Ebey's Landing Administrative History

Chapter Three:
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF CENTRAL WHIDBEY ISLAND

At the time of Vancouver and Whidbey's exploration, three Coast Salish tribes, the Kikiallus [4], Snohomish, and Skagits lived on Whidbey and Camano Islands. Although Puget Sound had been inhabited for ant least 10,000 years, the Coast Salish predominated after the fourteenth century. Of the three tribes, the Skagits were the most numerous on Whidbey Island; Snohomish predominated to the south. Captain Whidbey found permanent Skagit dwellings scattered along Penn Cove. The Kikiallus lived primarily on northern Camano Island; a fourth tribe, the Clallams, claimed a portion of Ebey's Prairie in the 1840s. [5]

When describing the Coast Salish, scholars generally characterize their political and social organization as tribal. Many anthropologists think that the concept is unsatisfactory, since it was extended family ties that unified village groupings. Furthermore, anthropologists distinguish groupings of Coast Salish communities from one another by kinship and language. Despite variations, however, their cultures were generally similar. [6]

In the rainshadow of the Olympics, the comparatively dry climate of Whidbey Island attracted what may have been the most dense native population in the Northwest. The Pacific Northwest was rich in forest and marine resources, and coastal peoples developed sophisticated technologies with which to exploit these natural resources. Abundance permitted time for varied and elaborate material cultures in which coastal natives became fine basket and wool weavers and some of the world's great woodcrafters. Over time, the natives developed an elaborate trade network throughout the Northwest, which even provided them with European goods long before the arrival of Euro-Americans. Although it was apparent that they had never met a white man, Captain Whidbey was intrigued by the fact that the island's inhabitants had acquired some metal European trade goods. Another influence on Whidbey Island's inhabitants were the Haida, a tribe whose warriors periodically swooped down from the Queen Charlotte islands of Canada in search of slaves and goods. Some villagers on Whidbey Island built protective strongholds against these marauders. [7]

The Indians of Whidbey Island had a varied diet. They generally gathered where fish and shellfish thrived, thus their permanent villages dot the northern coastal rim in the area opposite Camano Island. Seasonally, inhabitants decamped to follow spawning salmon. These people also tended and gathered a wide variety of wild plants on the islands. They encouraged two staples of their diet, camas and bracken fern, through burning and clearing. [8]

Whidbey Island's prairies were especially fertile ground. When Clallams displaced Skagits on Ebey's Prairie in the 1840s, they introduced potatoes to the prairie, a new staple acquired from the British. Their Euro-American successors would clear the land of its remaining native flora to cultivate market crops exclusively. [9]

Ultimately, the Indian population of Whidbey Island dwindled, to be replaced by Europeans. Bunt Euro-American settlement alone did not displace them. Like Indians everywhere, the Coast Salish had little resistance to European diseases. Despite relatively few direct contacts between Indians and Europeans, smallpox decimated native communities. Syphilis, tuberculosis, and influenza would also attack the Indians of the Puget Sound over the first fifty years of contact, leaving a vastly weakened people, less able to resist the encroachment of Euro-American settlers upon their lands. [10]