488 APPENDIX. 



along Puget Sound, especially those engaged in lumbering, 

 are mostly natives of the New England States, and went to 

 the Territory by sea. Those in the central, southern, and 

 eastern districts are generally natives of the Western States, 

 whence they went overland. At French Prairie, near the 

 beiui of the Cowlitz River, and in Mill Creek Valley, there are 

 a number of Canadian Frenchmen, who were formerly 

 hunters, trappers, and employes of the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 ])any. Many of them have married Indian wives. Within 

 twenty years, nearly or quite twenty thousand Indians had 

 their homes on the banks of Puget Sound and Hood's canal ; 

 but the white settlers have made war upon them, and strong 

 liquor and hereditary and infectious diseases have proved 

 still more dc^structive than open war and private quarrel. 

 It is doubtful whether five thousand now remain. The 

 tribes, which a few years since were separated by animosi- 

 ties and diversities of language, customs, and traditions, 

 have lost much of their distinctive character : many of 

 them have disappeared entirely, the individual members 

 having either died out, migrated to new homes, or fused 

 with the remnants of other tribes. SimiLir processes of 

 extinction have been at work in many parts of the United 

 States, but nowhere with so mucli rapidity, and with such fair 

 opportunities for observing all their stages, as in the American 

 States on the Pacific. The principal tribes now existing in 

 the western part of the Territory are the Claims (or Clallams), 

 on the shore of the Straits of Fuca; the Quiniults, in the basin 

 of the Quiniult River, which runs southwest from the Olympian 

 Mountains; the Cape Flattery Indians; the Chehalis Indians, 

 who reside along the stream of that name and about Gray's har- 

 bor ; the Shoalwater Bay Indians ; the Squamish, Nisqually, 

 Snoqualmie, Stolukwamish, and Skaget tribes; and the Belling- 

 ham Bay Indians. Most of the tribes which still preserve dis- 

 tinct names are called from the streams in the basins of which 

 they live, and in many cases the streams were named from the 

 adjacent tribes. East of the Cascade Mountains, the red men 



