History of the Coast Salish peoples

Since the colonial powers Great Britain and Spain agreed in 1790 not to have trading posts, the construction of forts did not begin on the Pacific coast accessible by ship, but first on the Columbia and further inland and only reached Vancouver Island more than 50 years later.

The early history of the Coast Salish people primarily relies on archaeological evidence, as written sources emerge only with the European exploration and subsequent claims in the late 18th century.

In addition to these sources, the Coast Salish history is enriched by oral traditions and research on culturally modified trees, which provide valuable insights into their ancestral practices and methods of processing resources.

In 1846, the USA and Great Britain divided the vast Oregon Country along the 49th parallel, severing traditional territories, kinship and trade ties.

While the Salish were initially able to play an important economic role in British Columbia before they were pushed out of most industries by legislation, in the USA they were often relegated to comparatively inhospitable regions.

These began in both states with proselytizing - against which their own spiritual forms developed as a reaction - led to bans on the most important cultural expressions, excluded all native inhabitants from the right to vote and escalated to the point of the forced removal of Indigenous children to residential schools for which the Canadian government apologized in 2008.

Thanks to more open borders and the increasing prosperity of some tribes, but above all the growing awareness of the common cultural values, there was a partial revival of the community of the Salish groups.

Such finds point to a far-reaching system of trade contacts, whose goods may have served to satisfy special representational needs, which are probably connected with the emergence of a class of nobility.

The Skeena Phase (1600–1200 BC), which can only be verified in Gitaus, shows molded, single-edged and lance-shaped bifaces, a type of double-edged hand axe.

Mussels were clearly important here, and fish (especially salmon and the starry flounder (Platichthys stellatus), a species of flatfish found on almost all coasts of the North Pacific.

Because of the paramount importance of salmon fishing, an immigration from the lower Fraser Valley or the Plateaus was long assumed, but Marpole culture appears to be regionally based.

Other tilled soil for growing Cranberries, Gooseberries, Rubus spectabilis, Rubus parviflorus (Thimbleberry), Wild Onions, Strawberries, Cow Parsnip (Heracleum maximum, too known as Indian Celery or Pushki), carrots, so-called crab apples, blueberries, black currants, etc., with the boundaries between farming methods, gardening and simply keeping the area free for certain plants, e.g. by fire, or protection of a suitable area by stone walls.

With camas bulbs, which were 4–8 cm in diameter and could weigh over 100 g, there was an intensive trade, especially with the Nuu-chah-nulth, because the majority of the coveted fruit grew in the less humid and warmer south of Vancouver Island.

The raiding and pillaging campaigns of the tribes living north of the Salish, especially the Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Tlingit, which were intensified by the first fur traders and the steady influx of arms, may have done considerable damage to the trade in some years.

Thus, among the inland Salish of the Flathead, Spokane, and Coeur d'Alene living in the backcountry, a "great disease" occurred in 1807 to 1808, but it is not until the epidemic of 1853 that it can be said with certainty that it was smallpox.

As Governor Stevens put it, "When gathered into large bands it is always in the power of the government to secure the influence of the chiefs, and through them to handle (manage) the people.

Nevertheless, the mission stations also benefited from these disasters, for the loss of cultural knowledge through the death of shamanss and medicine men, elders and healers, plus the belief that their own powers were too weak, caused many Salish to convert to Christianity.

The respective community leaders not only watched over the lifestyles of their youngsters - for which they reinterpreted the watchman system of the Indians and turned it into an instrument of control and punishment - but also disliked the occurrence of mixed-denomination marriages.

In 1923, two of their leaders, Peter Kelly and Andrew Paull, presented demands to the government, first for compensation (2.5 million CAD), then for increases in entitlement to 160 acres in reservation size, plus certain hunting and fishing rights.

This was due, in turn, to the fact that the supreme court of jurisdiction in London, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, recognized pre-European rights as continuing until the contrary was established.

In 1960, the Indians were given the right to vote at the federal level, but in 1965 the Court of Justice in Victoria tried to enforce that in undiscovered British Columbia the law of 1763 had no validity.

In 1859, over 2,800 Indians camped near the city, including perhaps 600 Songhees, 405 Haida, 574 Tsimshian, plus 223 Stikine River Tlingit, 111 Duncan Cowichan, 126 Heiltsuk, 62 Pacheedaht, and 44 Kwakwaka'wakw.

The Makah in northwest Washington, belonging to the Nuu-chah-nulth, formed the Neah Bay Fur Sealing Company in 1880 and chartered the ship Lottie in Port Townsend.

Gaining land rights, sovereignty, and economic self-sufficiency not only attracted new residents to the reservation and its environs, but more and more people acknowledged their Native American heritage.

The Indian Shaker Church, combining Christian and indigenous spiritual concepts, is based on the personal death and rebirth experiences of a coastal Salish from Puget Sound named John Slocum.

A song and spirit helper introduces the necessary knowledge, rituals such as bathing in the wilderness, restriction to certain food, are meant to strengthen the novice in his isolation from the environment.

Indeed, in 1982, section 35(1) of the Canadian Constitution recognized in principle the claims of the original people (aboriginals) and put the relationship with the levels of government on a new footing.

In 1994, in accordance with the change in the law, there was an opportunity for the first time in the expansion of Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, under the Bamberton Town Development Project to find workable ways.

The Lester B. Pearson College instructional program since then has included not only biological content, but also cultural aspects, in this case of the Beecher Bay First Nations.