Makah
is a Klallam word for "the People."
The Makah word for themselves is Kwe-net-che-chat, "People of the Point." They were a whaling people, culturally similar to the Nootkans of Vancouver Island.
Location The Makah lived around Cape Flattery on the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula, a region of fierce, rainy winters and calm, sunny summers. The Makah Reservation is in Clallam County, Washington, within their aboriginal lands.
Population Makah population was roughly 2,000 in the late eighteenth century. In 1990, 940 Indians lived on the Makah Reservation, and perhaps another 1,000 Makahs lived in regional cities and town.
Language Makah is a southern or Nootkan language of the Wakashan language family.
Historical Information
History People have lived around Cape Flattery for roughly 4,000 years. The Makahs emigrated from Vancouver Island about 500 years ago, although some Makah villages were occupied as early as 1500 B.C.E. The Makahs first encountered non-natives around 1790, when British and Spanish ships entered the area, and the Spanish built a short-lived fort. Around 1809, the Makah detained several shipwrecked Russians and Inuit and also detained three shipwrecked Japanese in 1833. They traded occasionally with Hudson’s Bay Company.
Results of early contact included an intensification of trade and the use of non-native goods as well as disease epidemics. By the 1850s, villages were being abandoned as a result of depopulation. The Makah signed the Treaty of Neah Bay in 1855, ceding land in return for "education, health care, fishing rights," and a reservation (subsequently enlarged). The Indian Service soon moved in and tried to eradicate Makah culture. They prohibited the native language and customs in government schools and tried, but failed, to replace maritime traditions with agriculture.
During the 1860s and 1870s, Makahs hunted fur seals for the non-native market. In the 1880s, Makahs were hunting on white-owned ships, at a profit so great that they temporarily abandoned whaling. By the 1890s, some Makahs had their own boats and were hiring both Indian and white crews. At this time, however, the seal population began to decline owing to overhunting. As international treaties began to restrict seal hunting, Makahs turned to poaching and then abandoned the activity altogether. By this time, in any case, many of their maritime-related ceremonies had disappeared.
In 1896, when the boarding school closed, many families moved to Neah Bay, which became the Makahs’ primary village. In 1911, a treaty gave the Makah and some other Indian groups the right to hunt seals using aboriginal methods, a practice that continued for several decades. Commercial logging began in 1926. A road connecting the reservation with the outside world opened in the 1930s, as did public schools, which replaced the hated boarding schools. Tourism and the general local cash economy increased. In the 1940s, the Army Corps of Engineers completed a breakwater that provided a sheltered harbor for tourist boats and fishing vessels.
Major postwar economic activities were commercial fishing, logging, and tourism. Makah cultural life began to reemerge with the relaxation of the more severe anti-Indian government policies. In any case, some aspects of traditional culture, such as the potlatch and the language, had never been eradicated. In 1970, archaeological excavations at the village of Ozette revealed much about the aboriginal life of the Makah. This site has yielded over 50,000 artifacts as well as other valuable information and has encouraged many young Makahs to study anthropology.
Religion The acquisition of guardian spirits was central to Makah religion and ceremonialism. Adolescent boys acquired them by fasting in remote places. Shamans, both male and female, who had acquired several guardian spirits cured people and provided ceremonial leadership.
Except for ritual hunting preparations, most ceremonies took place in winter. Carved wooden masks figured prominently in a four-day Wolf ritual, during which members were initiated into the secret klukwalle society. A healing ceremony and complex whaling rituals follow Nootka patterns.
Government The Makah lived in five permanent, semiautonomous villages, with one or more lesser satellite village in the same general area.
Customs Social groups included headmen, commoners, and slaves. The headmen regularly affirmed their rank through the institution of the potlatch. Commoners could advance or fall back slightly through marriage or by acquiring privileges. Alliances were formed and privileges and subsistence areas were inherited through ranked patrilineal lineages.
Whaling and fur seal hunting were particularly prestigious occupations. Only the former was an inherited privilege, but both involved substantial ritual components. Only men hunted and fished aboriginally; women gathered shellfish and plants and cleaned, cooked, and otherwise prepared food products.
At the onset of puberty, girls were secluded and observed certain rites. Gifts from the man’s to the woman’s family constituted a marriage; such gifts were then redistributed to extended family and friends. Corpses were removed through house roofs and buried in boxes, along with possessions. Slaves were sometimes killed when a chief died.
Dwellings Permanent houses were built on wooden frames as large as 60 by 30 by 15 feet high. Platforms along the wall served as sleeping and storage areas. Planks from nearly flat roofs, on which fish drying racks were located, could be easily removed for ventilation. Several families lived in one house. Privacy was provided by removable partitions. House fronts and posts were carved or painted. In summer, some people left the permanent villages for summer residences.
Diet The region supported abundant land and sea life, including mammals, fish and shellfish, birds, and flora. Sea mammals were the most important staple, followed by fish, particularly halibut. Oil, especially from whales and fur seals, was used to flavor dried foods. The Makah ate some land mammals. Plant foods included several varieties of berries, roots (especially sand verbena, surf grass, and buttercup), and greens. Plants were also used medicinally, for raw materials, and in entertainment.
Key Technology Makah women wove spun dog wool or bird skin and fiber cordage on a two-bar loom. Women also made baskets of cedar as well as of cattail, tule, and cherry bark. Whaling equipment included mussel shell-tipped harpoons, line made of whale sinew and pounded cedar boughs, and skin floats for floating the dead whales and towing them ashore. Fishing equipment included hooks and kelp lines, weirs, traps, and gaffs. Land mammals provided additional raw material, such as antler and bone, for manufactured items. Shell was used for cutting and eating tools and for adornment. Mats for canoe sails, blankets, and cargo wrap were made from cedar bark. Wooden implements, such as bent-corner boxes (steamed and bent), bowls, dishes, containers, clubs, harpoon and arrow shafts, and bows, were fashioned from yew, red cedar, spruce, alder, and hemlock.
Trade The Makah were actively involved in trade and social intercourse with all neighbors, including Klallam, Quileute, and Nitinaht. Makahs often served as middlemen, handling items such as dried halibut and salmon, sea otter skins, vermilion, whale and sea oil, dentalium shells, dried cedar bark, canoes, and slaves. They made an especially good profit selling whale oil. Camas, a favorite food, was obtained in trade from the north. They both imported and exported canoes.
Notable Arts Basketry and wood carving were the two most important Makah arts.
Transportation Several different types of canoes were used for hunting marine mammals and for war, trade, carrying freight, and other activities.
Dress Men wore little or nothing in warm weather. Such clothing as men and women did wear was generally made from cedar bark and woven bird down feathers, as were diapers and other such items. Blankets, skins, and cloaks provided warmth in colder weather. People also wore conical hats and bearskin robes in the rain. Personal adornment included nose and ear ornaments and face paint.
War and Weapons Makahs occasionally fought the Quileute, Klallam, Hoh, and others as well as their Nootkan relations to the north. Weapons included bone and horn-tipped clubs, yew-wood bows, arrows with stone or bone tips, knives, spears, and slings.
Contemporary Information
Government/Reservations The Makah Reservation (1855; 27,244 acres) is located in Clallam County, Washington. The tribe accepted the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 and adopted a constitution and by-laws in 1936. They provide for a five-member tribal council, elected for staggered three-year terms, with various appointed committees. In 1984, the Makah retook possession of Tatoosh and Waadah Islands. A one-square-mile reservation has also been established around the Ozette archaeological site.
Economy The Makah Cultural and Research Center (1979) is home to the Ozette artifacts. This major institution administers a highly successful language preservation program and is largely responsible for reinvigorating the Makah language. Commercial fishing, including a side business renting cabins to other fishers, remains important. Other economic activities include some logging and production of olivella-shell jewelry. The government (health services and schools) and local retail businesses provide some stable employment. Unemployment hovers around 50 percent.
Legal Status The Makah Indian Tribe is a federally recognized tribal entity.
Daily Life Radio station KRNB (1975) broadcasts from Neah Bay with some programs in Makah. Makah Days, a two-day celebration, is held at the end of August. The Makah are the only tribe in the United States with a treaty right to hunt whales. In 1995 they took their first whale in 80 years. In October 1997 they received permission from the International Whaling Commission to resume subsistence whaling. Some people still dance the family dances. Most Makahs are literate in their language.
