The Chimakum (Port Townsend area), like the Quileute on the Coast, somehow for 3,000 years, maintained residency using a “clicking” language unlike most others on the Salish Sea. To understand their plight, one might review New Zealand’s history where a series of 3,000 battles were fought throughout the islands among Māori between 1807 and 1837. The northern Māori obtained muskets and then engaged in an intertribal arms race in order to gain territory or seek revenge for past defeats. Much like plowing a field, weapons provided indigenous peoples created fertile ground for a wave of European pioneer who followed. “When most were dead, we quit supplying them with ammunition and flooded them with alcohol.” Here in the Northwest, “In 1847 a disastrous conflict with the Suquamish devastated the Chimakum, effectively wiping them out. Chief Seattle became
the leader of the war against the Chimakum … the Suquamish immediately fired a volley of bullets … the rapid rain of bullets mowed them down.” (Chief Sealth, a Duwamish, took few causalities, though one was his oldest son.) “I will not dwell on nor mourn over our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, for we, too, may have been somewhat to blame.” (Chief Seattle’s 1854 Unanswered Challenge). After the Yakama attack on Seattle in 1857, major casualties occurred in their return across the mountains from the Snoqualmie’s for which the mountain pass is named, death at the hands of their brethren from weapons readily supplied. The tactic of giving others guns to do the killing, continues to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimakum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Seattle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemakum_language
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/musket-wars/overview
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Chief_Seattle
https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=28A.320.170
https://www.quora.com/Why-can-we-tell-that-Chief-Seattle-s-speech-is-a-powerful-and-bittersweet-plea-for-respecting-Native-Americans-rights-and-environmental-values
https://suquamish.nsn.us/home/about-us/chief-seattle-speech/#:~:text=Tribe%20follows%20tribe%2C%20and%20nation,exempt%20from%20the%20common%20destiny
History Farm Prose & Primary Level Question
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