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Puyallup Tribe of Indians

ethnic group

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ225469 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Puyallup Tribe of Indians ( pew-AL-əp; Twulshootseed: spuyaləpabš, lit. 'people of the bend'; commonly known as the Puyallup Tribe) is a federally-recognized tribe of Puyallup people from western Washington state, United States. The tribe is primarily located on the Puyallup Indian Reservation, although they also control off-reservation trust lands.

The Puyallup Tribe was established in 1936 after the Indian Reorganization Act, although the reservation was established in 1854 in the Treaty of Medicine Creek. Currently, the tribe has approximately 4,000 citizens. Its membership is descended from the aboriginal Puyallup peoples, as well as other non-Puyallup peoples who were moved to the reservation. Other Puyallup citizens are descendants of other tribes. The population of Puyallup citizens who reside on the reservation is 2,500, which is 3.2% of the reservation's 41,000 total population.

The tribe's government is enshrined in its constitution, and is composed of an elected government, the Puyallup Tribal Council, and the three tribal courts: the Puyallup Tribal Court, the Puyallup Tribal Court of Appeals, and the Puyallup Tribal Children's Court. The laws of the Puyallup Tribe defined the authority of the courts as separate and equal to the Tribal Council.

Government

In 1936 the Puyallup Tribe was officially formed under the Indian Reorganization Act, which authorized reservation tribes to create their own governments.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Puyallup Tribe of Indians” is ethnic group. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Puyallup, Tribe and Indians, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1936, 1854—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Puyallup, Tribe and Indians is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “ethnic group” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q225469. The Library of Congress control number is sh85109258. Authority coordinates are 47.244, -122.371. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936 and 1854.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Puyallup Tribe of Indians”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Puyallup Tribe of Indians primary sources, Puyallup Tribe of Indians archive and Puyallup research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Puyallup Tribe of Indians”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Puyallup Tribe of Indians” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.