QUINAULT

At the site of Taholah, a town in the western part of Washington State, once stood the village of Kwi’nail (also written as Kwinail, Kwinaithl, and Quinaielt). The name came to be used for the people who lived there, spelled Quinault and pronounced quih-NAWLT, as well as for the river at the mouth of which the village was located. The Quinault River empties into the Pacific Ocean, and the Quinault, who had other smaller villages along the lower river and the adjoining coastline, are discussed as NORTHWEST COAST INDIANS. In what scholars classify as the Northwest Coast Culture Area are found peoples speaking many different languages. The Quinault spoke a Salishan language. Salis-han-speaking peoples living on or near the Pacific are discussed as Coast Salishans (or Coast Salish) to distinguish them from the people of the same language family in the Plateau Culture Area. To the north of the Quinault were the QUILEUTE, who spoke Chimakuan, and the MAKAH, who spoke Wakashan.

The Quinault homeland was a geographical dividing line, with narrow, rocky, and cliff-lined beaches to the north and wide and sandy beaches to the south. The Quinault traveled among their permanent villages of plank houses in dugout canoes, larger ones on the ocean and smaller ones for river travel. Western red cedar was the wood of choice for both dwellings and boats, as well as for containers and masks. Ocean and river fishing helped sustain them, augmented by some hunting of sea and land mammals and the gathering of shellfish and wild plant foods. The Quinault did some whaling in large dugouts usually obtained in trade from the Makah or NOOTKA. Like other peoples of the region, the Quin-ault practiced the potlatch, theirs a formal and complex version of the gifting ceremony, more similar to ceremonial practices of coastal tribes to their north than of those to their south. According to Quinault tradition, the deity Misp created the world and made it livable. The Xwoni Xwoni, a trickster figure, was celebrated in their legends.

The first recorded contact between the Quinault and non-Indians occurred in 1775, when tribal members paddled to a Spanish trading vessel anchored offshore. Several decades later, in 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, after their overland journey from St. Louis, encountered them. In the 1820s, non-Indian trappers and traders frequented the region. Settlers soon followed. Disease, carried to the region by these outsiders, took its toll, and growing non-Indian settlement meant the erosion of the Quinault land base. The Quinault were among those Washington tribes coerced into ceding most of their territory to Washington territorial governor Isaac Stevens. After refusing to sign the first treaty presented to them because of the poor quality of reservation lands offered, in early 1856, by the terms of the Quinault River Treaty, the Quinault agreed to settle on a 10,000-acre reservation near the growing settlement of Taholah. Officials attempted to place other coastal tribes—the Queets, Quileute, and Hoh—on this small piece. In 1873, President Ulysses Grant agreed to expand the reservation to 200,000 acres to accommodate them. One hundred years later, in 1973, the tribes received a cash award because of treaty violations.

Descendants of other tribes—the Chehalis, CHI NOOK, and Cowlitz—now also live on the Quinault Reservation, its various inhabitants organized as the

Quinault Indian Nation (QIN). The reservation includes 23 miles of unspoiled Pacific coastline. Among the tribe’s successful business enterprises are the Quin-ault Beach Resort and Casino and the Quinault Pride Seafood fish marketing company. With fishing at the heart of its economy, as it was in ancient times, the tribe has been active in conservation. To celebrate its traditional way of life as well as call attention to protection of resources, in 2005, as in past years, the QIN sponsored a canoe voyage, with representatives of various tribes along the Pacific coast paddling to the reservation to participate in a three-day potlatch celebration.