More changes came as local communities were pulled into the global fur trade centered in the 1780s at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. The survivors abandoned the villages on Guemes Island and gathered in one village on Samish Island. It is estimated that the Samish lost about 80 percent of their population, falling from several thousand to about 200 people. But the most important food was the salmon, which was both plentiful and nutritious.ĭisaster befell the villages in the late 1700s as the first wave of terrible plagues swept northward through Puget Sound. Waterfowl could be carefully and skillfully netted. ![]() Mammals such as deer, elk, and bear were hunted with bows and arrows or captured and dispatched in pit traps. Shellfish were harvested from the many muddy tideflats around the islands. As summer wore on the berry bushes provided the sweetest treats - red huckleberry, salmonberry, blackberries, and even cranberries among others. Camas roots grew in the vicinity and many other plants proved edible and nutritious. The houses were made of cedar, as were many other tools and the canoes used to travel between the islands and to the mainland.įrom the spring through the late fall, people obtained a tremendous variety of food from the lush forests and waters. The villages each consisted of several communal longhouses. ![]() Here community members would gather for the winter and live on the stored abundance of the earlier months. In the 1700s Samish bands occupied three villages just north of Fidalgo Island - two on Guemes Island and one on Samish Island. The rhythm of Salish life revolved around the seasonal round of food gathering from spring through fall followed by communal living in villages during the winter months. Refining, tourism, residential and retirement housing, and commercial retail have come to dominate the local economy. Several oil companies selected Anacortes for refineries in the 1950s. These industries thrived for many years before facing decline in the mid-twentieth century. Anacortes was incorporated in 1891 with an economy based on lumber, fishing and fish processing, and farming. Permanent non-Indian settlement began in the 1860s. Samish and other Northern Straits Salish peoples have inhabited the land in and around Anacortes for thousands of years. Highway bridges link Anacortes to the mainland and to Whidbey Island to the south. ![]() It is the only incorporated community on Fidalgo, which is separated from the mainland by the Swinomish Channel. The City of Anacortes is located in Skagit County on the northern end of Fidalgo Island in Puget Sound.
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