People of the Inside Water

Long before any street was laid, the Duwamish and their Coast Salish relatives lived along Puget Sound — an inland sea of salmon, cedar, and tide.

The Duwamish — the Dkhw'Duw'Absh, the People of the Inside — lived where two rivers ran down into Elliott Bay, one nation among many Coast Salish peoples on the Sound.

Life ran on the tide and the salmon runs. Cedar gave longhouses, canoes, and rope; the water gave salmon and shellfish. Winter villages stood where downtown is today.

This was never empty wilderness. It was a tended homeland, its beaches and streams known and named by generations — and the settlers of 1851 were latecomers to it.

Back

History of Seattle

#01

First Peoples

The land before the city

People of the Inside Water

Long before any street was laid, the Duwamish and their Coast Salish relatives lived along Puget Sound — an inland sea of salmon, cedar, and tide.

The Duwamish — the Dkhw'Duw'Absh, the People of the Inside — lived where two rivers ran down into Elliott Bay, one nation among many Coast Salish peoples on the Sound.

Life ran on the tide and the salmon runs. Cedar gave longhouses, canoes, and rope; the water gave salmon and shellfish. Winter villages stood where downtown is today.

This was never empty wilderness. It was a tended homeland, its beaches and streams known and named by generations — and the settlers of 1851 were latecomers to it.

See the first homeland

#01

Stand where the rivers still meet the Sound

The Duwamish live on along their river in West Seattle. Their longhouse and cultural center rise near the old village sites at the mouth of the Duwamish, the one full-scale longhouse in the city — you can visit it today.

Read the older map under the new one

The names give it away. The Duwamish River, and the chief the city itself is named for, carry the first language into the present. Look and the Coast Salish homeland is everywhere beneath the grid.

Know the people are present tense

The Duwamish Tribe is not a closed chapter. It endures today, still working for the full federal recognition it was long denied — a living nation, not a museum exhibit.

The city is young; the homeland beneath it is ancient — and its first people are still here.

People of the Inside Water

Long before any street was laid, the Duwamish and their Coast Salish relatives lived along Puget Sound — an inland sea of salmon, cedar, and tide.

The Duwamish — the Dkhw'Duw'Absh, the People of the Inside — lived where two rivers ran down into Elliott Bay, one nation among many Coast Salish peoples on the Sound.

Life ran on the tide and the salmon runs. Cedar gave longhouses, canoes, and rope; the water gave salmon and shellfish. Winter villages stood where downtown is today.

This was never empty wilderness. It was a tended homeland, its beaches and streams known and named by generations — and the settlers of 1851 were latecomers to it.

People of the Inside Water

Long before any street was laid, the Duwamish and their Coast Salish relatives lived along Puget Sound — an inland sea of salmon, cedar, and tide.

The Duwamish — the Dkhw'Duw'Absh, the People of the Inside — lived where two rivers ran down into Elliott Bay, one nation among many Coast Salish peoples on the Sound.

Life ran on the tide and the salmon runs. Cedar gave longhouses, canoes, and rope; the water gave salmon and shellfish. Winter villages stood where downtown is today.

This was never empty wilderness. It was a tended homeland, its beaches and streams known and named by generations — and the settlers of 1851 were latecomers to it.