Chehalis people


The Chehalis people or Tsihalis are a native people of western Washington state in the United States. They should not be confused with the similarly named Chehalis First Nation of the Sts'Ailes people along the Harrison River in the Fraser Valley area of British Columbia.
"Ts-a-lis" or "Chi-ke-lis" is the Lower Chehalis word for a historic native village at today Westport. Early explorers pronounced the word "Chehalis" and gave this name to the river and the people living upriver who later became the "Chehalis people" or "People of the Sands".
The Chehalis people of Washington consists of two divisions, speaking two distinct languages, which were not mutually intelligible: The Upper Chehalis or Kwaiailk and the Lower Chehalis, the boundary between the two groups was the confluence of the Chehalis River and Satsop River.
Today Chehalis people are enrolled in the federally recognized Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation, the Quinault Tribe of the Quinault Reservation, Shoalwater Bay Tribe, and Cowlitz Indian Tribe.
Chehalis-Population estimates in United States counts about 250 Upper Chehalis, and 500 Lower Chehalis.

Tribal lands and Chehalis bands or village groups

The "Upper Chehalis bands" hunted from the mountains, across the prairies, and fished the Cowlitz, Upper Chehalis, Newaukum, Skookumchuck, Black, and Satsop rivers, the "Lower Chehalis bands" fished the Middle and Lower Chehalis, Wynoochee, Wishkah, Humptulips, Elk, Johns, Hoquiam, North, Willapa, Niawiakum, and Palix rivers to Grays Harbor and in the Lower Puget Sound. Like many Northwest Coast natives, the Chehalis relied on fishing from local rivers for food and built plank houses to protect themselves from the harsh, wet winters west of the Cascade Mountains.
Lower Chehalis bands or village groups :
Upper Chehalis bands or village groups :
The Lower and Upper Chehalis languages belong to the Coast Salish family of languages among Northwest Coast indigenous peoples.

Reservation

The Chehalis people settled on their current Chehalis Indian Reservation along the Chehalis River in 1860. The reservation has a land area of 18.188 km² in southeastern Grays Harbor and southwestern Thurston Counties. As of the 2000 census its resident population was 691 persons. The major communities within the reservation are Chehalis Village and part of the city of Oakville. In the 2010 census, the population increased to 853 members. 639 of them were full-blooded.