Pat Rasmussen PO Box 13273 Olympia, WA 98508 Phone: 509-669-1549 E-mail:
[email protected] November 23, 2014 What happened to the Steh-chass people? The Steh-chass people lived in a permanent village at the base of Tumwater Falls for thousands of years. The Steh-chass village was a permanent settlement – property and food were stored there. They lived in gabled cedar plank homes of rectangular, slightly slanted sides of cedar posts and planks. In the mid-1850’s there were three cedar plank homes there.1 A community of up to eight families lived in each with bed platforms along the walls. The village was a ceremonial site, a sacred site, where at least five tribes - the Nisqually, Squaxin, Chehalis, Suquamish and Duwamish - gathered for ceremonies, feasts, potlatches and to harvest and preserve salmon, clams, mussels, whelts, and moon snails, as well as crabs, barnacles, Chinese slippers, oysters and cockles, by drying, smoking or baking in rock-lined underground ovens.2 Layers of seashells recorded many years of habitation. The village was named Steh-chass and the river, now the Deschutes, was named Steh- chass River.3 The Steh-chass people, a sub-tribe of the Nisqually Indians, fished and gathered seafood all along the shores of Budd inlet.4 T. T. Waterman’s maps of Budd Inlet from the mid-1800’s show the Steh-chass Indians lived along the shores of the entire inlet.5 The Steh-chass people were led by Sno-ho-dum-set, known as a man of peace.6 At the Medicine Creek Treaty Council of December 24-26, 1854, Sno-ho-dum- set represented the