Food Gathering

Foods of the Puyallup & Nisqually

From the Waters

The Puyallup and Nisqually tribes found a good deal of their food in the waters of the Puget Sound and in the many rivers flowing into it. There was a wide variety of fish and shellfish, but their favorite fish was salmon. The salmon as a food was so important to them that they observed a special ceremony each year. When the first salmon of the season began migrating up stream to spawn they would perform a ceremony thanking the salmon spirit for providing them with such bounty and ask that more fish be sent to them.

Methods for catching the salmon varied depending on the location where they were caught. Out on Commencement Bay, they would trail a line of tough nettle string from a canoe. On the end of the line was a hook made of bone and on that hook was a clam. In the rivers, salmon were trapped in nets or fences woven from branches that were placed across narrow streams. Smelt and herring were caught using cedar rakes at night. Large seals and sturgeon were speared using sharp wooden shafts. Shrimp and crab were gathered from the deep waters of the Puget Sound using small nets.

At low tide, a variety of shellfish could be gathered on the beaches. Along the shores with its many inlets and bays, the Puyallup and Nisqually gathered baskets of clams, oysters, mussels, and a variety of barnacles. All they had to do to get their food was to catch or dig for it.

From the Land

There was no need for the natives to plant gardens for there was an abundance of plants and animals that met their needs. The women of each village most often went out to gather edible roots, berries, and nuts. The men of the village would hunt in the forests for animal meat.

Among the plants gathered by the women were brake and wood ferns, dandelion roots and wild sunflowers, as well as cattail roots which they ate raw. A favorite vegetable was the camas; a bulb that was usually cooked in a hole in the ground with a fire built on top of it. The bulbs were then dried in the sun, which kept them from spoiling. They were used to make a tasty soup in the winter. Another favorite vegetable was the "wappato"; an egg sized wild potato that had a sweet taste. It grew in shallow lakes and creeks. In fact, one of the lakes in Tacoma was named after the plant because it was a good spot to find it. Berries were one of the few sweet foods the natives ate. The variety of berries available was almost overwhelming; salmon berries, salalberries, serviceberries, elderberries, red huckleberries, wild strawberries, blackcaps and black huckleberries. In the late summer months the blackberries were ripe and heavy with juice. Most berries were eaten fresh, but some were dried. Salal, huckleberries, and blackberries were dried and mashed together and molded into little cakes called "tuckams." Hazelnuts and acorns were also dried and kept for winter eating.

The animals the men hunted consisted of elk, deer, beaver, mountain goats, wildcats, cougars, groundhogs and bears. They shot with bow and arrow or trapped ducks, pheasants, and grouse. Drying and cooking the meat of both the salmon and elk or deer, carefully and properly, made it possible to keep for a long time. When frying deer steaks, they would wrap the steak with grease in strips of cedar bark and place them on hot, flat stones which made good frying pans. Many of their foods were cooked with seal grease or fish oil,which was used as cream, butter and even salad dressing. The only eggs the natives ate were those of the salmon (or roe), grouse, or duck.