- "Another legend claims that we descended from wolves and that the wolves are our brothers still. It's against tribal law to kill them."
- —Jacob explaining the Quileutes to Bella
The Quileute tribe are a Native American people, currently numbering approximately 750.
The Quileute (also spelled Quillayute) people settled onto the Quileute Indian Reservation after signing the Treaty of Quinault River of 1855 (later reauthorized as the treaty of Olympia in 1856) with the United States of America. The reservation is located near the southwest corner of Clallam County, Washington at the mouth of the Quileute River on the Pacific coast. The reservation's main population center is the community of La Push, Washington. The 2000 census reported an official resident population of 371 persons on the reservation, which has a land area of 4.061 km² (1.5678 sq mi, or 1,003.4 acres). They have their own government that consists of a Tribal council with staggered terms.
The Quileute tribe linguistically belongs to the Chimakuan family of languages among Northwest Coast indigenous peoples. The Quileute language is one of a kind, as the only related aboriginal people to the Quileute, the Chemakum, were wiped out by Chief Seattle and the Suquamish people during the 1860s. The Quileute language is one of only five known languages that do not have any nasal sounds (m, n).
Like many other Northwest Coast groups, in pre-Colonial times the Quileute relied on fishing from local rivers and the Pacific Ocean for food and built plank houses (longhouses) to protect themselves from the harsh, wet winters west of the Cascade Mountains. The Quileutes, along with the people of the Makah tribe, were once great whalers.