The Pacific Northwest was one of the most populated and prosperous regions for Native Americans before the coming of the white man. By the mid-1800s, measles and smallpox decimated the Indian population, and the remaining tribes were forced to give up their ancestral lands. Vine Deloria Jr. tells the story of these tribes’ fight for survival, one that continues today.
A facsimile reprint of a 1945 report on the Northwest Indians, answering questions about who they are, what they eat, their housing, work, clothing, home life, government, religion, and status.
This collection of more than one hundred tribal tales, culled from the oral tradition of the Indians of Washington and Oregon, presents the Indians' own stories, told for generations around their fires, of the mountains, lakes, and rivers, and of the creation of the world and the heavens above. Each group of stories is prefaced by a brief factual account of Indian beliefs and of storytelling customs. Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest is a treasure, still in print after fifty years.
The Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest, both on the Coast and the inland Plateau, were the last to encounter white traders and settlers. When contact occured in the late 18th century the explorers and traders found two distinct cultures. The fairly recent adoption of the horse had opened the Plateau tribes to influences from the peoples of the Plains; but the tribes of the Coast presented a sharply different picture, involving rigid class hierarchies, an economy based on fishing and hunting marine animals, and frequent intertribal warfare which involved slave raiding and head hunting. This fascinating text describes the ways of life, in peace and war, of the coastal and inland peoples of this region.
Throughout the 1850s, Native peoples of the inland Northwest actively resisted white encroachments into their traditional territories. Tensions exploded in 1858 when nearly one thousand Palouses, Spokanes, and Coeur d?Alenes routed an invading force commanded by Colonel Edward Steptoe. In response, Colonel George Wright mounted a large expedition into the heart of the Columbia Plateau to punish and subdue its Native peoples. Opposing Wright?s force was a loose confederacy of tribes led by the famous warrior Kamiakin. ø Indian War in the Pacific Northwest is a vivid and valuable first-person account of that aggressive and bloody military campaign. Related by Lawrence Kip, a young lieutenant serving under Wright, it provides a rare glimpse of military operations and campaign life along the far western frontier before the Civil War. Replete with colorful prose and acute observations, his journal is also notable for its dramatic descriptions of clashes with Kamiakin?s men and compelling portraits of leading figures on both sides of the Plateau Indian War. ø The new introduction provides the historical and cultural background and aftermath of the conflict, explores its effects on present-day Native peoples of the Columbia Plateau, and critically assesses Kip?s observations and interpretations. Also included in this Bison Books edition are two Native accounts of the conflict by Kamiakin and Mary Moses.
The 50th anniversary edition of this classic work on the art of Northwest Coast Indians now offers color illustrations for a new generation of readers along with reflections from contemporary Northwest Coast artists about the impact of this book. The masterworks of Northwest Coast Native artists are admired today as among the great achievements of the world’s artists. The painted and carved wooden screens, chests and boxes, rattles, crest hats, and other artworks display the complex and sophisticated northern Northwest Coast style of art that is the visual language used to illustrate inherited crests and tell family stories. In the 1950s Bill Holm, a graduate student of Dr. Erna Gunther, former Director of the Burke Museum, began a systematic study of northern Northwest Coast art. In 1965, after studying hundreds of bentwood boxes and chests, he published Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form. This book is a foundational reference on northern Northwest Coast Native art. Through his careful studies, Bill Holm described this visual language using new terminology that has become part of the established vocabulary that allows us to talk about works like these and understand changes in style both through time and between individual artists’ styles. Holm examines how these pieces, although varied in origin, material, size, and purpose, are related to a surprising degree in the organization and form of their two-dimensional surface decoration. The author presents an incisive analysis of the use of color, line, and texture; the organization of space; and such typical forms as ovoids, eyelids, U forms, and hands and feet. The evidence upon which he bases his conclusions constitutes a repository of valuable information for all succeeding researchers in the field. Replaces ISBN 9780295951027
In the late 1700s, when Euro-Americans began to visit the Northwest Coast, they reported the presence of vigorous, diverse cultures--among them the Tlingit, Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl), Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Coast Salish, and Chinookans--with a population conservatively estimated at over 180,000. A century later only about 35,000 were left. The change was brought about by the introduction of diseases that had originated in the Eastern Hemisphere, such as smallpox, malaria, measles, and influenza. The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence examines the introduction of infectious diseases among the Indians of the Northwest Coast culture area (present-day Oregon and Washington west of the Cascade Mountains, British Columbia west of the Coast Range, and southeast Alaska) in the first century of contact and the effects of these new diseases on Native American population size, structure, interactions, and viability. The emphasis is on epidemic diseases and specific epidemic episodes. In most parts of the Americas, disease transfer and depopulation occurred early and are poorly documented. Because of the lateness of Euro-American contact in the Pacific Northwest, however, records are relatively complete, and it is possible to reconstruct in some detail the processes of disease transfer and the progress of specific epidemics, compute their demographic impact, and discern connections between these processes and culture change. Boyd provides a thorough compilation, analysis, and comparison of information gleaned from many published and archival sources, both Euro-American (trading-company, mission, and doctors' records; ships' logs; diaries; and Hudson's Bay Company and government censuses) and Native American (oral traditions and informant testimony). The many quotations from contemporary sources underscore the magnitude of the human suffering. The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence is a definitive study of introduced diseases in the Pacific Northwest. For more information on the author go to http: //roberttboyd.com/
