Relics of a Coast Salish Landing Found Beneath Seattle’s Locks
Stone tools and bone implements from an old Native American gathering place have been classified and added to the University of Washington’s Coast Salish collection.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
According to the best information obtainable, there is an old Native American gathering ground and landing place used in early days just below the canal locks, where numerous relics have been dug up recently. Stone adzes, stone knives, elk-horn wedges, tools made of deer horns, hand hammers, bone awls, stone scrapers, anchor stones and stone sharpeners are among the treasures found. These have all been classified by F. S. Hall, director of the museum at the University of Washington. They have been added to the museum’s vast collection of data and relics of the Coast Salish peoples, the name given to the Native peoples of Puget Sound.
“Stone adzes, stone knives, elk-horn wedges, tools made of deer horns, hand hammers, bone awls, stone scrapers, anchor stones and stone sharpeners are among the treasures found.”
The artifacts were recovered as Seattle’s ship canal and locks remade the shoreline, a reminder that the infrastructure we treat as permanent sits atop Indigenous places that are far older. They went into the University of Washington museum, now the Burke Museum—an early chapter in the still-unsettled conversation about who owns and interprets Native history.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.