Some Notes on the Lummi-Nooksack Indians, Washington

Abstract

The Lummi Indians occupy the Lummi peninsula, facing Georgian bay and Hale's pass, about twenty miles south of the British Columbia line, just across Bellingham bay from the city of Bellingham, Wash. The Lummis are now mostly half-breeds. They number about 375. The full-bloods are nearly all old people. These are much diseased. Practically all of them have the sore-eye disease called trachoma (?), and many of them have it in such a virulent stage that they have become blind. These Indians are fishing Indians, but 'also farm on their allotments. Their principal fishing season is August and September. The fish caught are salmon and halibut. These they dry for themselves or sell to the canneries. They now dry their fish in a fish house, but in the old times they would cut the fish into strips or halves and place same on a puncheon slab and prop this up before the fire. In the old times they made flour from fern roots. They also made salmon egg cheese. They put salmon eggs in a hair-seal pouch, and this they hung up in their smokehouse to dry and be smoked by the smokehouse fires till cured to the Indians' taste. A white man probably would not have relished it. The tribe as known to-day is made up of the Lummi, Snohomish, Nooksack and British Columbia Indians. They belong to the Salishan linguistic stock and now all speak the Lummi branch of that language. The Chinook jargon is also used extensively. The young people all speak English well. Besides being fishermen, each Indian has an allotment on the reservation. On these they are now doing quite extensive farming, which is well done, and in 1904 their houses were often better than those of their white neighbors, though sometimes not kept quite so neat and cle'an. In fact, they have advanced nearly to our standard, many even taking daily papers. In the old times these Indians practiced all the ceremonies known to their linguistic group. They waged war for the sole purpose of capturing slaves. Moreover, they had grades or castes, in a sense, among them. There were chieftain stock, common people, and slaves. Furthermore, the results of the hunting and fishing trips were portioned out ariong the participants by the leading chief according to the standing of each person. For instance, the chief always got the choice part of the whale. This consisted of the saddle and other special parts. The base people received the red meat, but little or no blubber. These people flattened their babies' foreheads so that a modern hat fits them better crosswise than the way a white man would wear it. They had puberty customs and mortuary dances, and had many dance lodges and secret 429