July, 2021
What’s a “Hibulb?” Good question. I didn’t know what it meant when I first saw the word, but now I know.
Hibulb was a community/village of the Tulalip Nation people, near Everett, Washington. The name Hibulb is pronounced hee-bulb with the accent on bulb.
A friend of mine joined me on this afternoon’s drive to visit the Hibulb Cultural Center located in Marysville, WA, just north of Everett, WA. Just walking up to the door was pretty cool. The door is hand-carved and gorgeous. My photos don’t do it justice.
I loved the floor inside. The tiles must have been handmade as well. They evoked feelings of walking on rock and sand and water even though the tiles were solid, and feelings of walking through the ages of time.
I didn’t get a photo of the sign that told how old the boat was in the photo below. It had certainly seen its share of water and weather and likely carried many, many people to safety on shore at the end of every journey.
It appeared that the wood had been stitched together using leather or plant twine.
The building is huge, about 23,000 square feet, and it sits on 50 acres of land where there are outdoor exhibits too. One of the exhibits inside the building was a replica of a longhouse (photo below). There were a number of white benches for seating and people could sit on the different levels of wood along the sides as well. Videos are shown here about history and art and construction and food and all manner of things relating to the Tulalip Nation.
The four longhouse poles (two on each side of the video screen) are old and were used in a real longhouse.
There were many rooms of exhibits, including an entire room dedicated just to books written by Tulalip Nation people about their history and lives. The photo below shows a tiny portion of that room.
The photo below is of another small corner in another room …
And more … and more …
A few handmade tools used for fishing (below) …
Regarding the next two photos below, in a nutshell, before the ice age happened, this area of the world was alternately covered by oceans and sand/mud and was often tropical in nature and weather patterns. Then the ice age happened and a number of glaciers came and went. The Vashon Glacier descended upon the area about 14,000 years ago, covering thousands of miles of land with ice approximately 3,000 feet thick. As the Vashon Glacier retreated, it left pretty much the land and water that we live on today. There are fossil records of alligators here! After much sleuthing online, I found an EPA document confirming those reports.
Here below is a sign and a photo talking about the knowledge that the Tulalip people had about the former presence of alligators. Oh, by the way, Tulalip is pronounced too-lay-lip, with the accent on “lay”.
As always, click on photos to enlarge them. I continue to repeat this for new readers. 🙂
This Hibulb Cultural Center was awesome. If you’re ever in the Marysville, WA, area and have some time, please go take a look.