbor seals, ospreys, and bald eagles and provide habitat for cormorants, great blue herons, purple martins [4] and other native waterfowl.
The kehl-kah-KWEH-yah ("Proud People") had their village at too-KWHEHL-teed ("a large open space") farther upstream at a former bend of the Duwamish, in what is now south Georgetown.
The people called shill-shohl-AHBSH had the village of shill-SHOHL ("threading a needle", apparently for the narrow opening out to Puget Sound) on the north shore of what is now named Salmon Bay, where the Ballard Locks were built.
[14] The hah-chu-AHBSH called what is known now as Bailey Peninsula in Seward Park skEba’kst (skuh-BAHKST, "nose"); the isthmus was cqa'lapsEb (TSKAH-lap-suhb, "neck").
The Xacuabš had a village of two longhouses (khwaac'ál'al, forerunners of sizable cohousing for tens of people in each one) at xaxao'Ltc (ha-HAO-hlch, the "sacred or taboo place", from xá?xa?
The previously mentioned xaxao'lc ("taboo place") at Brighton Beach, south of the peninsula, was named for a supernatural spirit who was said to live in the lake there.
Remarkably, this is the approximate location of the Seattle Fault, which moved more than 20 feet (6.1 m) vertically during an earthquake about 1,100 years ago.
This quake caused a landslide at South Point on Mercer Island sending a large section of forest into the lake.
One of the possible village sites of the skah-TEHLB-shahbsh was around what was later named Wetmore Slough, now the filled Genesee Park in Columbia City.
The influential and principal village of the hloo-weelh-AHBSH was in the vicinity of present-day Brooklyn Avenue, at a then-much larger Portage Bay,[17] and SWAH-tsoo-gweel ("portage") on the north shores of a Union Bay nearly a mile farther than today, near what is now the Burke-Gilman Trail and the southeast corner of Ravenna Park.
[18] The village of hehs-KWEE-kweel ("skate") was of the hloo-weelh-AHBSH (from s'hloo-WEELH, "a tiny hole drilled to measure the thickness of a canoe"), for the narrow passage through then-large and resource-rich Union Bay marsh.
The Duwamish Tribe is today leveraging the sacred site in the path of substantial enlargement of SR 520 through south Union Bay between Redmond and Interstate 5, in their quest for recognition.
The village of too-HOO-beed was of the too-oh-beh-DAHBSH extended family and was near what is now called Thornton Creek in what is now Matthews Beach, with Meadowbrook their back yard.
