South Capitol Neighborhood is located on the ancestral lands of the Steh-Chass band of the Squaxin Island Tribe. The Squaxin Island Tribe, also known as the People of the Water, lived in seven distinct settlements.
Each of the seven inlets of South Puget Sound had an associated settlement. The Steh-Chass people lived in the inlet of Budd Bay. When the 1854 Medicine Creek Treaty was signed, the Indigenous people of South Puget Sound “ceded” over 4,000 square miles of territory.
The Steh-Chass people were moved to Squaxin Island along with the six other inlet settlements and became known as the Squaxin Island Tribe. The Steh-Chass People traded, potlatched, fished, and hunted living with reverence for the complex interrelationships of the natural environment.
This is a 1867 U.S. Coast Survey maritime map or nautical chart of the Puget Sound, Washington Territory. The full chart covers the Sound from Quimper Peninsula and Whidbey Island south and is available on Wikimedia HERE.
South Capitol Neighborhood Association 