S'Klallam

The S'Klallam, whose name means 'strong people', are a Coast Salish people of the northern Olympic Peninsula, on the southern shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca in present-day Washington State.

Before contact their villages lined the coast from the mouth of the Hoko River to Port Discovery Bay, with further settlements across the strait on southern Vancouver Island. They lived by salmon fishing, sealing and whaling in canoes carved from red cedar, and settled rank through the potlatch.

The first European ship entered the strait in 1787, Robert Gray reached Clallam Bay in 1789, and George Vancouver met the S'Klallam in 1792; introduced disease and the maritime fur trade then sharply reduced their numbers in the early nineteenth century.