The Quillayute are a Native American tribe located in western Washington in the United States of America, presently totaling about 750. The Quileute tribe colonized onto the Quileute Indian Reservation situated near the south-west corner of Clallam County, Washington at the mouth of the Quillayute River on the Pacific seacoast. The reservation’s primary population center is the residential area of La Push, Washington.
Similar to many Northwest Coast tribes, in pre-Colonial times the Quileute were dependent on fishing by local rivers and the Pacific Ocean for food. The Quileute built loghouses to protect themselves from the brutal, soaked winters west of the Cascade Mountains. The Quileute and additional Northwest Tribes relied on the sea. The Quileutes were among the sole tribes that hunted whales. Although the ocean was full of fish for the Quileute Tribe, they as well hunted game. They’d hunt down beasts such as deer and elk. In the Northwest coast naturally developing resources are abundant, and the Quileute Tribe survived off the land as well. The Quileute weren’t a farming tribe; they survived off of what they could find.
Quileute Creation Legend
Like most Native American Tribes the Quileute had their own set of legends that were passed down from generation to generation to explain events and occurances in their history. Many of these legends have survived the passage of time while others have been lost. Many of the Quileute legends can be found on this website.
The beliefs of the Quileute tribe varied over time. They originally were a really spiritual tribe, the Quileute legends have shamans and healers and numerous legends contain monsters that they believed in. For example; the Quileute creation legend says that a traveling shape shifter came upon a wolf and transformed him into a human being, creating the first Quileute.
The Quileute are told to have struggled with about all the tribes between the Columbia River and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, however most of the details of these conflicts are not available to examine. The one that’s explained is the warfare with the Makah Tribe in 1850. The describe of the fight, from Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian, reads more similar to a myth than a historical account:
“They removed his [Kihlabuhlup] blanket to find out why they had been unable to kill him, and they found marks on his body where the bullets had flattened themselves against his flesh, as if they had been shot against a stone. Then they cut him open and found that his heart was covered in hair, and his intestines, which were very short, were striped.”
As you are able to visualise, this doesn’t appear to be an precise historical account of the war, but it provides some insight into their culture. There were peaceful relations between tribes as well, with intermarriage and trading which was applied largely with the Makah.
The Quileute are still in existance today. The 2000 census accounted an official resident population of 371 populate on the Quileute Indian Reservation , which has a acreage of 1.5678 sq mi.