The Salish peoples are an ethno-linguistic group of the Pacific Northwest, identified by their use of the Salish languages which diversified out of Proto-Salish between 3,000 and 6,000 years ago.The term “Salish” originated in the modern era as an exonym created for linguistic research. Salish is an Anglicization of seliš, the endonym for the Salish Tribes of the Flathead Reservation.