The Swinomish are a Coast Salish group whose historic lands were in the Skagit and Samish River valleys as well as Whidbey, Camano, Fidalgo Islands and the San Juan Islands. They lived in large permanent villages during the winter, then spread out in spring and summer to gather resources – salmon from the rivers, shellfish from the coastline, cedar wood and berries from inland forests. In 1855, four major groups and their allied bands – Aboriginal Swinomish, Lower Skagit, Kikiallus, and Aboriginal Samish – signed the Treaty of Point Elliott with the United States. They ceded their land to the US while reserving rights to hunt, fish, and gather at usual and accustomed places, as well as reserving the Swinomish Reservation on southeastern Fidalgo Island for a permanent homeland. Today, most descendants of these groups live on the Swinomish Reservation.
The January 22, 1946 Treaty Day celebration at the Swinomish Reservation at La Conner featured the game known as slahal or the bone game. Slahal is a gambling game played by many Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. It involves hiding animal bones in one team's hands while the other guesses which hand holds the bones. Two teams of players sit in lines facing one another, with one player holding the pair of bones and the others singing and beating time with sticks and a drum. This photograph shows one line of slahal players. Swinomish tribal member Abel D. Joe (wearing dark hat and jacket) sits behind a group of tall scoring sticks placed in the ground. He chants while holding one of the game bones in his open hand. Two drummers sit in the left foreground; other players sing and drum the floor with sticks.
Caption information source: "Who we are," Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, retrieved from https://swinomish-nsn.gov/who-we-are.aspx Caption information source: "Swinomish tribesmen relive their former glories," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 23, 1946, page 3.
