The Lower Skagit had conflicts with Haida from the north, who would raid their camps to take slaves, as well as Klallam from the other side of the Puget Sound, who tried to occupy their lands.

Their lives revolved around the food they could harvest from the sea, such as salmon, through use of fish weirs, as well as nets dragged between two canoes,[3] and hunting duck, seals and deer.

[4] This diet was supplemented by gathering of a wide variety of nuts and fruits, as well as cultivation of camas roots, nettles, bracken, and after European contact, potatoes.

[5] In January 1855, a Lower Skagit chief named Goliah signed the Treaty of Point Elliott, by which the United States established reservations for numerous coastal tribes.

On October 13, 1971, the Indian Claims Commission ordered US$74,856.50 to be paid to the Lower Skagit to cover the amount of land that they had lost as a result of the Point Elliott Treaty.