A History of Indian Fur-Seal Hunting on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State

Collins, Cary

For thousands of years, Indians on the Olympic Peninsula of present-day Washington State relied upon and hunted whales, sea otters, and countless other varieties of marine life, including northern fur seals that travel off the Pacific Coast on their annual migration to their breeding rookeries on the Pribilof Islands of southwestern Alaska. As sources of subsistence and survival, fur-seal products rivaled in importance that of whales, supplying enormous quantities of meat, oil, and skins, the surpluses of which served as valuable commodities in the exchange economies of the Pacific Northwest coast. In the Washington territorial period (1853-1889), Olympic Peninsula Indian fur sealers drew on their unparalleled backgrounds and vast resources as the means to catapult themselves to paramount commercial successes. Effectively penetrating home and global economies, Makah and Quileute fur sealers especially invested heavily in schooners and equipment, personal initiative that returned to them substantial profits. But the boom proved unsustainable. Lack of regulation, in combination with rapid and extensive national and foreign harvesting, conspired to produce a stunning decline in the fur seal population which, in turn, resulted in the negotiation of international agreements that placed strict quotas on the number of animals that could be taken and imposed harsh rules on the methods that could be used to havest them. For Indian fur sealers, the laws set the industry back on a strictly non-industrial footing, frustrating their attempts of adaptive integration and costing them dearly in treasure and morale. Although they were allowed to continue sealing and were hired by schooner captains because they could still hunt using traditional weaponry, the legislation signaled the beginning of the end of fur sealing by Pacific Northwest coast Indians. This report provides background on and an understanding of the nature of fur-seal hunting and, by extension, many other related products of the fur trade. Explored are the positions that fur sealing held in relationship to other subsistence and commercial pursuits, its role in the exchange economies of the Pacific Northwest coast, its rise and decline as a commercial commodity and, finally, its importance in recent decades as a subsistence, ceremonial, and economic resource for Olympic and Washington coast peoples.

A History of Indian Fur-Seal Hunting on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State

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