People of the Little Lake") living around Lake Union. At the time of initial major European contact, these people considered themselves distinct from the related People of the Inside, with whom they are joined in today's Duwamish Tribe. Prior to the construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in the 1910s, Lake Washington drained into the Black River in what is now Renton. The Black River joined the Cedar and White (now Green) rivers to become the Duwamish River and empty into southeast Elliott Bay. With ever-increasing European contact, the People of the Large Lake and the People of the Inside became unified under the rubric of the Duwamish Tribe. Seasons There were numerous villages in what would become the Seattle metropolitan area as well as the nearby Snoqualmie River valley. Common to Coast Salish, villages were diffuse: people dispersed in the spring, congregated for the salmon in the summer, and wintered in village longhouses. In spring, salmonberry shoots and bracken fern fiddleheads were foraged, while hunters searched for deer or elk grazing on the skunk cabbage or the anthropogenic grasslands. Camas from nearby prairies would be gathered or traded. The grasslands encouraged berries, fern roots, bulbs and other useful plants. Garry oaks, whose thick bark helps them survive fires, are typically associated with prairies, and their presence at Seward Park and Martha Washington Parks suggests that anthropogenic grasslands extended between them. They may have been planted for their edible acorns. In summer and fall, thimbleberries, salal, raspberries, salmonberries, trailing blackberries, serviceberries, strawberries, huckleberries, and others were foraged. The berries were eaten fresh, or dried and formed into cakes to preserve them for winter. Mixed with dried fish and oil in recipes, pemmican made hearty late winter fare or compact, hardy provision for travel. Women and children would gather important wetland plants such as cattails for mats and wapato ("Indian potatoes") for food. Crayfish and freshwater mussels were available in the lake. Shellfish and tidal resources were available year round, limited only by red tide or similar infrequent closures. From midsummer through November, life revolved around the iconic salmon s√ʔuládxʷ and realization of its inspiring power and wealth, both corporeal and spiritual. Salmon returned to virtually every stream with enough flow; among these streams was sqa’ts1d ("blocked mouth"), now called Genesee Creek, which formerly drained the Rainier Valley. The name of the creek suggests that a fishing weir in place