Reliable food preservation techniques were vital to maintain adequate food supplies during winter months as well as in lean periods. Wild plants and roots added to the Nootkan diet. Land animals, such as deer, bear, and elk, were hunted or occasionally trapped. Seals, sea lions, whales, and porpoises were also important food sources whales were valued for their ceremonial use as well. Wooden fishing weirs were placed in rivers, and tidal fish traps were used in the sea nets, hooks, lines, herring rakes, gigs, fishing spears, and harpoons, as well as dip nets for smaller fish, such as smelt, were also used. Salmon was the most stable food source and was obtained in large numbers in the fall and stored for the winter months herring and salmon roe, cod, halibut, sardines, and herring complemented salmon supplies. The Makah, who live on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, live year-round at coastal Neah Bay, which is connected by road to the rest of the peninsula. Victoria, British Columbia, and Vancouver Island towns are now home for many Nootka. The physical isolation of most of these Reserves makes year-round living there impractical. Today there are numerous Nootka reserves dotting Vancouver Island's west coast. Villages were situated near sources of firewood and fresh water, as well as for shelter from surprise raids. The local group took its name from the place it was located, such as a fishing site sometimes it was named after a chief. The focal point of each was a family of chiefs who owned the houses as well as the territorial rights to exploit local resources. There, each local group had its own important ceremonial art. In the winter, several local groups formed a larger winter village. Within the longhouse, each housegroup family had its own cooking hearth and living area. Up to thirty-five related people (a house-group) lived in a longhouse. Nootkans moved between winter and summer settlements, with each local group having at least one longhouse for use in the Summer at one site and another longhouse for winter use at another site. Each local group had one or more clusters of cedar-plank houses (called longhouses), which were as large as forty by one hundred feet. The primary Nootkan settlement was a social unit known as a local group (also called a band). Presbyterian missionaries also lived among other Nootka groups. Shaker and Presbyterian Missionaries came to Neah Bay in about 1903 and some from the Apostolic Church arrived in the 1930s. Beginning around 1800 the Nootka were drawn into the fur trade, first with the British and later with the European-Americans. In 1803, John Jewitt, a sailor aboard the English ship Boston, was captured by Chief Maquinna at Nootka Sound and lived there for more than two years, working as Maquinna's slave. On March 29, 1778, Captain James Cook was the first European to walk through a Nootka village at Nootka Bay. History and Cultural RelationsĪ small party of Russian sailors, the earliest European explorers in Nootka territory, arrived on July 17, 1741, but weren't heard from again. Together, the languages Nootka, Nitinat, and Makah are called Nootkan they are related to Kwakiutl, the Nootkans' Neighbors to the north, and belong to the Wakashan language famfly. The Makah are Nootkans living on the Olympic Peninsula at Neah Bay, Washington they spoke a language separate from Nootka and Nitinat. The language of the Nitinat, a Southern Nootkan tribe, is sometimes, but not always, distinguished from Nootkan dialects as a separate language. Numerous geographic dialects correspond to the two hundred-mile or so cultural distribution of Nootkan people on Vancouver Island. Nootka is the language of the Northern, Central, and Southern Nootkan tribes. Today, there are probably about five thousand. Aboriginally, there were approximately ten thousand Nootkans. For many years, scholars at the Provincial Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, have been assisting local Nootkan groups in their effort to preserve native cultural and language traditions.ĭemography. Today, some Nootkans still live on Westcoast reserves for native people, but many Nootkans have moved to Vancouver Island's urban areas to find employment. Aboriginally, the Nootka lived on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, from Cape Cook in the north to Sheringham Point in the south and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca at Cape Flattery on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Today, the Nootka people as a group prefer to call themselves Westcoast People. Nootka people are customarily divided into three groups known as the Northern, Central, and Southern Nootkan tribes. The term nootka is not a native one, but seems to refer to Captain Cook's rendering of what he thought the native people were calling themselves or their territory. The Nootka are an American Indian group located mainly on Vancouver Island.
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