Volume #8 of 20 in The North American Indian series contains detailed information on the The Nez Perces, Wallawalla, Umatilla, Cayuse, The Chinookan tribes. The subject areas covered on each tribe are histories, customs, ceremonies, mythologies and comparative vocabularies.

"[A] comprehensive and permanent record of all the important tribes of the United States and Alaska that still retain to a considerable degree their primitive customs and traditions. The value of such a work, in great measure, will lie in the breadth of its treatment, in its wealth of illustration, and in the fact that it represents the result of personal study of a people who are rapidly losing the traces of their aboriginal character and who are destined ultimately to become assimilated with the 'superior race.' It has been the aim to picture all features of the Indian life and environment--types of the young and the old, with their habitations, industries, ceremonies, games, and everyday customs ... Though the treatment accorded the Indians by those who lay claim to civilization and Christianity has in many cases been worse than criminal, a rehearsal of these wrongs does not properly find a place here"--General introduction.

Policy, politics, and administration : prologue to captivity -- Lapwai to the Bear's Paw : the road to surrender -- Fifty days : the Bear's Paw to Fort Leavenworth -- Survival and military jurisdiction at Fort Leavenworth -- Life in the Eeikish Pah, the hot place -- Peace chiefs and diplomats -- Removal to the Oakland subagency : new lives, demographics, and changing intertribal relationships -- Life at the Oakland subagency : challenges and change -- Federal Indian schools and Nimiipuu, Palus, and Cayuse students -- Communities of faith in the Indian territory -- Interactions and life in the Indian territory -- Leaving the Indian territory