Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe

From

The S'Klallam village on the west side of Port Gamble Bay, where the general store is now and all around where the cemetery is.

To

The sand spit at Point Julia, across the bay. The settlement there was known as Little Boston.

Year

1853

The Tribe's own word is "forced relocation." Oral history on the Tribe's own history page records that Captain Josiah P. Keller, who arrived in 1853 with the machinery to start the Puget Sound Mill Company, "incentivized the forced relocation across Port Gamble Bay to Point Julia with offerings of firewood, lumber to build homes, and Christmas 'treats'." On 6 October 1853 Keller filed a Donation Land Claim for three sections covering Point Julia, the town of Port Gamble and the spit at Teekalet Bluff. The same year, delegates for the new Washington Territory arrived to negotiate the treaty that would, three years later, assign the S'Klallam to a reservation more than a hundred miles from Hood Canal.

Source: Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, History & Culture, the Tribe's own account. The mill's arrival and the Donation Land Claim date are corroborated by the Tribe's own Cultural History PDF, which is Jacilee Wray's 2002 University of Oklahoma Press chapter reprinted with permission. (read 2026-10-04)

From

Hood Canal and Port Gamble Bay, the S'Klallam's homeland.

To

Six sections, 3,840 acres at the head of Hood's Canal, which became the Skokomish Reservation.

Year

1855

A removal ordered by treaty and refused for eighty-three years. Article 3 of the treaty of 26 January 1855 (12 Stat. 933) is the sentence that makes this a removal rather than a migration: "The said tribes and bands agree to remove to and settle upon the said reservation within one year after the ratification of this treaty, or sooner if the means are furnished them." The Tribe's own history page records that "Many S'Klallams refused to leave." The Tribe's own Cultural History PDF says something harder, and both are the Tribe: "unfortunately, they were forcibly moved to the reservation anyway." Edmond Meany interviewing John Hawk in 1905 recorded that "as a tribe the Clallams recoiled from the agency ideas." In 1919 Special Indian Agent Charles E. Roblin reported they refused allotments on the Quinaielt reservation. The Tribe's own account of the outcome: "The Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe had to wait 88 years for a reservation or any compensation for the lands they ceded, but by standing their ground, they were able to remain united near their original ancestral lands."

Source: Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, History & Culture and Cultural History PDF, the Tribe's own documents. The treaty text of 12 Stat. 933 Article 3 is cited from the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe's own published copy of the same treaty, which this research did not find on either S'Klallam Tribe's site. Roblin's 1919 report and Meany's 1905 interview are federal and academic records respectively. (read 2026-10-04)

From

The houses on the sand spit at Point Julia, some of them the only homes their occupants had ever known.

To

New houses on the bluff above Point Julia, on the 1,234-acre reservation.

Year

1940

Condemned, then burned. The Tribe's own words: "After the establishment of the reservation, the houses at Point Julia were condemned by the Health Department and eventually burned to the ground. While these structures were ramshackle at best, they were also the only homes some Port Gamble S'Klallam had ever known. Many Elders refused to leave, sitting by in protest as government officials packed out their belongings." The Tribe's own timeline dates the new houses and water system to 1939 and 1940 and the burning of the village to the same years, and places the end of the village: houses were built by the Puget Mill Company on Point Julia in the 1860s and 1870s for S'Klallam who worked at the mill, and families lived there until 1940.

Source: Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, History & Culture and Historical Timeline, the Tribe's own account. (read 2026-10-04)