1460R Hoh Indian Reservation Locator Map

The Hoh or Chalá·at ("Those-Who-Live-on-the-Hoh River" or "People of the Hoh River") are a Native American tribe in western

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

state in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The tribe lives on the Pacific Coast of Washington on the

Olympic Peninsula The Olympic Peninsula is a large arm of land in western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle, and contains Olympic National Park. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the ...

. The Hoh moved onto the Hoh Indian Reservation, at the mouth of the

Hoh River The Hoh River is a river of the Pacific Northwest, located on the Olympic Peninsula in the U.S. state of Washington. About long, the Hoh River originates at the Hoh Glacier on Mount Olympus and flows west through the Olympic Mountains of Olymp ...

, on the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

Coast of Jefferson County, after the signing of the

Quinault Treaty The Quinault Treaty (also known as the Quinault River Treaty and the Treaty of Olympia) was a treaty agreement between the United States and the Native American Quinault and Quileute tribes located in the western Olympic Peninsula north of Grays ...

on July 1, 1855. The reservation has a land area of and a 2000 census resident population of 102 persons, 81 of whom were Native Americans. It lies about halfway between its nearest outside communities of

Forks In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...

, to its north, and

Queets Queets is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Grays Harbor and Jefferson counties, Washington, United States. The population was 174 at the 2010 census. The primary residents of the community are Native Americans of ...

(on the

Quinault Indian Reservation The Quinault Indian Nation ( or ; QIN), formerly known as the Quinault Tribe of the Quinault Reservation, is a federally recognized tribe of Quinault, Queets, Quileute, Hoh, Chehalis, Chinook, and Cowlitz peoples.

), to its south. The river is central to their culture. The main resources they used included cedar trees, salmon, and the nearby vegetation. They also traded and bartered with other tribes closer to

Eastern Washington Eastern Washington is the region of the U.S. state of Washington located east of the Cascade Range. It contains the city of Spokane (the second largest city in the state), the Tri-Cities, the Columbia River and the Grand Coulee Dam, the Hanfor ...

, near the Plateaus and Great Plains.

Name

The Hoh River (and the Hoh who were named after it) takes its name from the Quinault language name for the river, Hoxw. No meaning can be associated with the Quinault name, in fact, no etymology for the name can be found in either the Quinault or Quileute languages. The Hoh call themselves Chalá·at or Chalat' (′People of the southern river, i.e. Hoh River′) after their name for the Hoh River Cha’lak’at’sit or Chalak'ac'it, which means the "southern river".

History

In aboriginal times, there was nothing secluded about the Hoh Watershed, even its upper reaches. No less than ''seven permanent settlements'' were situated along the banks of the Hoh, most with a fish trap. The river served not only as a riverine thoroughfare leading to their fishing sites and their hunting, trapping, and foraging grounds, it was also the nursery of the salmon and home of freshwater fishes that they harvested as part of their annual cycle. The watershed included the sites of the burials of their ancestors, the hidden locations of their empowering guardian spirits, and the family campgrounds and upstream summer-homesites near resource gathering areas that were heritable family property. Besides that, there were named landmarks, sites associated with ritual and mythic occurrences, and riverside trails. The Hoh (Chalá·at) people refer to both their traditional lands and their reservation as ChalAt’i’lo t’sikAti, (′the land belonging to the people who live at the Hoh River′). Though the Hoh (Chalá·at) are today considered to be a band of the

Quileute The Quileute , are a Native American people in western Washington state in the United States, currently numbering approximately 2,000. They are a federally recognized tribe: the ''Quileute Tribe of the Quileute Reservation''. The Quileute peo ...

tribe, the original Hoh language was actually the

Quinault language Quinault (''Kʷínaył'') is a member of the Tsamosan (Olympic) branch of the Coast Salish family of Salishan languages The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America (the Canadian p ...

and they were related to the

Quinault Quinault may refer to: * Quinault people, an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast **Quinault Indian Nation, a federally recognized tribe **Quinault language, their language People * Quinault family of actors, including * Jean-Baptis ...

. After intermarriage with the Quileute, the Hoh became a

bilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

tribe, speaking both

and Quinault, until the Quileute language was favored. Today, however, all three tribes have overwhelmingly adopted

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...

as their

home language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

. The lifestyle of the Hoh, like many Northwest Coast tribes, involved the fishing of

salmon Salmon () is the common name for several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family (biology), family Salmonidae, which are native to tributary, tributaries of the ...

Ethnobotany

The

Hoh Water () is a polar inorganic compound that is at room temperature a tasteless and odorless liquid, which is nearly colorless apart from an inherent hint of blue. It is by far the most studied chemical compound and is described as the "univer ...

make use of

Vaccinium myrtilloides ''Vaccinium myrtilloides'' is a shrub with common names including common blueberry, velvetleaf huckleberry, velvetleaf blueberry, Canadian blueberry, and sourtop blueberry. It is common in much of North America, reported from all 10 Canadian prov ...

. They eat the fruit raw, stew the berries and make them into a sauce, and can the berries and use them as winter food.Reagan, Albert B., 1936, Plants Used by the Hoh and Quileute Indians, Kansas Academy of Science 37:55-70, page 67

References

Hoh Reservation, Washington
United States Census Bureau

External links

Tribal websiteHoh tribe profile
at the website of the

Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board The Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB) is a non-profit tribal advisory organization in Portland, Oregon, run and organized by participating tribes. It was established in 1972 to focus on four areas as they pertain to the health o ...

University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – The Pacific Northwest Olympic Peninsula Community Museum
A web-based museum of the history and culture of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula communities {{authority control Native American tribes in Washington (state) Federally recognized tribes in the United States Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau Populated coastal places in Washington (state)

Name

History

Ethnobotany

See also

References

External links