Beset by warfare from surrounding Salish peoples, their last major presence in the region was eradicated by the Suquamish under Chief Seattle in the mid-19th century.
Some survivors were absorbed by neighbouring Salish peoples, while some moved to join the Quileute on the southeast side of the Olympic Peninsula.
The area was once dense conifer forest, inhabited by the local Salish peoples, until the arrival of the Rainier Valley Electric Railway from Downtown in 1891.
The seliš were the easternmost Salish people and the first to have a diplomatic relationship with the United States so their name was applied broadly to all peoples speaking a related language.
In the 1940s, she accompanied her daughter, the anthropologist Frederica de Laguna, on anthropological field trips in Arizona and among the Salish people of the Pacific Northwest.
The Salish people choosing weaving materials that grew abundantly in their local environment.
Though the Salish peoples together are less numerous than the Cherokee or Navajo the numbers shown below are a small fraction of the group.
He has also done fieldwork with the Salish people at the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State and received names among the Creek and Tewa tribes.
The Kwakwaka'wakw people of British Columbia, Canada applied it as a metonym to the Salish people living in the area of the present-day town of the same name.
The Chelan tribe (pronounced sha- lan), meaning "Deep Water" are an Interior Salish people speaking the Wenatchi dialect, though separate from that tribe.
