In the Pacific Northwest, the river of dominance is the Columbia, and in ways both profound and mundane its history is the history of the region. In Great River of the West historians and anthropologists consider a range of topics about the river, from Indian rock art, Chinook Jargon, and ethnobotany on the Columbia to literary and family history, the creation of an engineered river, and the inherent mythic power of place. Since first contact between Euro-Americans and Native peoples during the late 18th century, the river's history has been characterized by dramatic demographic, social, and economic changes. The remarkable set of essays in Great River of the West investigate these changes by highlighting important episodes in the history of the river. Readers meet mariners who challenge the Columbia River bar, a family torn by insanity, Native people who preserve fishing traditions, and dam-builders who radically change the Columbia.

Details the destruction of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest by well-intentioned Americans who saw only the benefits of the dam-building, power plant and irrigation projects, not realizing the longterm effects of killing the river.

"River of Memory honors a place and time now gone from view. It restores an unfettered Columbia through more than ninety historical photographs that capture the river as it once appeared. This visual record is complemented with the words of early explorers, surveyors, and naturalists who wrote about specific places along the river and with new works by contemporary American and Canadian writers and poets."--Jacket.

Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

At the centre of this wonderful book is the great Columbia River-rich with history, myth, and riverfolk, as well as progress and its effects. Cody's canoe trip from the Columbia's Canadian headwaters to where it meets the Pacific Ocean, churns up a lively portrait of the river and the land through which it courses. The Los Angeles Times Book Review praised the hardcover edition with "Voyage is neither an environmental treatise nor a search for [Cody's] own soul. It's about the taming of a river and, from water level, what that taming has meant.....Cody is a clear writer with strong descriptive powers." The hardcover edition was awarded the 1996 PNBA Award.

"Ulrich's broad and incisive account ranges from descriptions of the dam's disastrous effects on a salmon-dependent culture to portraits of the plight of individual Indian families. Descendants of those to whom the promise was made and activists who have spent their lives working to acquire the sites reveal the remarkable patience and resiliance of the Columbia River Indians."--BOOK JACKET.