Description
The Kittitas also known as the Upper Yakama) are a Sahaptin tribe closely related to the Yakama, sometimes described as a band or subtribe of the Yakama. Their traditional territories are found within Kittitas and Yakima counties within Washington state, chiefly in the Kittitas Valley, Naches Valley, Wenas Valley, and upper Yakima Valley. Individuals of Kittitas descent are today enrolled in the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakima and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, but the Kittitas are not recognized as a distinct band by either tribal government. The Kittitas traditionally occupied an intermediary role between other Plateau groups and the Coast Salish groups west of the Cascades. The Kittitas acquired horses by the 1730s, and traded for cattle and western vegetables with the Hudson's Bay Company outpost at Fort Nisqually.
Language
Yakama is a Penutian language of the Western Plateau.
Culture
They have spiritual practices like the sweat house cleansing in preparation for traditional life way activities like medicine food gathering and participating in seasonal first-food feasts of thanks and respect to other beings with whom we share Mother Earth. Native people on both sides of the Cascades fished for salmon, hunted deer and elk, and gathered and tended to berries and native plants for food and medicine. From their home villages, native people traveled widely across their territories, tracing the seasons as they stewarded the bounty of the landscape. Families and villages were connected by ties of marriage, language, customs like potlatch, and trade gatherings such as those at Che-lo-han in the present-day Kittitas Valley.