COOS

Kusan, the language of the Coos, or Kus, Indians, consists of two dialects, Hanis and Miluk. Although perhaps related to the Yakonan language spoken by other NORTHWEST COAST INDIANS—the YAQUINA, Alsea, Kuitsh (Lower Umpqua), and Siuslaw—it is generally classified as a distinct language family within the Penu-tian phylum. The Coos proper (sometimes called the Hanis) lived on the Coos River and Coos Bay, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean in what is now southwestern Oregon. The group known as Miluk lived to the south at the mouth of the Coquille River. The name Coos, pronounced as it is written, has been variously translated as “inland bay,” “lake,” or “south.”

The Coos and Miluk depended on the sea and rivers for subsistence, sometimes fishing from dugout canoes, sometimes from the riverbank, especially during seasonal fish migrations. Clams were another sought-after food as were berries and camas roots and bulbs. Deer and elk provided meat as well as hides for clothing. Winter villages consisted of semisubterranean rectangular buildings of cedar planks. Summer camps, typically placed upriver, consisted of brush shelters. The Coos were known for their woodwork and their basket-work. Headmen and shamans both had considerable influence over the village communities of extended families. Individuals sought spirit power through vision quests; shamans had at least five powers revealed to them on these quests.

The first non-Indians to have contact with the Coos were traders—first by ship, then by land. Settlers arrived in their homeland in 1853. In 1857, after tribes to the south—the TAKELMA and Tututni—were involved in the Rogue River War with settlers, most Coos were relocated northward to Fort Umpqua on the Umpqua River. (A Coos woman by the name of Libby eluded the soldiers in Coos Bay, hidden by a non-Indian friend in a flour barrel when the soldiers came to find her; she is remembered in the name of the Libby mines and the Libby area of Coos Bay.) In 1861, the Coos were forced to relocate again, this time to the Yachats (Alsea) Reservation, next to the Siletz Reservation, where a number of Athapascan-speaking tribes had been placed, such as the Tututni. In 1876, Yachats was opened to non-Indian settlement. Some Coos chose to make their homes on the Siletz Reservation; others migrated to the mouth of the Siuslaw River near the Yakonan-speaking Siuslaw and Kuitsh (Lower Umpqua) tribes. In 1941, the three tribes were given just over six acres of land for a reservation; the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians currently have tribal headquarters at Coos Bay and operate the Three Rivers Casino in Florence, Oregon.