How the Duwamish Became the River of No Return

Of Native Americans and their world on Puget Sound, here ar the words of John, a Swinomish elder born in the 1880s, who said: “Every river has its people.”  In our tradition, a corollary would be, “Every city has its river.”  Think of Rome, Paris, London, New York, and…Tukwila.  Seattle also has the Duwamish river, but few in Seattle have ever seen it. 

If you travel I-5 down to Sea-Tac, the river is just visible (don’t blink).  In that split-second the ditch beneath the low overpass is easily missed.  From the West Seattle freeway bridge, the East and West Duwamish waterways that cut through its delta are extensions of Elliott Bay.  If you ferry across Elliott Bay and look south: the river’s once bucolic mouth is hidden by a forest of cargo cranes.

Either way, it is disappointing to learn that the storied Duwamish is now only 12 miles long and a toxic superfund site.  Ride the tide up the waterways to where a weedy slough in Tukwila stagnates on the east bank, and it becomes Green River. 

In Lushootseed, the native language spoken here, the river is dx^wdǝwɁ, home of the dx^wdǝwɁabš, the Duwamish people.  If you can’t pronounce these, and few can, English letters and combinations approximate native pronunciation. I write dx^wdǝwɁ as DKHW duw, the whispered prefix DKHW, “place, where,” capitalized because it is stressed.  And duw, “inside,” voiced in a high tone, names the river. 

The peoples’ name, dx^wdǝwɁabš is Dkhw duw  AHBSH.  The D in Dkhw is capitalized because it is a proper noun and the suffix, AHBSH, “people,” because it is stressed.   Ɂ is a glottal stop, the silence “heard” in the English phrase, “uh oh,” shown here by the double space between duw and AHBSH.  When not followed by a syllable, as in dx^wdǝwɁ, the Ɂ signals that the preceding syllable is voiced in a higher tone.  The anglicized versions are highlighted and italicized.

The Dkhw duw   AHBSH, more generally, Duw AHBSH, or simply Duwamish, lived beside a river flowing over 100 miles from Cascade snows through the Puget lowland (between the Olympics and Cascades) to Whulj, “saltwater,” not the ill-named Salish Sea. Puget Sound partly reverses its flow twice yearly, and the cold, pellucid streams enter Puget Sound via three separate mouths.

That original river differed sharply from ours.  Its watershed formed a large К, the mainstream being the angled lower right line of the K, heading in the Cascades and flowing west and north–the upper half of the vertical stem–to the Sound.  This was the DKHW duw, “Place where [it goes] inside,” a Lushootseed description.

The upper right arm of the К represents connected Issaquah Creek, Lake Sammamish, Sammamish River, and Lake Washington, whose final, mile-long southern outlet joined the Duw as a tributary called the Lake Fork. The remaining lower half of the vertical stem, Dkh KOH kuh, “Where water [is] white,” White River, has its headwaters in Mt. Rainier’s Emmons Glacier, milky with dust ground from rocky slopes.  Green River is tributary to the White.  Its name describes a fluctuating level caused by snowmelt or rains, but also the increase in population of the Skop AHBSH, “Variable stream people.” The name recalls the days when equestrian interior kin crossed passes to winter in more temperate western valleys.

When American settlers arrived here in the 1850s with their own ideas of stream hydrology, they renamed the Duw.  Its forested upper reach became the Cedar River, the shadowed middle Black River, and the last 12 miles, Duwamish.  Dkh KOH kuh became White River.  A southern White River distributary kept its name, Stuck, “Plowed through,” describing how whales seeking escape to the Sound bored through its banks to the Puyallup River, imaging a great flood. 

The Duwamish delta on Elliott Bay was its first mouth.  Stuck River was second. A third happened at seasonal high water when Lake Washington spilled westward over the Montlake divide near the University of Washington campus, anticipating the Montlake Ship Canal.  This flowed into Lake Union that emptied via Ross Creek that emptied westward into Salmon Bay and threaded its way higgledy-piggledy–SHEEL shol–into Puget Sound.  The was a Dzee LAH lich, a “crossing place,” connecting saltwater to the lakes and mountains—larger than a Dzee dzee LAH lich, “little crossing place,” a narrow spit flooded at high tide that connected an islet to the mainland under what is now Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle.

But how does Duw, “Inside,” fit in the old configuration?  All rivers flow inside their basins.  But Duw described a part of the river: from the exit of KHAH chu, “THE lake,” Lake Washington, to its confluence with Dkh KOH kuh, White River, at the city of Tukwila, a segment bracketed by powerful myths.

This Black River part of the Duw is the weedy slough mentioned above.  East of Fort Dent Park, over the railroad tracks and accessed by the wonderfully named Monster Road S.W., is the Duwamish Hill Preserve, a bedrock knob rising 140 feet above sea level and saved from industrial oblivion by citizens who from 1999 to 2010 fought to preserve it.  

Here a race of supernatural dwarfs,  Swah wah TEEKHW tud, “Earth Beings” or Lords of Fertility, clustered to protect abundant resources.   Like little men 18 inches tall and glowing yellow-green, they drove insane those who misused the environment.  (Americans come to mind.)  On the hill itself, garter snakes swarmed in disturbing yard-high heaps to mate.  The Duwamish welcomed snakes into their longhouses and vigorously protested when pioneer children gleefully drove them into flames.

On hot summer days snakes swimming across the river to a sandy point here baked and died.  All is buried under levees today, but the last two syllables of the place name, Cu HUUD u tu gwul, “Where [they] burn,” may be the origins of the name Tukwila (pronounced Tuk WIL la), at least as much as the often-proposed Chinook Jargon word for hazelnut, TUK weel la.

Earth Beings were most active at points dividing confluences that called migrating fish up both streams.  That Duwamish Hill rose at this point made it a supernaturally potent site, said to have resisted transformation during the Gwul, in myth time, the capsizing of the world when DOH kwe bahl, “The Changer,” (the demiurge) made it habitable for humans. Remnant country roads follow the winding course of this vanished Duw to Papa Murphy’s Take ‘n Bake Pizza in Renton where a powerful merman, SKAi taw, inhabited a deep portion of the Lake Fork.  With long, waving hair he gave wealth to individuals that carried out vision quests to gain his favor—analogous to the Earth Beings further west protecting natural fertility.

Double-headed eagles and snakes are preternatural images of a violent, shaking earth. A Quileute image of a double-headed serpent with horns and forelegs belongs to this genre. In the Duwamish watershed, such a creature, called Ai YAH hos, lived in cliffs where its movements caused deadly avalanches. The dots on its arched back depict the pulses
of its shattering roar.

We can imagine Ai YAH hos’s depiction coming from collapsed bluffs revealing mammoth bones: an immense head with immense tusks, gigantic forelegs, a serpentine backbone. Doubled, the heads image floods from two mouths, a monstrous feature captured in the 18th century Chinook Jargon phrase identifying this section of the Duw as Moxt La bush, (“Two mouths”). After the event, during fall and spring floods, ponding water reversed the course of the Duw into the lake. Think of “Inside,” as a hand reaching into a basket, or a leg into leggings. The Lushootseed word dǝw — duw — describes reaching into a confined space.

In the winter of 923-24 AD, the Seattle Fault ruptured.  Geophysicists theorize that this was a thrust fault, reaching from Hood Canal across Bainbridge Island, Alki Point, the Duwamish, and east to Lake Sammamish. 

The effects of this earthquake were catastrophic.  South of the fault and parallel to I-5, land lurched upward 20 feet in a few terrible minutes.  The northward flowing White and Duw Rivers ponded, and from Tukwila to the lake outlet, the Duw reversed flow and poured into Lake Washington.  Terrible shaking sent mile-wide forested hillsides tumbling into the lake, raising enormous waves killing everything and everybody and leaving an 18-inch layer of sand north at Kenmore.  The lake’s 200-foot depth prevented rot, and divers can visit the drowned forests – trunks erect, limbs intact, beribboned with algae.

After the event, during fall and spring floods, ponding water reversed the course of the Duw into the lake: “Inside,” as a hand reaching into a basket, or a leg extending into leggings.  The Lushootseed word dǝw—duw describes this action.

Duw AHBSH, identified all named native groups in the watershed, but the more particular Dkhw duw AHBSH described those living on the reversing channel, who were said to be the “real” Duwamish.  Those living near the SKAI taw called themselves Skah TELB shahbsh and young Chief Seattle’s first wife came from their wealthy village. The couple’s first child, a daughter, Sabolitsa, renamed Angeline, was born there around 1810.  

Many more mighty myths and legends describing storied landmarks along the Duw survive today principally in obscure ethnographic monographs.  I and many others have labored decades to preserve the few not buried or dynamited to make way for growth.  Their drama and lessons made the Duwamish homeland holy and meaningful, but their fate mirrors that of the people themselves — dispossessed for 160 years and facing erasure by the city named after the Duwamish chief Seattle, who invited Americans to settle among his people and intermarry with them so both might prosper.

Profitable coal and the promise of a railroad so increased land value that settlers colluded with their government to make sure the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott left the Duwamish no reservation in their splendid homeland.  Greed, war, and racism kept those who refused to leave it impoverished and unable to access promised treaty rights.

Even so, wide rivers and broad lakes still teemed with life. Forest naves glowed in emerald illumination, and long distances in deep hush heard the kiss of silver salmon seizing bejeweled dragonflies.  Immense, majestic, and home for millennia – but no longer.

In 1906, a flood on White River poured into Tacoma’s Commencement Bay, and farmers demanded a concrete barrier to stem flooding and make the diversion permanent.  Anticipating the construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, Cedar River was diverted into Lake Washington, and the lake was lowered by 9 feet in 1916 when the canal opened.  Black River on the Duw disappeared with its great salmon runs managed well enough by the Duwamish so that the Inside People flourished for millennia.

Now dispossessed and impoverished, the Duwamish tried to accommodate themselves to mounting change.  Incoming residents drove them from longhouses.  In 1893, one longhouse at the mouth of the Duw was burned by whites fearing that a continued native presence jeopardized their financial futures. 

With Chief Seattle, many converted to Catholicism, but on their own terms.  In a chapel he built on Cedar River, Duwamish leader Ben Solomon rang a bell calling the people to prayer.  In 1916 several hundred incorporated as the Duwamish Tribe of American Indians.  A decade later they wrote a constitution. But officials of what became the Bureau of Indian Affairs did not appreciate Indians presuming to enjoy tribal life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness out from under their thumbs and refused to acknowledge them. 

The Duwamish persisted, and on January 19, 2001, the BIA finally granted recognition.  But other federally recognized tribes protested, fearful that this would reduce their cuts of the federal pie or profits from casinos allowed on their reservations.  On Monday, January 21, the Duwamish were un-recognized.  Money and politics won again.

Today, only Green River flows through White River’s Channel into a stunted Duwamish, now with less than half its original volume and its diseased fish no longer edible.  It appears to be a river of no return. But life finds a way.  At a remnant bend near its mouth, herons roost, and an astonishing modern landmark, the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center, flourishes above the Duw, proclaiming “We are still here!”

They are doing what government promised but failed to do. Tens of thousands of local residents participate in Real Rent Duwamish, a grass-roots citizen effort whose membership has contributed monthly to the Duwamish Tribal Organization, making them The People’s Tribe.  If “every river has its people,” can The People restore their river?