The Coquille are a Native American people who historically lived in the Coquille River watershed and nearby coast to Charleston/South Slough area on Coos Bay. They along with other tribes, signed the 1855 Coast Treaty - and removed to the Siletz/Coast Reservation in 1856. Most Coquelle people remain there, as members of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians - but some of the off-reservation population is now recognized separately as the Coquille Indian Tribe, and is now centered in southwest Oregon in the United States, where the Coos River flows into Coos Bay.
Name
The name of the Coquille resembles the French word for "shell". This has led to speculation that the name was attached to the Indian people by French Canadian voyageur trappers working for the North West Company, because of the people's diet of shellfish and use of shells as personal ornament. However, a report written for the modern Coquille Indian Tribe suggests that the name comes from a mispronunciation of some native word, possibly for a river, geographic place, or person. Coquille, per an elder of the tribe who spoke with my father in the early 1970s meant "where the land meets the sea and there you provide a living." It was another word for an estuary, where they did their fishing weirs and provided their living every year.
Groups
The Coquille are one of the Lower Rogue River Athabascan tribes, which included the Coquille tribe, Shastacosta tribe and Tututni tribe. Bands of Tututni tribe include the Kwatami, Tututunne, Mikonotunne, Chemetunne, Chetleshin, Kwaishtunnetunne, Yukichetunne, and Naltunnetunne.
Human occupation of the coastal areas of the Coquelle dates back as far as 8,000 years, and 11,000 years in inland areas. Fish traps used on the lower Coquille River have been dated back at least 1,000 years. Extensive oral histories of the Coquille have been collected and preserved at the Coquille Indian Tribe Library in Coos Bay, Oregon. The Coquille fished in the tidewaters and estuaries along the Oregon coastline using fishing weirs and basket traps, and collected shellfish. Some lived in lean-tos made of cedar planks, others constructed homes on wood-frame poles out of willow frames covered with sod or grass reeds. Modern scholars have documented an extensive network of trails, footpaths, and canoe routes that the Coquille people had developed by the time of contact by the North West Company's Alexander McLeod in 1826.
After the treaty of 1855, the Coquille people were forced to move to the Coastal Indian Reservation. Today Coquille people may be part of one of two tribal entities: the Coquille Indian Tribe or the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz. The Rogue River Athabascan tribes, Takelma, Latgawa and Shasta peoples were in 19th century collectively known as Rogue River Indians.
