By the eighteenth century, the ethnic group known as the Nuh-Lummis had spread all over the north Puget Sound country and included the Lummi Tribe of the northern San Juan Islands, the Samish occupying Samish Island and southern San Juan and Lopez Islands, the Semiahmoo at Blaine, the Nooksacks on the Lummi and Nooksack rivers and a few of the more northern Skagit County groups.
With ample and easily acquired food, there was little warfare between the different villages, but a serious and powerful enemy developed from the northern Pacific Coast Indians of the Athabaskan and Wakashan ethnic peoples — particularly the Haidas and Tsimshian clans. They were a tall powerful warlike people equipped with excellent weapons with copper and stone points, knives and spears. They wore armor made of hide and wood. They were slavers, and in the spring would raid the Lummi Villages, killing all the inhabitants except those wanted as slaves. They sold slaves up and down the Pacific coast, such slaves having been found as far south as the Hoh River.