Cedar bark baskets could have easily held the day’s crab catch as well as mussels and clams ii. Women would have canvassed the soppy tidelands, smooth, wet sand oozing between their toes as they fished for crabs in shallow tidal ponds. Seven years before George Vancouver sailed his vessel through the Strait of Juan de Fuca into the unchartered and dangerous waters of the Whulge (Puget Sound) and 70 years before the Treaty of Point Elliot, Sdzidzilalitch was where The People of the Inside socialized, traded, formed alliances, and shared knowledge. The People of the Inside (Duwamish, Suquamish and Muckleshoot) would have emerged from their longhouses, perched on a patch of land not submerged by high tide, to celebrate the coming of spring - their skin painted with vermillion, and their songs welcoming spring’s promise and bounty. Pacific tree frogs sang their mating chorus ( kreck-ek, kreck-ek) in the marshy forest which brimmed with fir, oak, cedar and other trees, some now extinct. In the spring of 1785, earthy toned mudflats glistened in the moonlight during low tide in the place called Sdzidzilalitch (little crossing-over place) i.
Pre-settler map (1841) of what is now known as Pioneer Square.
