July, 2020
The Scenic Beach campground is on the west side of Kitsap Peninsula. On the northeast side of the peninsula, there is a small town called Suquamish. The name of the town is pronounced soo-qua-mish with the accent on “qua”. The first syllable sounds like the name “Sue”. The language of the Suquamish people is Lushootseed. In their language, the name of their tribe, their people, is spelled/pronounced as you see it above.
I enjoy learning about other people’s history and culture, same as I enjoy learning about my own. So this morning I drove to the small town of Suquamish for a look around.
The town of Suquamish is larger than Seabeck (not hard to do), but still Suquamish is a small town. It is named for the Suquamish Tribe. The Suquamish Tribe and individual members of the tribe own most of the reservation land there, although not all of it, which seemed odd to me. Seemed to me that the tribe and members of the tribe should own the entire reservation. During my visit here, I hoped to learn why things were the way they were. I planned to stop first at the Suquamish Museum in order to ask those folks if they had answers to my questions.
Unfortunately, the Suquamish Museum was closed because of COVID19. Maybe I’ll get to enjoy the museum on my next visit. But I read information on signs, and talked with other people in town, and I learned many things. I haven’t found the answer yet to my question about land ownership, but I’ll keep looking.
The Suquamish people have inhabited the very large, central portion of Puget Sound for thousands of years (including a number of settlements on land that is now called Seattle). In fact, Chief Sealth, ˈsiʔaːɬ in Lushootseed, was the Chief of the Suquamish Tribe during the creation of the Suquamish reservation in 1855. The city of Seattle is named for him.
I was especially fascinated by two things while I was here in the town of Suquamish. One was the Suquamish Tribe Veterans Memorial.
The wooden columns and beams are hand-carved. It’s a memorial to tribal members who are veterans.
The two columns in the rear are a man and a woman.
There is a custom among many native people to place a rock or feather, or a coin or flower, on a grave site or a memorial out of respect and connection. I took the photos above and then walked through part of the town of Suquamish. When I returned to this memorial (my truck was parked there), someone had placed two stones on the palm of the hand of the woman.
Little Towhee was with me, as she always is on these trips. She wanted to show her respect too. She couldn’t pick up rocks that she felt were large enough, so she asked me to put HER on the other palm of the woman. Little Towhee said she knew that the woman would hear and see that Little Towhee had respect in her heart.
I thought that was pretty cool. Sometimes a little bird can teach us important elements of life — to have respect for all things.
The two columns at the front of the Memorial had these animals on the front of the columns.
On the back side of each of those front columns was information about Chief Seattle and Chief Kitsap, two of the most powerful chiefs in all of the greater Puget Sound area. (Click on photos to enlarge the photos so you can read the text.)
The other fascinating part of Suquamish for me was the pier and its attached float. The pier went WAY out onto the water of Puget Sound. There was room at the float out at the end of the pier for small boats to moor temporarily. I’d bet mostly small, personal fishing boats might tie up there for a bit.
Fishing by people without a boat was not allowed from the float or from the ramp down to the float. But public fishing was allowed from the pier that was built on pilings. Lots of folks were fishing from the pier on the day I was here.
I was standing there on shore wondering what they were fishing for when one of the women pulled up a crab net, with a good-sized crab in it. Yum!
From where I was standing on shore at the head of that dock in Suquamish, I could look east about eight miles across Puget Sound and see (photo below) the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Shilshole Marina (with all those sailboat masts on the left side of the photo), a tiny bit of the outer entrance to the Ballard Locks (Hiram M. Chittenden Locks to be precise), and the dark green hill on the right side of the photo which is the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle … I could see millions of people and lots of smog.
That might be impressive to some folks.
But when I turned about 45 degrees to my right, more to the south, and looked about 71 miles to the southeast, my view vastly improved!
Mt. Rainier … 71 miles away and yet more visible, more clear, more present than Seattle.
The thousands-of-years-old Lushootseed name for this mountain is təˡqʷuʔbəʔ, pronounced something like “tahobeh”. The Lushootseed word means “mother of waters”.
There is much more to learn and see and do here in the town of Suquamish, and the area around it. I’ll be back!