La Push is home to the Quileute Tribe. According to legend, the tribe was created from wolves by a supernatural transformer. The tribe's lineage stretches back thousands of years to the Ice Age, making them possibly the oldest inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. Tribal members built cedar canoes that ranged in size from two-man to ocean-going freight vessels capable of carrying three tons. They ranked second only to the Makah as whalers, and first among all the tribes as sealers. Special woolly-hared dogs were bred, and their hair spun into prized blankets. According to the stories, the Quileutes only kin, the Chimacum, were separated from them by a great flood that swept them to the Quimper Peninsula on the other side of the North Olympic Peninsula, where they were wiped out by Chief Seattle and the Suquamish Tribe in the 1860s.

First official contacts with the white man occurred in 1855, when the Quileutes signed a treaty with representatives of Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens. A treaty a year latter would have moved them to a reservation in Taholah, but the Quileute territory was so remote it wasn't enforced. In February 1889, an executive order by President Grover Cleveland established a one mile square reservation a LaPush which, at the time, had 252 inhabitants. While villagers were picking hops in Puyallup, the town was destroyed by arson in 1889.