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The largest Sammamish village was tlah-WAH-dees at the mouth of the Sammamish River, which at the time was east of its present location, between present day Kenmore and Bothell . A second Sammamish village with at least one Longhouse was located near what is now Issaquah . When Europeans from the Hudson Bay Company arrived in the area in 1832, the Sammamish had several permanent and seasonal settlements along the length of the river, and numbered as many as 200. In 1855, the United States government signed the Point Elliott Treaty with members of several local tribes, including Chief Seattle of the Duwamish. The Sammamish tribe was named in the treaty, and the territorial government moved to enforce it by relocating the tribes named in the treaty, including the Sammamish. Many of the Sammamish, including Sah-wich-ol-gadhw, did not accept the validity of the treaty. Negotiations with Indian agent Doc Maynard were unsuccessful, and in 1856 some of the Sammamish joined in the Battle Of Seattle , an attack on the white settler population. After the unsuccessful end of that attack and the brief Puget Sound War , the Sammamish relocated from the river valley to reservations named in the treaty, or to non-reservation lands. Timber baron Henry Yesler, who had previously used local Indians as laborers, aided the relocation. As with the relocation of other Northwest natives, the relocation of the Sammamish was probably accelerated by a Smallpox plague in 1862 that may have killed as much as half of the remaining native population, which was already devasted from the effects of previous epidemics. Descendants of the Sammamish were absorbed into other tribes, including the Duwamish and Suquamish , and are generally considered members of those tribes. REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS |
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