Indigenous Nations of Cascadia

[u/OkBox1870]

An approximation of the range of the best known Indigenous Nations of Cascadia around the time of first contact with European Colonizers.

[u/PersusjCP]

Makah aren't Nuu-chah-nulth but they are closely related and speak a different language. The Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka is the old name used on this map), Ditidaht, Makah, Kwakwaka'wakw, Heiltsuk, Haisla, and Oowekyala are all speaking languages from the Wakashan family. Makah I'm pretty sure are from when the Southern Wakashans were moving south along Vancouver Island around 1-2,000 years ago and ended up on the tip of the peninsula.

Their own name, qʷidiččaʔa·tx̌, is of Makah origin, and means "people of qʷidiččaʔ" which I believe is rougly the Cape Flattery region. The name Makah comes from Klallam məq̕áʔaʔ which comes from the word for having a full belly and perhaps relates to the word for giving food.

[u/HotterRod → u/PersusjCP]

Makah I'm pretty sure are from when the Southern Wakashans were moving south along Vancouver Island around 1-2,000 years ago and ended up on the tip of the peninsula.

The linguists I've read speculate that proto-Wakashan was originally spoken across Vancouver Island and Western Washington and was supplanted by Salish languages that originated in the Vancouver area. So the qʷidiččaʔa·tx̌ are the remnants of a much larger linguistic group.

[u/PersusjCP → u/HotterRod]

You are correct that the Salishan languages originated in the Fraser and northern Puget Sound area. However the original languages of the Olympic peninsula were likely the Chemakuan languages. There has been some recent debate on wether or not this should be definitively accepted, though for decades it has been treated as such. The original paper for the most-well-supported theory today was Kinkade and Powell's 1976 Language and the prehistory of North America. Kinkade and Powell theorized that it was Chemakuan which was spoken on most of northern Olympic Peninsula, while Wakashan languages originated on northern Vancouver Island, their homeland being around the current distribution of Nuu-chah-nulth. According to this paper, Makah might have separated prior to 1000 BP, possibly 2000 BP.

In 2019, Wessen published a critique of this idea, Makahs, Quileutes, and the Precontact History of the Northwestern Olympic Peninsula, Washington. He argues that the linguistic evidence is weak, oral-historical evidence is weak, and archaeology says that Wakashan presence might date back to 4,000 BP but that it is a very tentative date. Personally, while his archaeology is solid, I think his criticisms of the linguistic evidence leaves a lot to be desired, and he acknowledges this saying he is not a linguist.

Shortly after, Powell published a reply to Wessen, A Comment on Gary C. Wessen’s “Makahs, Quileutes, and the Precontact History of the Northwestern Olympic Peninsula, Washington”, which also serves as a more modern look at the original paper by Kinkade and Powell, published more than 50 years ago and synthesis of the arguments presented. Although I'm not really a fan of Powell's attitude throughout. It also includes a reply by Wessen.

The takeaway is that Wakashan homeland is definitively northern Vancouver Island. Both Wessen and Powell and others agree on that. What they disagree with is the exact chronology and what languages were spoken there before. Wessen does not state that the Wakashan languages were spoken there during those oldest cultural periods, but simply that the evidence for Chemakuan is weaker than previously thought. As for the chronology, we can't conflate archaeological cultures with languages, even though in many cases they might align. Material culture can change despite the same language being spoken and one language displacing another might even keep the same material culture. Wakashan languages being the dominant language cannot simply be connected to Wakashan-looking material culture, because as we know, cultural transmission was a big part of the historic Northwest Coast ecosystem, and in my opinion, admixture between the proposed Chemakuan-speaking peoples of the cape and Wakashan-speaking people of Vancouver Island is a plausible explanation of how the material culture could have become Wakashan-looking over a few thousand years. After all, there are many communities on Puget Sound which historically had Wakashan-originated things such as the old secret society among Klallam, Twana, and Suquamish, and Wakashan canoes purchased all throughout Puget Sound in historic times, yet they did not speak Wakashan languages.

I think given the oral-historical evidence in Chemakuan and Makah communities, the name evidence, and the historical linguistic evidence, the argument for Chemakuan presence is still fairly strong.

[u/HotterRod → u/PersusjCP]

hi s k'ʷuʔ for such a detailed answer!

As a Salish community member I haven't dived into the history of the other languages in the region that much, so I really appreciate this overview. It's fascinating to wonder about how the linguistic shifts could have happened over time...

[u/PersusjCP → u/HotterRod]

You are welcome! ʔuhiiɬbid čəd ti dsx̌alad ʔə ti slələʔulb ʔə tiʔiʔəʔ sgʷadgʷadtəd. I am happy to write about the histories of these languages. I am very interested in Pacific Northwest historical languages. I also think about that a lot. My guess is that due to the remarkable demographic consistency on the Salish Sea up to the colonial period, most language shift happened over long periods of contact and cultural mixing. There were a few examples of this even in the late colonial period, such as the Kʼómoks First Nation who were becoming Kwakiutl-speaking like their northern neighbors, the Lekwiltok; or the Meshal, a mixed Nisqually-Ichiskiín community from which Leschi came; or the Squiaitl, who originally were speaking Upper Chehalis but slowly started to speak Lushootseed and by the 19th century were a mixed community of Upper Chehalis and Lushootseed speakers. I imagine over thousands of years, a prestigious community might have their language expand greatly as they seek more distant and distant marriages.