On January 22, 1855, the Treaty of Point Elliott was negotiated at Mukilteo between the United States government and Coast Salish tribes from the northern Puget Sound region. More than 2,000 Indians gathered there, and eighty-two tribal representatives, including Patkanim, S'hootst-hoot, Chief Seattle, Goliah, and Chowitshoot, signed with Isaac I. Stevens, governor of the newly formed territory and superintendent of Indian Affairs, and other government officials. Held in the traditional territory of the Snohomish, the treaty was one of eight treaties and two Executive Orders executed in Washington Territory. Negotiated in Chinook trade jargon despite major language and cultural barriers, it ceded extensive tracts of tribal land in exchange for small reserved tracts and established the Tulalip, Port Madison, Lummi, and Swinomish reservations. It also protected rights tribal leaders insisted on retaining, including fishing at all usual and accustomed grounds and hunting and gathering on open and unclaimed lands; these reserved rights were understood as rights the tribes had always possessed, not rights granted by the treaty. In addition to reserving homelands and rights, the fifteen-article treaty promised education, medical assistance, and housing. The Tulalip Tribes, successors in interest to the Snohomish, Skykomish, and other allied tribes, organized under the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, while other treaty tribes organized governments on the Lummi, Swinomish, and Suquamish reservations. Since the treaty was signed, the Tulalip Tribes and other local tribes have continually fought to uphold treaty rights, including a major victory in the 1974 Boldt case, which reaffirmed treaty-protected fishing rights in usual and accustomed places and established the tribes as co-managers of the fisheries resource; later cases also affirmed rights to shellfish and protection against habitat destruction affecting salmon runs. Despite the hardships of the reservation system and the cession of millions of acres, the treaty is celebrated by the Tulalip Tribes as formal recognition by the United States of their inherent right to self-determination as a sovereign and distinct people, and it remains legally binding under the United States Constitution.