A popular quip in geographically divided Idaho is that the state has three capitals: Spokane for the northern half,
An even more important intertribal gathering took place at the Grand Dalles of the Columbia River, the home territory of the Wishrams, Wascos, and other peoples. It was the most important point of con...
Because whites only poorly understood that decentralized arrangement, they eventually forced the notion of a single tribal chief upon the Indians. Prior to Euro-American intrusion, the Nez Perces had...
But life in the Coast culture area was hardly idyllic. Warfare aimed at driving out or exterminating another lineage or family was an established practice in the northern portion of the region. People...
Canadian missionaries promoted legislation in 1884 that made giving or assisting in a potlatch dance a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison. That law remained on the books until 1951.
It was believed that salmon represented a race of supernatural beings who dwelled in a great house beneath the sea. When a salmon died, its spirit returned to its place of origin, and thus it behooved...
Once it was believed that the Coast culture was essentially an extension of that of Asia. Anthropologists now argue that it was derived from that of ancient Eskimos and spread through the interior to...
Over a three-year period the Chinook population declined to one-tenth its former size, and riverbanks were strewn with the unburied dead. The depopulation here has been truly fearful, observed the phy...
That Euro-Americans ultimately prevailed over Indians was less a matter of warfare than of disease. It was neither the guns of the whites nor their whiskey that really decimated the Indian population,...
The Coast peoples were hunters and gatherers. The land and sea around them was so rich in food that they did not need to cultivate crops. Their only domesticated animals were dogs, used mainly for dee...
The crisis at Nootka thus sparked the first cabinet-level foreign policy debate in the United States under the new Constitution of 1787.