Puyallup Tribe of Indians

Background

In Lushootseed the Puyallup call themselves the puyaləpabš, a word the Tribe translates as people from the bend at the bottom of the river, which refers to the many dispersed villages that once spread out from the mouth of the Puyallup River near the present site of the Tacoma Dome; over time the same word also came to stand for the people’s welcoming and generous behavior. The Tribe’s page says it is one of the many Lushootseed-speaking peoples of the northwest, and that before European settlement its people lived in villages from the foothills of təqʷuʔmaʔ or təqʷuʔbəd, its names for the mountain that a British Rear Admiral was afterwards honored by, along the rivers, creeks and prairies to the shores and islands of Puget Sound. It records that on December 24, 1854 Puyallup people and neighboring bands were met at šxʷnanəm, Shwh-nah-num, or Medicine Creek, by documents asking them to sign away their lands, that three reservations were created as a result, and that the Fox Island Council of late August 1856 renegotiated the treaty and expanded or relocated the Puyallup, Nisqually and Squaxin Island reservations. The Tribe’s government runs from 3001 Puyalupabsh Street in Tacoma, Washington, and its Heritage Division is organized under three names, culture in ʔalalusuɫ, historic preservation in dxʷlələʔuləbadiʔ, and the language program in syayusadiʔ ʔə txʷəlšucid.

Visit and learn

Puyallup Tribe of Indians's own site

Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.

Parks on its homelands

Mount Rainier National Park

The Puyallup Tribe's name means people from the bend at the bottom of the river, and the tribe says its mountain was renamed after a Rear Admiral in the British Royal Navy, and that it calls the mountain by its own name today. Source

Programs

• Heritage Division

  Three departments sit under the division: Culture, Historic Preservation, and the Language Program, and the Tribe’s site gives each of them its own name in the Lushootseed. The division also keeps a Cedar Box traditional foods curriculum and a land acknowledgement among its resources, and the page carries a Heritage Request form as the contact route.

  https://www.puyalluptribe-nsn.gov/about-our-tribe/heritage-division/·culture

Sources

• https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-01-30/html/2026-01899.htm
• https://www.puyalluptribe-nsn.gov/about-our-tribe/
• https://www.puyalluptribe-nsn.gov/about-our-tribe/heritage-division/

Checked September 2026.

Found an error? Tell us.