Political Organization of the Duwamish

Anthropological studies have largely ignored the political implication of the ecology of the Puget Sound Indians. Most writers insist upon limiting the political organization of this region to near or at the local village level (Kroeber 1971:396; Ballard 1929:35; Spier 1936:5; Barnett 1938:119; Ray 1939:89; Underhill 1944:174; Collins 1950:334; Smith 1967:68; Riley 1974:79; Onat 1984:89; Suttles 1988). This view apparently ignores a plethora of historical data, much of which is native testimony and eye-witness accounts (Jones 1853:9-10; Gibbs, 1855, 1877; Hill 1856; Bancroft 1890; Grant 1891; Browning 1893; Costello 1895; Carlson 1903; Whitfield 1926; Bagley 1929; Harrington 1907-1957; Haeberlin and Gunther 1930). To arbitrarily assign these historical data to the imaginations of historians (Underhill 1945:174) or to some king-making venture (Collins 1950:341; Riley 1974:74; Lane 1975:31) is simplistic and misleading. History argues that there were great councils like this hosted by Chief Pat Kanim at Penn's Cove, Whidbey Island, in 1848, which was attended by thousands of Indians and their leaders several years before government officials arrived and supposedly gave them their political organization. Did the whites these Indian leaders or did they merely give recognition to some of their existing leaders? This is the crux of the problem. Garretson (1962:16) states that Colonel Simmons was appointed by Gov. Stevens on March 22, 1854, to serve as the Indian agent for the Puget Sound to or chiefs as one of his many duties. Anthropologists tend to accept the appoint and ignore the recognize part. Anthropological studies of the Puget Sound generally misunderstand the political organization of the Puget Sound Indians because they overlook the synergistic effects of five important ecological considerations: area topography, food resources, level of technology, population density, and political organization. These five elements are treated as interdependent variables in this study to ascertain their collective effect upon the political organization of the pretreaty Puget Sound Indians. Data for this study are taken from the Duwamish Indians of the greater Seattle area and used to describe the level of political organization that emerged from the interaction of these five variables

Political science · Politics · Sociology · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Archaeology and Natural History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law

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