Salishan

Salishan is a family of more than twenty languages spread across the Pacific Northwest, from the coasts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon inland to Idaho and Montana. It includes Coast Salish, the Tsamosan and Tillamook branches on the outer coast, Nuxalk, and Interior Salish; Salish was originally the self-name of the Bitterroot Salish of Montana.

The languages are known for polysynthesis, agglutinative word-building, ejective consonants and reduplication. Coastal villages such as those of the Fraser estuary go back thousands of years.

Spanish explorers entered the Strait of Georgia in 1791 and George Vancouver surveyed the coast the next year. Fur-trade posts from Fort Vancouver in 1824 to Fort Langley in 1827 and Fort Nisqually in 1833 drew Salish-speaking peoples into the Hudson's Bay Company trade network, even as northern raiders and introduced epidemics struck their communities.