For thousands of winters before the arrival of the White Drifting-House people, the Ho-qwats, the Quileute Indians and the ghosts of their ancestors lived and hunted near La Push, Washington. For as long as legend recalls, the Quileutes flourished in a territory that originally stretched from isle-strewn Pacific beaches along rain forest rivers to the glaciers of Wt. Olympus. Their chiefs are buried atop James Island, or A-Ka-Lat, and Quileute elders remember the old stories of people who challenged Kwalla, the mighty whale, and recounted the exploits of Wily Raven or Rayak. In their ancient creation story, a wandering transformer changed the Quileutes from wolves into human beings, embodying both man and wolf. Tribal legend holds that their only kindred, the Chimakum Tribe, were washed away from La Push by a flood and deposited near present-day Port Townsend, where they lived until Chief Seattle's Suquamish Tribe wiped them out in the 1860s, leaving the Quileutes with no known tribal relatives on Earth. Surrounded by unrelated tribes, they lived near the Makah to the north along the Pacific Coast, the S'Klallam to the northeast along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Quinault to the south at Taholah. Relations with these groups allowed trade, intermarriage of nobility, and potlatches, community-wide celebrations that honored people through the giveaway of possessions and redistribution of wealth, though disputes over trespassing sometimes led to warfare. Today the Quileute Nation's homeland is at the juncture of the Quillayute River and the Pacific Coast at La Push, where the Quileute Tribal Council guides the tribe, oversees the Quileute Tribal School, holds community events including the mid-summer Quileute Days, and benefits from a local economy supported by ocean fisheries and the tribal-run Oceanside Resort.