In my last column I indulged in banter about the passage of time. Now, we’re diving deep and I hope you’ll join me …
On Friday, our local tribe’s archaeologist, David Brownell, gave a fascinating presentation at Sequim City Hall about the historic S’Klallam village at Washington Harbor, which controlled the entrance to Sequim Bay. As one of a handful of sophisticated villages in the area, this one was called “Stqueen” in an 1854 interpretation that evolved into “Sequim.”
The village was served by a spring at the base of the bluff where Pacific Northwest National Laboratories sits now. As the saying goes, “water is life” — and water both in historic times and today determines where human habitation is possible.
In this village there were 10 large houses containing multiple families, supporting as many as 500 people in a complex social structure. It was occupied for 700 years until the late 1800s when 90 percent of the population was decimated by smallpox.
Most survivors eventually joined a new settlement at Jamestown beach by 1900, but some stayed on and worked for the Bugge Cannery for many decades.
It turns out the last chief of the village was a sharp trader and hosted long, exuberant and generous potlatch events for dozens of neighboring tribes. The chief’s house was also the potlatch house and was the central focus of the cluster of houses surrounded by a tall fence – a necessary protection during unsettled periods.
At the moment the only visible remnants of the village structure are seven 8-inch cedar fence posts sticking out of the beach near the Laboratories; however, more is waiting to be discovered, hidden under 20th-century structures and landslide debris.
Pitship Point, where the John Wayne Marina is now situated, is known for its extensive midden, or “kitchen” — piles of leftover shells and bones from the processing of shellfish, fish and mammals. It wasn’t occupied after European contact 300-400 years ago, for reasons unknown.
Digging into history
The next period with significant archaeological evidence is another 5,000-year-old kitchen unearthed when the Sequim Bypass was constructed at the Sequim Avenue exit. Again, the fresh water in wetlands associated with prehistoric Bell Creek made the site ideal for the processing of elk, deer and other mammals.
Side note for modern hunters: local elk were much larger a few thousand years ago.
Nearby Sequim Prairie was a major hunting ground, maintained as a prairie using fire. Indeed, another theory of the source of the name Sequim is that the prairie was known as Schwtichwane, meaning “a place to hunt, or shoot.” People learned that camas and other vegetation could be propagated and harvested on the prairie in cycles that involved fire.
Continuing back in millennia, the very first evidence of human occupation in the Sequim area is the 13,800-year-old spear point in the rib of the “Manis Mastodon,” found in Happy Valley a few decades ago. The area was tundra at that time as it was colder and the continental ice sheet had relatively recently melted away. Somewhat younger bison remains are also found at the site.
As the last Ice Age was coming to an end, Cordilleran and alpine glaciers were receding, respectively, northward and upward into the Olympic Mountains. The sea was rising and land bridges began to be separated by the marine inlets and bays we are now familiar with—a landscape profoundly shaped by water.
Human populations were expanding and exploring around the entire globe, moving into recently-opened landscapes and following the first prey animals present in the advancing ecosystem. Populations persisted where resources were sustainably available.
Our region had abundant prey as well as fresh water resources and people stayed. And they’re still coming.
Parting thought
For more than 13,000 years – from the time of the mastodons to European settlement – society was evolving in this place where most of us have lived for merely a handful of years or decades. In this single column I’ve summarily described thousands of years of history as if it could be summarized … as if it were a few decades. (This is a weakness of the human brain in my opinion, that we have great difficulty thinking about time spans other than what we personally relate to, the human life span.)
Brownell was riveting in his telling of stories of the earliest visitors and occupants of this place we now call Sequim, as well as the story of how he continues to learn by piecing together ethnographic information and artifacts.
In this time of visible change in our landscapes and invisible changes in our atmosphere, Brownell’s stories make us realize how radical these changes really are.
They also remind us that water literally weaves through history, through stories, through landscapes, and through us.
Geek moment
The melting snow has left its cute heart-shaped remnant on Baldy, showing on our southern horizon. Distant Mount Cameron, peeking at Sequim from between Greywolf Ridge and Blue Mountain, is still covered with impressive snowfields and glaciers. Visibly or not, our snow is melting fast and drought watchers are concerned.
Stay tuned for a full report next month.
“Glacial retreat” is a misnomer. The glacial front may retreat, but glaciers only move one way, like a conveyor belt, downhill.
For the 2018 water year (started Oct. 1, 2017):
• At Sequim 2E weather station (elev. 25 feet): Cumulative rainfall = 19+ inches (way above normal)
• At the Dungeness SNOTEL station (elev. 4,010 feet): Snow depth = 0
On the morning of July 9, 2018:
• At the USGS gauge on the Dungeness River (Mile 11.2) = 374 cfs (50 percent of the normal flow for this date)
• Bell Creek at Carrie Blake Park = no flow; at the mouth at Washington Harbor = about 1 cfs
Ann Soule is a hydrogeologist immersed in the Dungeness watershed since 1990, now Resource Manager for City of Sequim. Reach Ann at columnists@sequimgazette.com, or via her blog @ watercolumnsite.wordpress.com.
