Chimakum

Chimakum

A Chimakum woman, photographed by Edward S. Curtis
Total population
unknown
Regions with significant populations
United States (Washington)
Languages
English, formerly Chemakum
Related ethnic groups
Quileute

The Chimakum, also spelled Chemakum and Chimacum were a Native American people (known to themselves as Aqokúlo and sometimes called the Port Townsend Indians), who lived in the northeastern portion of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, between Hood Canal and Discovery Bay through the mid-19th century. Their primary settlements were on Port Townsend Bay, on the Quimper Peninsula, and Port Ludlow Bay to the south.

Today Chimakum people are enrolled in three federally recognized tribes:

The Chimakum population was estimated at 400 in 1780 and 90 in 1855. The Census of 1910 enumerated just three. In the present day there are people who identify as Chimakums or descendants of Chimakums.

The Chemakum language was one of two Chimakuan languages and very similar to the Quileute language. It is now extinct. It was spoken until the 1940s on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula between Port Townsend and Hood Canal. The name Chimakum (or Chemakum) is an Anglicized version of a Salishan word for the Chimakum people, such as the Twana word čə́bqəb [t͡ʃə́bqəb] (earlier [t͡ʃə́mqəm]).

In 1890 anthropologist Franz Boas found only three speakers of the Chemakum language, and they spoke it imperfectly.

According to Quileute tradition, the Chimakum were a remnant of a Quileute band. The Chimakum had been carried away in their canoes by a great flood through a passageway in the Olympic Mountains and deposited on the other side of the Olympic Peninsula.