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

Appendix 6
Quileute Exploitation and Maintenance of Prairies
in Traditional Times
By J. V. (Jay) Powell, PhD
December, 2002
(A report based on published and archival sources and ethnographic notes recorded by the author
INTRODUCTION
between 1968 and the present at LaPush and Lower Hoh River, Washington)
The Quileute Indians live on the western side of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Their
traditional territory includes the watersheds of the Sol Duc, Calawah, Bogachiel and Dickey Rivers, and
extends from the Olympic mountains to the Pacific littoral. The Quileute Reservation is at LaPush, a
village located at the mouth of the Quillayute River. Note that various anglicized spellings of Kwo’liyot’
have come into use over time and are used or quoted herein as they are used: Quileute, Quillayute, Quiliute,
Quillehuyt.
The Quileute were aware of the value of prairie areas. They maintained them, occupied them, and
relied on the food and materials they hunted and harvested there. They called prairies yaqw. Several of
these open flatlands existed within their traditional territory at the time of contact. This report is primarily
about the Quileute, but another Quileute-speaking tribe, the Hoh, live to the south of the Quileute at
the mouth of the Hoh River, whose watershed comprises the Hoh’s traditional territory of use and occupancy.
I will occasionally refer to the Hoh, as well. That the Quileute and Hoh systematically exploited
and maintained their prairies is recorded in the historic and ethnographic record. This report undertakes
to document the lore (knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, and products) of prairies in the traditional lifeways
of the Quileute-speaking peoples. The term “traditional” will be used with regard to Quileute perspectives
and behaviours that pertained just before treaty times and, in many cases pertained into this century
or continue to the present.
The body of this report, then, is composed of a cultural description of aboriginal prairie use.
The Quileute cultural patterns that I present appear to be warranted based on historical records and the
recorded statements of Quileute elders. As recently as the 1980s, I interviewed Quileute old people who
had foraged and camped in those prairies in their youth and even saw them burned. It is our goal to
reconstruct a cultural perspective, a set of traditional Quileute cognitive definitions that will allow us to
project how the talaykila pots’oqw (“the old-time Indians”) actually thought about their prairies in terms
of issues such as ownership, stewardship responsibilities, annual cycle, exploitation of the prairies, and
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