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.

NORTHWEST.

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.

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.

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.