210727-051 Lummi Basket
ca 1900
5 3/4" x 9 1/4" Round Basket
History
The Lummi Indians are the principal tribe of more than twenty small Salishan tribes originally living on the lower shores, islands, and eastern side of Puget Sound in Washington State. They call themselves the Nuglummi, which means “the People”, or Lhaq’temish, which translates to People of the Sea. While the shorter version “Lummi” used today is usually pronounced with a short u, the longer Nuglummi is pronounced with a long u. Lummi Indians were the first settlers on San Juan Island, with encampments along the north end of the island.
North-end beaches were especially busy during the annual salmon migration, when hundreds of tribal members would gather along the shoreline to fish, cook, and exchange news. The original Lummi spoke the Songish dialect of the Salish language. Their language is the same as that spoken, with dialectic variations, by the Samish and Klalam to the south, the Semiamu on the north, in British Columbia, and the Songish, Sanetch, and Sooke of Vancouver Island, B. C. The Salish language is still spoken by many people today.
For 12,000 years, the Lummi subsisted near the Pacific Ocean and in nearby mountain regions. They returned seasonally to their longhouses situated at scattered locations on territory that is included in the present reservation in today’s western Whatcom County and the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Their protein-rich diet consisted principally of salmon, followed by trout, shellfish, elk, deer, other small wildlife, starchy camas bulbs and sun-dried berries. Most of their meat and seafood were smoke dried for preservation. They used carefully calibrated burning to prepare fields where they cultivated camas, tiger lilies, onions, and other edible plants.
Like most Northwest Coast peoples, they lived in winter villages of large cedar plank longhouses, dispersing in the warmer months to fish, hunt, and maintain and harvest shellfish beds and upland gardens. They weaved wool blankets from dog and goat hair. Baskets were woven from cedar bark, limbs, and roots; wild cherry bark, rye grass, bear grass, and nettle fibers.
They designed the commonly used fishing methods of the reef net, the weir, and the purse seine. They expressed their language and religious traditions through elaborate carvings on totems and ceremonies.
The Lummi medicine chest included Yarrow flowers boiled into a tea to relieve body aches and sinus congestion, buds of cedar chewed and swallowed for sore lungs, and to treat toothaches, and the whole lady fern plant was used for medicines and dye.The Lummi make a tea from current twigs that is a pain killer. These are just a few of the hundreds of natural medicines they used in the past, and continue to use.If the Lummi people had a church, it would be the ancient cedar, hemlock, and Douglas fir forest of Arlecho Creek near Mt. Baker, Washington.
Members of seyown, the Lummi Spirit Dancing Society, have worshiped here for millennia, fasting, taking purifying dips in the ice-cold creek, and bringing back special songs to sing for the rest of their lives.Over the years, much of the surrounding forest has been clearcut, leaving 672 acres of unprotected old growth. Should that remainder be cut as well, the Lummi believe that their songs would no longer be valid because they would lose their connection to specific animals of the forest. According to one Lummi ancient prophesy, “When the trees are gone the sky will fall and we and the salmon will be no more.”
The Lummi social structure was family centered and village oriented, marked by complex interrelationships. Leaders earned their status by their wits and demonstrated ability. Marriages were often arranged to facilitate trade relationships.The Lummi were accomplished artisans in the crafting of boats, seine nets, houses and numerous other artifacts, and they were part of a sophisticated regional political network.