The Coast Salish
The Coast Salish are a a large group of related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, including the Cowlitz, Pentlatch, Quileute, Samish, Squamish, Xacuabš, and many, many others. They are related, linguistically, to the Interior Salish to the east. The first confirmed settlement was at 3000 BCE at Xa:ytem, in British Columbia.
Coast Salish groups have many cultural similarities with each others. Unlike many of their neighbors, they use a patrilineal kinship system. Historically, they had social and religious leaders, but no formal political system or standing army force. Warfare was tupically defensive action against raids from their neighbors.
Social organization had the highest-ranking male be the ceremonial leader, and had three hereditary social roles (upper class, lower class, slaves). Married women lived with their husband's village. Freeborn people were often marked via body modification, using cradleboards to shape the heads of their infants into a sloping shape.
Many groups had the same or similar beliefs, but they also diverged between groups. The Quileute, for example, believed that everything has a spirit with five parts: the body, the inner soul, the outer soul, the life force, and the ghost.
The land management practices of the Coast Salish benefitted the health of the ecosystem and the people. They maintained forest gardens that included types of fruit trees, anthrogenic grasslands from which to harvest vegetables and attract land game, and obtained a large part of their diet from the oceans and lakes.