White River Wilderness Information Center
Mount Rainier National Park maintains active relations with six Indian tribes located in its vicinity: the Nisqually, Puyallup, Squaxin Island, Muckleshoot, Yakama, and Cowlitz. All but the Cowlitz trace their modern tribal identity to one or more of three treaties signed in 1854 and 1855. The Upper Cowlitz, or Taidnapam, did not sign a treaty with the United States, but like the treaty tribes, maintained traditional ties to landscapes that later became part of Mount Rainier National Park. Tribal people journeyed to the park in the summer and early fall to hunt and to gather berries, medicinal plants and other resources of use to them throughout the year. They continued to pursue these activities even after the park was created in 1899, and the mountain remains important to them to this day.
Because of the park’s growing archaeological record, we know that the ancestors of modern tribal people ranged widely over the mountain’s mid to upper elevation landscapes. We also know that, as early as 15,000 to 10,000 years ago, when Mount Rainier was largely draped in ice and permanent snowpack, people lived in the plains and valleys within its view.
