The Ozette Prairies of Olympic National Park - Natural Resources ...

to the sea to the north of Cape Alava, the farthest-west point of land in the coterminous United States. It
was a year-round village that encompassed a stretch of ocean beach and the islands of Tskawahyah (Cannonball),
Ozette, and Bodeltah (see Figure 8). The main part of the village faced the ocean above the rocky
beach, bounded to the east by a steep hill with spruce forests and an understory of western swordfern
(Polystichum munitum) (Gill 2005:55) (see Figure 9). A large offshore reef was exposed at low tide, allowing
easy and safe access by canoe (Mauger 1991:39). To distinguish these people from the Makah in general,
this report will use the terms “Ozette people” or “the Ozette.”
An earthquake struck the Ozette region on January 26, 1700 A.D. (Atwater et al. 2005), causing a
massive mudslide that buried several Makah plank houses at the Ozette Village. The vast wall of liquified
clay had the effect of freezing the daily life of a few Ozette families in time. In February of 1970, Pacific
storm waves exposed part of a longhouse, and then between 1970 and 1981, basketry, cordage, harpoons,
lines, bags, pegs, tools, weapons, and boxes were uncovered by Washington State University archaeologists,
in cooperation with the Makah and the National Park Service. In all, more than 50,000 artifacts were
excavated. Hundreds of thousands of bones and shell fragments from sea and land mammals, birds, fish,
and invertebrates were identified, quantified, and interpreted (Huelsbeck 1994a and 1994b; Wessen 1994;
DePuydt 1994).
Figure 9. Ozette Indian village, one of five Makah villages, in 1879. It faced the Pacific Ocean near Cape Alava, twenty miles south of Cape
Flattery. Courtesy of the North Olympic Library System. .
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