Coast Salish

Background

Mount Rainier National Park names the Coast Salish people among the Cowlitz, Muckleshoot, Nisqually, Puyallup, Squaxin Island and Yakama whose homeland is the land the park administers, then links six tribal governments to that same list. The Coast Salish therefore appear in the park's account of its homelands without a government of their own behind the name. A separate National Park Service page on the Salish Sea calls the Coast Salish Tribes the sea's namesake, says they have lived in that region since time immemorial, and describes the sea as reaching from Washington State into British Columbia, supplying abundant salmon and shellfish and serving as a transportation route between settlements throughout its waters. It records that Coast Salish people indigenous to San Juan Island invented a form of reef net fishing that let them harvest large numbers of migratory salmon. Mount Rainier also names the Taidnapam people, whose homelands include Ohanapecosh and the southeast areas of the park, and says they are represented by the modern Cowlitz and Yakama tribes.

Parks on its homelands

Mount Rainier National Park

Mount Rainier's associated-tribes page names Coast Salish alongside the six tribes it lists, calling the land the ancestral homeland of all seven since time immemorial, and it spells the mountain Takhóma. Source

Sources

• https://www.nps.gov/mora/learn/historyculture/associated-tribes-of-mount-rainier.htm
• https://www.nps.gov/places/the-salish-sea.htm

Checked September 2026.

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