Lushootseed

Lushootseed, once called Puget Sound Salish, is the Central Coast Salish dialect continuum spoken around the inland waters of Puget Sound, from the Skagit and Snohomish in the north to the Duwamish, Puyallup and Nisqually in the south, perhaps by as many as 12,000 people at its peak.

The Lushootseed-speaking peoples lived in permanent winter villages of cedar-plank longhouses, moving to seasonal camps for salmon fishing, berry gathering and root digging, and villages were linked by marriage, trade and the potlatch, in which hosts gave away wealth to establish rank.

European diseases reached the sound in the 1770s, decades before sustained contact, which began when George Vancouver surveyed Puget Sound and claimed it for Britain in 1792. Maritime fur traders followed, and the Hudson's Bay Company built Fort Nisqually, the sound's first European post, in 1833, while northern raiders swept the villages for slaves.