From the late 1860s to the early 1890s, hop farming was an important activity in the valleys of the Puget Sound region, including Puyallup, White River, and Snoqualmie. Indigenous workers came from throughout the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and Alaska (but especially from regional tribes like the Puyallup, Snoqualmie, Muckleshoot, Duwamish, Sammamish, Lummi, and Nisqually) as a seasonal labor force to harvest these crops in late summer and early autumn. Often, whole families would work together and on occasion entire villages were emptied as people left for the hops harvest. Workers would use downtime to socialize with each other, weave baskets to sell, or fish for salmon.

These Indigenous workers gathered the cone-like fruit into handmade baskets, as shown in this photograph. Indigenous people used split cedar or spruce root to make this type of open-weave storage basket, traditionally used to store dried foods and household goods in the longhouses.

Caption information source: "Indigenous Hop Pickers in Western Washington" by Hans Zeiger, HistoryLink.org Essay 21295.