Native Seattle (40 page)

56   
Uprooted Trees
   qulquládee
or
Bad Bank
   qulqulééqad
Waterman and Harrington recorded differing versions of the name for this site along the shore of
XWuQ
(55). Both of them agreed, however, that the name referred to the limited access to the site. The similarity in their pronunciation suggests that one of them, after being misheard
or misremembered, could have easily shifted to the other. Together, however, they paint a vivid picture of this place, now somewhere in the middle of Seattle's industrial harbor.

57   
Tideflats
   TSúqas (lit. ‘rotten or fermented flats’)
This is where Seetoowathl and his wife starved to death in their float house. Kellogg Island, a wildlife preserve on the lower Duwamish, is a remnant of an original, larger island.

58   
Crying Face
   XaXaboos
A small creek, likely fed by springs “weeping” from the face of the hillside, flowed across a small flat here. Tribal elders testified in the 1920s that three longhouses once stood here; the many middens found in the area are reminders of that lost settlement.

59   
Cottonwood Trees
   QwadQWad7ééQWatS
Black cottonwoods (
Populus trichocarpa
) were, and still are, relatively common in the Duwamish estuary. While cottonwood leaves and bark had some medicinal uses, this name has the suffix
-atS
, which actually refers to the whole, growing tree as opposed to its component parts.

60   
Backwater
   sqabqabap (lit. ‘very still bottom’)
This quiet place in the river, on the south side of Kellogg Island, exists today as the last remaining bend of the Duwamish River's original course.

61   
Basketry Hat
   yulééqWad
Around a millennium ago, the Seattle Fault violently and suddenly slipped several meters, dramatically altering the nature of this place. Despite such catastrophes, excavations done here in the 1970s and 1980s show that indigenous people used this site for several centuries both before and after the earthquake. As early as the first century
bce
, when the site was an open, wet terrace above the river, people camped here during the spring to harvest fish and roots. By the time of the earthquake the site was being used far more intensively: faunal remains
from that period were overwhelmingly those of salmon but also included dogfish, cod, grebes, deer, seals, mussels, clams, octopuses, elderberry, and wild onions. After the earthquake, the site was higher and drier and became a permanent settlement surrounded by forest.

Muckleshoot informants in the 1920s recalled hearing of three houses located here on the west bank of the river, each 60 feet wide by 120 feet long, although the site appears to have been abandoned during the epidemics of the 1770s. The name refers to a type of woven hat worn by Yakama women, suggesting trade networks across the Cascades, while a clay-pot fragment found here may have come from the Columbia River. When the Port of Seattle uncovered the settlement in the 1970s, the resulting excavation provided the unrecognized Duwamish Tribe with a highly visible venue for their claims. This site is now Herring's House Park, a name that has “migrated” upstream from the site of entry 51. The Duwamish hope to someday build a longhouse and cultural center facing the park across West Marginal Way.
²⁷

62   
Giant Horsetail Place
   XubXubálee
This grassy, level, and very wet place was rich with giant horsetails (
Equisetum telmateia
), whose little black roots were peeled and eaten raw. As one of the first green plants to appear in the spring, these were an important source of food and nutrients after a long winter of preserved foods.

63   
Aerial Duck Net Place
   tuqbálee
As at the site of entry 32, a large trap stood here along a river bend at the foot of the bluffs. Enormous flocks of waterfowl would have populated the rich estuary of the Duwamish, particularly during spring and autumn migrations, making nets like these hugely successful. By the early twentieth century, though, most of the birds were gone, and the imposing net structures were a largely forgotten technology.

64   
Fish Drying Rack
   TáleecH (lit. ‘covering for sliced [fish]’)
Wooden frames for drying fish were set up along the bank at what is now known as Puget Creek. One of the salmon runs that would have
been harvested here, the Duwamish chinook (
Oncorhynchus tshawytscha
), is now listed under the Endangered Species Act.

65   
Head of the Shortcut
   taTLqééd (lit. ‘head of extension between two points’)
The river curled back on itself here, creating a convenient detour at high tide.

66   
Little Bends at the Tail End
   poopii7álap
The name of this small creek which flows into the Duwamish River is actually a diminutive form of the name of the Puyallup River, which flows into Puget Sound at Tacoma. Both names describe the curves of a watercourse's lower course.

67   
Lots of Douglas Fir Bark
   cHhLcHácHabeed (lit. ‘made [fire] increaser’)
Unlike entry 59, which refers to an entire tree, this name lacks the
-atS
suffix and thus refers only to the useful parts of the Douglas fir tree. Indigenous people used Douglas fir (
Pseudotsuga menziesii
) primarily for firewood because of its easily collected bark, hence its name of ‘fire increaser’. Preferring drier soils, this species is uncommon in estuaries, but here along the base of Beacon Hill, ancient lahars (catastrophic mudflows) from Mount Rainier built up a higher, drier terrace with ideal growing conditions for the huge conifer. Tiny pieces of fir found by archaeologists at the site of entry 61 quite possibly came from this very place, which is now part of the Georgetown neighborhood.

68   
Missing in the Middle
   soob7éédgWas
The name refers to the middle section of the bank having caved in. It seems possible that this name and the following one in fact refer to the same place. This one was collected by Harrington; entry 69 was collected by Waterman.

69   
Eroded Bank
   bee7abtub (lit. ‘bank has been acted upon by usual means’)
At this place, sand and other debris constantly fell into the water as the river ate away at the lahar terrace on its eastern bank. When the King County Poor Farm was built here in the nineteenth century, its gardens benefited from the shell-enriched soil of ancient middens.

70   
House Post
   tSQWálad
According to Waterman's informants, the river curved here in a way reminiscent of the forked cedar posts used to hold up longhouse roofs.

71   
House Beams
   TahLTahLoosad
This site's name refers to a house's crossbeams. One of Harrington's informants said that at one time there had been a village here, but that there was “nothing but sticks left” by the early twentieth century. The name may be a description of those ruins.

72   
Hand Causing Ill Will
   huCHsácHee
The original course of the river still exists here, in the form of a channel dead-ending among industrial buildings on East Marginal Way just south of Ellis Street. Indian people who worked with Waterman called this a “bad place” because of its resident spirits. In deep time, the Changer came upon two men fighting here. He transformed one into a cottonwood on the west bank and the other into a white fir (
Abies grandis
) on the east bank, and bright sparks were said to fly between the two ancient enemies even in Waterman's informants' time.

The name of the site refers to a third spirit, which lived in the river itself, occasionally rising above the water in the form of a hand missing its fingers. Such a hand was known to other Coast Salish groups as well. There was a “bad hand” in Maggie Lake in Duhlelap Twana territory on Hood Canal. In Steilacoom territory south of Tacoma, a “large human hand, opened flat with the fingers close together,” was a feature of American Lake. Native people believed that if “the hand slowly disappeared again into the water the beholder was sure of a near death.”
²⁸

73   
Abandoned
   hLuwáhLb
This place-name refers to a former river channel that, having become an oxbow lake, was no longer used by travelers. The oxbow saw a renaissance of sorts in the early twentieth century when it was dredged to create the Duwamish Waterway.

74   
Place of the Fish Spear
   dxWqWééTLtud
This site was situated on a large flat in a bend of the Duwamish River. Waterman mistook his informant's description of this town's site (“a large open space; a plain”) for the meaning of its name. Sam Tecumseh, whose ancestors once lived here, said in the 1920s that the town included two large longhouses and several acres of potatoes. The villagers are said to have been described as “proud or confident people.” Once the site of the Georgetown race track, it now lies under the north end of Boeing Field. The author of a 1949
Seattle Business
article offered a powerful description of this place's history, writing that the area was once “just reed-grown duck marsh” but was now inhabited by “mechanical birds for test and flight.”
²⁹

75   
Rafter Support Post
   tuCH7was (lit. ‘sticks into the rib’)
An old trail, likely from the vicinity of entry 94, came down to the river here. A landslide had buried the trail, and Waterman posited that some of the trees that had slipped with the earth might have looked like braces used to support a house's rafters, thus inspiring the name.

76   
High on the Neck
   tSuqálapsub
This narrow, necklike isthmus was the site of a small prairie where the nutritious bulbs of the camas lily (
Camassia quamash
), and surely other plant resources, were cultivated and gathered.

77   
Lift It Over
   xWáPeecHad
This was a wide flat at the southern end of the abandoned river channel. While Waterman did not understand the name's meaning, it likely refers to the portaging of canoes.

78   
Beach Worm's Throat
   Qeeyawálapsub
The creature after which this site—an expansive flat containing three hills in the present-day South Park neighborhood—is named was identified by local informants in two ways: as an eel or as a long, green beach worm that inhabits driftwood and can be used as bait. The confusion may stem either from the superficial resemblance between the two animals or from an informant's not knowing the precise English term for an organism he of course knew well. The solution is found in a Suquamish place-name,
sQuyáwub
, which is based on
Quyáw
‘long green grubs’ that are found in old logs. Candidate species include blennies of various genera and nereid worms (
Nereis
spp.).
³⁰

79   
Much Paddle-Wood
   XoobXoobtay
According to General Land Office surveys of the 1850s (as well as tribal informants), a grove of Oregon ash (
Fraxinus latifolia
) grew on this flat in a bend of the river. It was the favored wood for paddles among many of the Northwest's indigenous peoples.

80   
Hollers after Eating
   TSeeTSQdééb
“Hollers after eating' is the name of a small, active shorebird that bobs up and down and has a loud cry, possibly the lesser yellowlegs (
Tringa melanoleuca
) or the spotted sandpiper (
Actitus macularia
).

81   
Sweat House
   gWúXW7altxW
This is the name of a small creek entering the Duwamish River. The Southern Puget Sound Salish, including the Duwamish, used sweat bathing for bodily cleanliness and to aid physical well-being, but not as a cure to any serious ailment. This contrasts with the Northern Puget Sound Salish, who used it in preparation for spirit questing.
³¹

82   
Meanie
   sXayáKW
Three hills (82, 85, and 87) sit near each other in this part of the Duwamish Valley. Once islands in an arm of Puget Sound, they remained largely unchanged as catastrophic lahars created the valley floor around them in the millennia since the last ice age. Not surprisingly, they are landmarks
in indigenous mythology, being the site of an epic battle between great forces of nature. Although this hill's name was translated by Waterman as ‘beaver’, the name he recorded is actually the diminutive form of the word for a mean person, a fitting description given the story recounted below.

In addition to their mythic significance, the hills here served a more practical purpose as places to keep watch for friends and enemies. Muckleshoot elder Dosie Wynn recalled that her grandmother had told her “they climbed up on them rocks. And they had scouts, Indian scouts, and they could look out [from] there.” Today, the Boeing Access Road exit from Interstate 5 crosses over part of this hill, and Airport Way cuts deep through its core in what must have been a very expensive off-ramp.
³²

83   
North Wind
   stóóbul7oo
There are many versions of the epic associated with this part of the Duwamish Valley. Most, however, focus on a great battle between North Wind, a force of cold and betrayal (and the ‘meanie’ of entry 82), and Storm Wind, who ultimately vanquished North Wind and helped establish the present-day climate. This place, located on the hillside to the west of the river, was the site of North Wind's ancient village. The epic suggests the persistence of deeply held memories stretching back to the retreat of the great ice sheets.
³³

84   
Barrier
   quláXad
A ridge of stone in the riverbed, visible at low tide from the footbridge at South 112th Street, is all that remains of North Wind's ice weir, which had once kept salmon from swimming upstream to Storm Wind's people. According to one version of the story, the Barrier also served as a demarcation of territory during the myth period, when trespassers were hanged. After North Wind fled the area, the portion of his fish weir that was not washed away in a flood was turned to stone. In the postcontact period, the same word by which this site was known was used for ‘fence’ or ‘stockade’.
³⁴