“Klahowya” from Cultus Bay
Today I’m on Whidbey Island, WA, on a research & writing trip.
Crazily enough, I forgot to bring my phone when I drove and hiked to Cultus Bay!
Here’s a good sample of the view from this place that was once a really major Snohomish Coast Salish village, dəgʷasx̌ / dəgʷadᶻq, one of 3 such in the vicinity:
Image credit: Wikipedia
You surely know that the reason I’m writing this here is that Cultus = kʰə́ltəs = kultus, “useless, no-good”.
Why is the place called that, though? One source says it’s from the very shallow waters there. Maybe you had to know the tides in order to land…Maybe that was a point in its favor, defensively?
Welcome to the States! I live in Edmonds, just south and across the water, where the ferry crosses. (Edmonds is also known as stubus, by its Lushootseed name, for its small marsh and beaches, an ancestral resource gathering site for local Tribes.) So I look out on Cultus Bay from my window. Everything I’ve heard is that the bay is called that by newcomers for its shallow waters–at least from a settler perspective. Yes, there were several longhouses in the area, one on the bay. William Shelton, the Snohomish leader at Tulalip, writes a bit about the longhouse and its magnificent carved houseposts; it seems they inspired him to start carving “storypoles” in the 1910s. The longhouse was likely burned or dismantled by settlers in the 1880s. Certainly the bay was good enough for canoes and for the Snohomish who lived there. Yes, I’d say defense is a good guess, but then I’ve been watching the World Cup, so that’s on my mind…
🙂 naika wawa masi, Robert 🙂
It must be a problem with that end of the island. Did you notice that the next bay over is named Useless Bay? In English this time.
I blame Settlers 🙂