Publisher's Synopsis
This book is about the territory of the Quileute-speaking peoples, all the land that the Quileute and Hoh tribes occupied, used and owned. According to their mythic beliefs, this was the place where they were created. Quileute territory also included the entrance to the Underworld, where the souls of generation after generation of ancestors went to await reincarnation. So, all of this traditional territory was where they lived, raised families and died. Contemporary Quileutes still speak of their land as a vast territory of shorelines, rivers, forests and mountains that is their heritage and homeland. One of the objectives of this book is to recount the mythic, folk-historic and documentary evidence of Quileute traditional ownership of their territory, its boundaries and the enforcement of those boundaries. The boundaries were real and known. As Hal George said, "When I'm out hunting and see someone from a neighboring tribe with a gun, either he's on my territory or I'm on his. There isn't an open no-man's-land between tribal lands." Being Quileute has a lot to do with this history and these lands. As Charlie Howeattle said, "What are we Quileutes, anyhow? We are our stories and our land."
