Each local group had one or more clusters of cedar-plank houses (called longhouses), which were as large as forty by one hundred feet. The primary Nootkan settlement was a social unit known as a local group (also called a band). Presbyterian missionaries also lived among other Nootka groups. Shaker and Presbyterian Missionaries came to Neah Bay in about 1903 and some from the Apostolic Church arrived in the 1930s. Beginning around 1800 the Nootka were drawn into the fur trade, first with the British and later with the European-Americans. In 1803, John Jewitt, a sailor aboard the English ship Boston, was captured by Chief Maquinna at Nootka Sound and lived there for more than two years, working as Maquinna's slave. On March 29, 1778, Captain James Cook was the first European to walk through a Nootka village at Nootka Bay. Together, the languages Nootka, Nitinat, and Makah are called Nootkan they are related to Kwakiutl, the Nootkans' Neighbors to the north, and belong to the Wakashan language famfly.Ī small party of Russian sailors, the earliest European explorers in Nootka territory, arrived on July 17, 1741, but weren't heard from again. The Makah are Nootkans living on the Olympic Peninsula at Neah Bay, Washington they spoke a language separate from Nootka and Nitinat. The language of the Nitinat, a Southern Nootkan tribe, is sometimes, but not always, distinguished from Nootkan dialects as a separate language. Numerous geographic dialects correspond to the two hundred-mile or so cultural distribution of Nootkan people on Vancouver Island. Nootka is the language of the Northern, Central, and Southern Nootkan tribes. Today, there are probably about five thousand. Aboriginally, there were approximately ten thousand Nootkans. For many years, scholars at the Provincial Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, have been assisting local Nootkan groups in their effort to preserve native cultural and language traditions.ĭemography. Today, some Nootkans still live on Westcoast reserves for native people, but many Nootkans have moved to Vancouver Island's urban areas to find employment. Aboriginally, the Nootka lived on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, from Cape Cook in the north to Sheringham Point in the south and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca at Cape Flattery on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Today, the Nootka people as a group prefer to call themselves Westcoast People. Nootka people are customarily divided into three groups known as the Northern, Central, and Southern Nootkan tribes. The term nootka is not a native one, but seems to refer to Captain Cook's rendering of what he thought the native people were calling themselves or their territory. The Nootka are an American Indian group located mainly on Vancouver Island.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |