Twana

The Twana are a group of nine related Coast Salish peoples living along the forested shores of Hood Canal in western Puget Sound, whose Central Coast Salish language is a close relative of Lushootseed.

Like other Coast Salish they spent the winters in permanent plank-house villages and dispersed to summer camps for the salmon runs. Rank was displayed through the potlatch, where sponsors gave away blankets, dentalia, canoes and even slaves, and shamans cured illness by recovering lost souls.

Maritime fur traders seeking sea otter pelts made the first European contact around 1788, and the sea otter had been nearly hunted out by 1792, after which Hood Canal saw almost no outsiders for roughly thirty years. The epidemics that swept the Puget Sound region nevertheless reached the Twana, thinning their villages before the treaty period began.