The Price of a Wife: Marriage Traditions of the Skokomish
A rare 1885 account details the intricate marriage customs, dowries, and inter-tribal alliances of the Pacific Northwest tribes.
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.
Among the Skokomish Indians, marriages are a formal affair involving tribal alliances. A man seeking a wife often pays a bride price, sometimes ranging from one hundred to four hundred dollars in goods, blankets, and jewelry. The Skokomish are intermarried with many tribes including the Clallam, Chehalis, and Puyallup. In one ceremony observed in June 1884, a Skokomish man married a Chehalis woman. The bride was presented to the tribe, covered in blankets, and her friends laid out bolts of calico as a 'carpet' for her to walk upon, as the ground was considered unfit. Her friends then danced toward the groom, and the dowry was distributed among the groom's friends. Such ceremonies represent the complex social bonds and economic exchanges that cement relationships between tribal families.
“Her friends then unrolled two bolts of calico and stretched them on the ground... This was for a carpet on which the bride was to walk, the ground not being deemed fit for this purpose.”
This account provides a rare, if colonial, window into the legal and social structures of Indigenous nations in the Puget Sound region. It highlights how marriage served not just as a union, but as a critical mechanism for inter-tribal diplomacy and economic distribution—a sharp contrast to the individualistic property laws imposed by the encroaching settlers of the time.
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