American Indian Culture and Research Journal

INTRODUCTION The aboriginal Snoqualmie tribe inhabited the Snoqualmie River valley between the present cities of Monroe and North Bend, Washington. They were basically a riverine tribe who traveled to the shores of Puget Sound to obtain seafood and across the Cascade Mountains to obtain products from eastern Washington. E. Huggins (3 February 1855), an early pioneer, reported that the Snoqualmie,under chief Pat Kanim, were "the most warlike on the Puget Sound, and the terror of the other tribes. Often in armed bands they made raids upon the other Sound Indians, and murdered, plundered, or made slaves of all those captured alive." Oral and documentary sources suggest that the Snoqualmie controlled a major trade route with the plateau Indians, that they had a monopoly on the trade in flint stones, that they had a good supply of horses by the nineteenth century, and that they were well equipped for defending themselves. Haeberlin and Gunther state, in their survey of the Puget Sound tribes, that "[f]lint arrowheads were bought from the Snoqualmie,who were the only tribe that made them." The majority of the Snoqualmie never moved to a reservation, and, in a 1919 survey by special Indian agent Charles Roblin they were identified as an off-reservation tribe. The historic Snoqualmie tribe has survived to the present as a distinct Indian community. In fact, they were selected to serve as the Washington State Centennial Indian Dance Group in 1989 by the Washington State Centennial Committee. This study seeks to ascertain how the Snoqualmie Indians were able, in the absence of government economic assistance or political protection, to persist as a landless tribe in the face of severe pressures to assimilate.