"Cayuse" (a word derived from the French cailloux, meaning "People of the Stones or Rocks") describes Indians who may have lived with the Molala Indians on the John Day River until the early eighteenth century. Their self-designation was Waiilatpus, "Superior People." At that time the Cayuses acquired horses, and by the nineteenth century they owned many horses and were disproportionately strong and dominating for the size of the tribe. They expanded northward and eastward, into the Grande Ronde and Walla Walla Valleys, subjugating the Walla Walla tribe in the process. They also regularly hunted buffalo on the Great Plains, adapting many Plains cultural attributes.
During the eighteenth century, Cayuse Indians lived along the headwaters of the Walla Walla, Umatilla, and Grande Ronde Rivers, in present-day Oregon and Washington. Today, most Cayuses live in Umatilla County, Oregon, and in regional cities and towns.
Largely because of their enormous herds of horses, the Cayuses became so wealthy during this period that they no longer bothered to fish, trading instead for fish and other necessities. They welcomed the Meriwether Lewis and William Clark expedition in 1806 and welcomed as well the fur traders who entered their territory shortly after the explorers' coming. They were not especially interested in furs but rather in the manufactured goods of non-Indians that they might trade for. Their openness to non-Natives was also due in part to their luck at having so far escaped most of the disease epidemics that ravaged other Indian peoples.
The first Presbyterian missions in the area opened in 1836. In 1843, the first emigrants traveled on the Oregon Trail. In 1847, relations between the Cayuses and whites, hitherto friendly, took a dramatic turn for the worse when a group of Indians destroyed the local mission and killed its founders, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, and others. They blamed the missionaries for the disease epidemics that were destroying their people. They also resented the Whitmans for their intolerance to the Indians and their new wealth based on sales of former Indian land.
The Whitman "massacre" was the opening salvo in a constant struggle with non-Natives (the Cayuse War) that lasted until about 1850. Tiloukaikt, a band chief and former friend of nonNative traders, was a leader in this conflict. The tribe was ultimately defeated, and some of its members were hanged by the U. S. government. By this time, disease, warfare, and intermarriage with the Nez Perce had greatly reduced the tribe. Although the Cayuses kept up sporadic resistance into the 1850s, they were assigned by treaty to the Umatilla Reservation in 1855, and most were removed there in 1860. Some Cayuses took up farming on the reservation. Some joined the Yakimas (1855), Nez Perce (1877), and Bannocks (1878) in their various wars against the whites, but some also served with the U. S. Army during these wars.
See also Disease, Historic and Contemporary; Horse, Economic Impact; Trade.
"Coeur d'Alene," derived from the French for "awl heart," is reportedly a reference by an Anglo trader to the trading skills of these Indians. Their selfdesignation was Skitswish, perhaps meaning "foundling." In the eighteenth century, the Coeur d'Alenes lived along the Spokane River upstream from Spokane Falls, including Lake Coeur d'Alene. The region of over 4 million acres is fertile and well watered. In the early nineteenth century the tribe lived in central Idaho, eastern Washington, and western Montana; the mountains in this area helped to protect their horses against raiders from the Plains. Today's Coeur d'Alene Reservation is located in Benewah and Kootenai Counties in Idaho.
Like all Salish peoples, the Coeur d'Alenes probably originated in British Columbia. They migrated to the Plateau during their prehistoric period, keeping some Pacific Coast attributes even after they adopted Plateau culture. They acquired the horse around 1760, at which time they gave up their semisedentary lives to hunt buffalo, Plains-style.
Their traditional antipathy toward outsiders made it difficult for trappers to penetrate their territory. A Jesuit mission was established in 1842, however, foreshadowing the significant role the Jesuits were to play in their later history. At this time, the Jesuits successfully influenced the Indians to give up buffalo hunting and begin farming.
In the meantime, intermittent warfare with Indians and non-Indians, plus disease and crowding, had dropped their population by about 85 percent by 1850. In 1858 they fought the ill-fated Coeur d'Alene War (1858) with the help of tribes such as the Northern Paiutes, Palouses, and Spokans. Although the immediate cause of this conflict was white treaty violations, it may be seen as an extension of the Yakima War (1855-1856) and the general Plateau Indian resistance struggle during that time.
The roughly 600,000-acre Coeur d'Alene Reservation was created in 1873, at which time the Indians ceded almost 2.4 million acres. However, pressure from miners soon forced the tribe to cede almost
185,000 more acres in the late 1880s. Most of the rest of their land was lost to the allotment process in the early twentieth century. In 1894, thirty-two Spokan families joined the reservation. Most Coeur d'Alene Indians became Catholics, farmers, and stockbreeders. In 1958, the tribe was awarded over $4.3 million in land claims settlements.
See also Buffalo; Reservation Economic and Social Conditions.
See Sinkiuse.
See Colville; Umatilla; Yakima (Yakama).
"Colville" is a name derived from the Colville River and Fort Colville (a Hudson's Bay Company trading post), which in turn were named for Eden Colville, a governor of the company. Whites also called these Indians Basket People, after their large salmon fishing baskets, and Chaudiere (kettles), after depressions in the rocks at Kettle Falls and a corruption of their self-designation, Shuyelpee. They were culturally similar to the Okanagon and Sanpoil Indians. They spoke a Salishan language made up of elements from the constituent tribes.
In the eighteenth century, the Colville Indians lived in northeastern Washington, around the Kettle and Columbia Rivers. Today, most live in Ferry and Okanogan Counties, Washington, and in nearby cities and towns.
As early as 1782, a smallpox epidemic destroyed large numbers of Colville Indians. Colville Indians became involved with the fur trade shortly after the arrival in the area of the first non-Indians (early traders) around 1800. By the midnineteenth century they were suffering from a sharply declining population and a deteriorating way of life due to new diseases, anti-Indian violence, land theft, and the severe disruption of their subsistence habits. Missionaries arrived in 1838. Non-Indian miners flooded into the area in the mid-1850s. Colvilles did not participate in the wars of that time.
Traditionally, autonomous villages were each led by a chief and a subchief; these lifetime offices were hereditary in theory but were generally filled by people possessing the qualities of honesty, integrity, and diplomacy. The authority of chiefs to
Serve as adviser, judge, and general leader was granted mainly through consensus. As judge, the chief had authority over crimes of nonconformity such as witchcraft, sorcery, and assault.
An informal assembly of all married adults confirmed a new chief and oversaw other aspects of village life. All residents of the village were considered citizens. Other village leaders included a messenger, a speaker, and a salmon chief (often a shaman, with the salmon as a guardian spirit, who supervised salmon-related activities). By virtue of their ability to help or hurt people, shamans also acquired relative wealth and power from their close association with chiefs, who liked to keep them friendly.
Two Colville reservations were established in 1872 for local nontreaty tribes. One, created in April, was considered by local whites to have too fertile lands, so another reservation with less desirable land was established in July. The early reservation years were marked by conflict with non-Indians and among the tribes. Many Colville Indians converted to Catholicism in the later nineteenth century. In 1900, they lost 1.5 million acres, over half of their reservation. Even so, non-Natives continued to settle on the truncated reservation in large numbers until 1935.
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation was formed in 1938. The government restored some land in 1956. The tribe divided over the issue of termination through the 1950s and 1960s but ultimately decided against it. The tribe won significant land claims settlements in the later twentieth century.
See also Dams, Fishing Rights, and Hydroelectric Power; Disease, Historic and Contemporary; Reservation Economic and Social Conditions.
See Salish.
"Kalispel," or Camas People, is derived from the name of an important plant food. They are also known as the Pend d'Oreilles, French for "ear drops," a term referring to the Indians' personal adornment. These people were grouped aboriginally into two divisions: lower (Kalispel proper) and upper.
In the eighteenth century, the Kalispels lived around Pend d'Oreille Lake and River. Today, most live on their reservation in Pend Oreille County, Washington. Kalispels also live on the Colville and Flathead Reservations,
Like other Salish peoples, the Kalispels probably came from British Columbia. The upper division may have moved east and south onto the plains of Montana before the Blackfeet pushed them back, in the eighteenth century, to the Pend d'Oreille Lake region. After the introduction of the horse, they joined with other Plateau groups to hunt buffalo and to organize war and raiding parties.
In the eighteenth century there were two geographical divisions: Upper Pend d'Oreilles and Lower Pend d'Oreilles, or Kalispelems. The latter were further divided into Lower Kalispel (Kalispels proper), Upper Kalispels, and Chewelahs (perhaps a separate tribe). Each division was composed of related families and was led by a chief selected on the basis of merit. Later, a tribal chief presided over a council made up of the band chiefs.
The Kalispels were masters of their white pine canoes. The lower division had distinctive low-riding canoes to meet the winds on Pend d'Oreille Lake. Although they were excellent horsemen, they had relatively few horses, even in the midnineteenth century. Most clothes were made from rabbit skins or deerskins. Men wore breechclouts and shirts, and women wore dresses. Both wore moccasins, caps, robes, leggings, and shell earrings.
The North West Trading Company opened a trading post in Kalispel country in 1809. The first Catholic mission opened in 1846 and relocated in 1854 with the upper Kalispels to the Lake Flathead area. Kalispels were forced into a major land cession in 1855, and the upper division was assigned to the Flathead Reservation in Montana, but the lower division refused to relocate, asking instead for a reservation of their own. They remained relatively isolated until 1863, when the British Columbia gold rush brought many miners through their territory.
In 1887, one of the two Lower Kalispel bands moved to the Flathead Reservation. The other, under Marcella, remained in the Pend d'Oreille Valley. Their reservation was created by executive order in 1914: It consisted of 4,629 acres, of which only 150 acres of tribal land remained after individual allotments and white encroachments. The tribe was awarded $3 million in land claims settlements in 1960, and another $114,000 in 1981.
See also Buffalo; Canoes; Reservation Economic and Social Conditions.
"Klamath" is a word of uncertain derivation. The Klamaths' self-designation is Maklak, "People." The Klamaths were culturally similar to the Modocs and to other northern California Indian peoples. In the early nineteenth century, the Klamath people lived on 20 million acres in south central Oregon and northeastern California. The land included forests and mountains of the Cascade Range, highland lakes and marshes, and the headwaters of the Klamath River. Today the descendents of these people live mostly in Klamath County, Oregon, and in regional cities and towns. The Klamath language is a dialect of Lutuami, a Penutian language.
Traditionally, the Klamaths were organized into four to seven autonomous subdivisions or tribelets. Each tribelet may have consisted of about ten winter hamlets. Each had a chief (chosen either as a consequence of wealth or the ability to provide leadership in war), but shamans probably wielded more authority.
Permanent winter hamlets were generally built on lake shores and near marshes. Houses were semisubterranean, circular multifamily structures, covered with earth on a wood frame. Entry was through the roof. Several nuclear families might have lived in one lodge. Circular, mat-covered wood-frame houses served in summer or on hunting trips. Winter and summer sweat lodges were built in a style similar to that of the dwellings.
Fish, mostly freshwater whitefish and suckers, was the food staple. The Klamaths also ate waterfowl. In the summer, women gathered roots, berries,
Klamath woman seated in front of house thatched with rush mats, ca. 1923. (Library of Congress)
And other plant foods, and men hunted deer, antelope, and small game. Wild waterlily seeds (wokas) were harvested in the late summer; they were eventually ground into flour.
The Klamath Indians were probably spared direct contact with non-Natives until the arrival in 1829 of Peter Skene Ogden. The white invasion of the 1850s also brought disease and scattered the game, destroying traditional subsistence patterns. In an 1864 treaty, the Klamath and Modoc people ceded over 13 million acres of land for a 1.1-million-acre reservation on former Klamath lands in southern Oregon. In addition to the Klamaths and Mod-ocs, the reservation included Pit River Indians, Shastas, Northern Paiutes, and other groups. These Indians agreed to end the practice of slavery at that time.
Some Modocs left the reservation in 1870 because of friction between themselves and the Klamaths. The latter remained aloof from the 1872-1873 Modoc War. By the end of the nineteenth century, all Indians on the Klamath Reservation were known as the Klamath tribe. In 1901, the government agreed to pay the tribe $537,000 for misappropriated lands. Other land claims settlements, for millions of dollars, followed during the course of the century.
In 1958 the U. S. government terminated the Klamath Reservation. Although the government had long coveted the timber-rich reservation, many Klamaths were strongly against termination, but it was hastened by the then tribal leader. In 1958, 77 percent of the tribe voted to withdraw from the collective entity and take individual shares of the land proceeds. In 1974, the remaining 23 percent agreed to sell the rest of the reservation for per-capita shares. At that time, the Klamaths lost the last of their land base. Termination has had a profoundly negative effect on members of the tribe.
See also Dams, Fishing Rights, and Hydroelectric Power; Reservation Economic and Social Conditions; Termination.
"Klikitat" is derived from a Chinook term meaning "beyond" (the Cascade Mountains). Their self-designation was Qwulh-hwai-pum, "Prairie People." The Klikitats were culturally similar to the Yakimas. The Klikitats lived and continue to live in the vicinity of Mount Adams in south central Washington. Klikitat was a member of the Sahaptian division of the Penutian language family.
The Klikitats may have originated south of the Columbia River, moving north in the prehistoric period to become skilled horsepeople and fighters after they acquired horses around 1700. The 1805 encounter with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, on the Yakima and Klikitat Rivers, was friendly all around.
Nomadic bands were led by nonhereditary chiefs with advisory powers. Before the historic period, the tribe created two divisions, eastern and western, of which the latter mixed with Cowlitz Indians west of the Cascades to become Taitnapams.
Skilled with firearms, the Klikitats sometimes acted as mercenaries for other Indian tribes, taking women and horses as pay. Their effort during the 1820s to expand south of the Columbia was repulsed by the Umpquas. Later, the Klikitats had their revenge by helping whites conquer the Umpquas. They also scouted for the U. S. Army in the 1850s.
In 1855, the United States asked the Klikitats and other local Indians, including the Yakimas, to cede 10.8 million acres of land. Most tribes accepted a 1.2-million-acre reservation in exchange. Although Indians retained fishing and gathering rights at their usual off-reservation places and were given at least two years to relocate, the governor of Washington declared their land open to non-Indians twelve days after the treaty council ended.
Angered by this betrayal, a few Yakimas killed some whites. When soldiers arrived, a large group of Indians drove them away. In retaliation for the treacherous murder of a Walla Walla chief and negotiator, the Walla Walla, Klikitat, Cayuse, and Umatilla Indians joined the Yakimas in fighting non-Indians. After the war ended and twenty-four of their number were executed, the Yakimas agreed to settle on a reservation in 1859. The future Yakima Indian nation included, in addition to Yakima bands, the Klikitats, Wanapams, Wishrams, Palus (Palouse), and the Wenatchis.
Reservation Yakimas entered a brief period of prosperity but were soon pressured to sell land; most people were forced into poverty, obtaining some seasonal work at best. In 1891, about one-third of the reservation land had been allotted to individuals, but the Yakima nation, under Chief Shawaway Lotiahkan, was able to retain the "surplus" usually sold to non-Indians in such cases. Still, many of the individual allotments, including some of the best irrigated land, were soon lost. Around the turn of the
Century as much as 80 percent of the reservation was in non-Indian hands.
As a result of twentieth-century dam construction (Bonneville in 1938, Grand Coulee in 1941, Dalles in 1956), the number of salmon and steelhead that returned to spawn in the Yakima River declined 98-99 percent. The issue of fishing rights remained an important and controversial one from the beginning of the reservation period through its resolution in 1974. Well into the twentieth century, Yakima nation people continued much of their traditional subsistence and ceremonial activities.
See also Dams, Fishing Rights, and Hydroelectric Power; Reservation Economic and Social Conditions.
The Kootenais are a nomadic people geographically divided into upper and lower divisions after their exodus from the northern Great Plains. The Upper Kootenais remained oriented toward the Plains, whereas the Lower Kootenais assumed a more Plateau-like existence. Their self-designation was San'ka, "People of the Waters." Kutenaian is unrelated to any language family except possibly Algo-nquian.
The Kootenais may once have lived east of the Rockies, perhaps as far east as Lake Michigan. In the late eighteenth century, they lived near the borders of British Columbia, Washington, and Idaho. Today, most live on the Kootenai Reservation, Boundary County in Idaho; on the Flathead Reservation, Flathead, Lake, Missoula, and Sanders Counties in Montana; and on several reserves in British Columbia.
Each of roughly eight autonomous bands was led by a chief and an assistant chief, such as a war, fish, and hunting chief. The chieftainship was hereditary into the historic period, when leadership qualities began to assume the most importance. A council of shamans chose the upper division chief. Decision making was by consensus.
Although they lived in the mountains west of the continental divide, upper division Kootenais subsisted on the Great Plains buffalo, whereas the lower division ate mostly fish (trout, salmon, and sturgeon), small game, and roots. Both divisions also hunted big and small game, and both gathered roots and berries, especially bitterroots. Most foods were dried and stored for the winter.
Men fished using weirs, basket traps, and spears. Women made a variety of baskets, including ones that could hold water. Hunting equipment included cherry and cedar wood bows, clubs tipped with antler points, stone knives, and slingshots. Buffalo were hunted with a bow and arrow or by driving them off cliffs. Leather items were prominent, especially among the upper division, whereas the lower division primarily made items of Indian hemp and tule. Kootenais also made carved wood bowls, clay pots, and stone pipes.
During the eighteenth century, the Kootenais acquired the horse and began hunting buffalo on the Plains, adopting much of Plains culture. Shortly after initial contact around 1800, Canadian traders built Kootenai House, a trading post. More traders, including Christianized Iroquois, as well as missionaries soon followed. Despite the Kootenais' avoidance of much overt conflict with whites, they suffered dramatic population declines during these years, primarily as a result of disease and alcohol abuse. The formal establishment of the international boundary in 1846 divided the tribe over time.
The Flathead Reservation was established in 1855 for the Salish and Kootenai people. Some Kootenais refused to negotiate the loss of their land, however, and did not participate in these talks. Some moved to British Columbia rather than accept reservation confinement. When the Kootenai Reservation was established in 1896, about a hundred Kootenai Indians moved to the Flathead Reservation. Of the ones who refused to move, those near Bonners Ferry were granted individual allotments in 1895. The tribe won a $425,000 land claims settlement in 1960, and the Kootenai Reservation was officially established in 1974.
See also Dams, Fishing Rights, and Hydroelectric Power; Horse, Economic Impact; Reservation Economic and Social Conditions.
See Okanagon.
"Lillooet," a name meaning "wild onion" or "end of the trail," was once applied only to the lower division of the tribe. The Lillooets exhibited marked
Characteristics of the Northwest Coast culture. Most lived traditionally and continue to live in southwest British Columbia, Canada. Lillooet is an Interior Sal-ish language.
Indian groups of the Plateau, including Interior Salishan speakers, have been living in their historic regions for a long time, probably upward of 9,000 years.
Lillooets were organized into upper and lower divisions, with each division composed of named bands of one or more villages. In aboriginal times, each village represented a single clan with one hereditary chief. Other leaders included war chiefs, hunting chiefs, orators, and wealthy and generous men.
Adolescents prepared for adulthood by fasting and engaging in feats of physical endurance. They also sought guardian spirits through vision quests or dreams to give them luck and skills. Girls were isolated at the time of their first menstrual periods. Like coastal groups, the Lillooets observed a caste system and kept slaves. Potlatches commemorated special life cycle events, at which the host enhanced his prestige by giving away gifts. The dead were wrapped in woven grass or fur robes and placed in painted grave boxes or in bark - or mat-lined graves. Graves were often marked with mortuary poles carved with clan totems (spiritual and mythological associates).
Men built circular winter lodges of cedar bark and earth on a wood frame. Lodges were excavated to a depth of around six feet and ranged between twenty and thirty-five feet in diameter. The floor was covered with spruce boughs. The clan totem was carved on the center pole or on an outside pole (lower division). Larger log and plank dwellings housed between four and eight families. Oblong or conical mat-covered houses served as shelter in the summer.
Salmon and other fish were the food staples. Men hunted both large and small game, including bear, beaver, rabbit, raccoon, and mountain goat. Hunters rubbed themselves with twigs to disguise their human scent. Women gathered assorted roots and berries and dried the foods for storage.
Men were known for their skill at wood carving. Stone, often soapstone, was also carved for artistic purposes, most often in the shape of a seated person holding a bowl. Women decorated clothing with porcupine quillwork. They also made excellent coiled baskets decorated with geometric motifs and colorful dyes.
Early (ca. 1809) intercourse with non-Native traders was generally friendly, although some nonnative diseases had struck the people even before the beginning of the actual contact period. The people were able to live in a relatively traditional way until they were devastated by smallpox epidemics accompanying the gold rushes of the midnineteenth century. To make matters worse, famine followed the disease epidemics, striking with particular severity in the mid-1860s. Survivors gradually resettled on reserves delineated by the government of British Columbia.
See also Dams, Fishing Rights, and Hydroelectric Power; Disease, Historic and Contemporary; Worldviews and Values.
"Modoc" comes from Moatokni, or "Southerners" (Klamath). Their self-designation was Maklaks, or "People," as was that of their neighbors and linguistic cousins, the Klamaths. Traditionally, Modocs lived around Goose, Clear, Tule, and Klamath Lakes in northern California and southern Oregon. Today, Modocs live mostly around Oregon and in Northwest cities as well as in Oklahoma. With the Kla-maths, the Modocs spoke a dialect of the Lutuami division of the Penutian language family.
Each of about twenty-five Modoc villages was led by a civil and a war chief. Civil chiefs were selected on the basis of their wealth as well as their leadership and oratory skills; there were also some hereditary chiefs. An informal community assembly decided most legal matters.
Winter dwellings were permanent, semiexca-vated lodges made of willow poles covered with tule mats and earth. Width averaged between twelve and twenty feet. People entered through a smoke hole in the roof. Temporary mat-covered structures were used at seasonal camping sites. Sweat houses were heated with steam; they were a place for cleansing as well as for praying.
Modocs followed the food supply in three seasons. They ate fish, especially salmon, trout, perch, and suckers. Men hunted a variety of large animals as well as rabbits and other small game. Antelope were driven into brush corrals. Fowl were taken with nets and decoys. Women gathered camas and other roots, greens, berries, and fruits. Seeds, especially those of the waterlily (wocus), were also
Toby Riddle, also known as "Winema," standing between an Indian agent and her husband, Frank (left), with four Modoc women in front, ca. 1873. Riddle, whose husband was white, acted as an interpreter during negotiations in the Modoc War. (National Archives and Records Administration)
Important; they were gathered in the fall and ground into flour.
Fishing equipment included nets, spears, hook and line, and basket traps. Many items were made of tule or bulrushes, such as twined baskets, mats, cradles, rafts, and moccasins. The people used stone mullers and metates for grinding seeds, stone arrow straighteners, and basketry seed beaters. Modoc Indians also were actively involved in the regional trade. They especially obtained horses for slaves and plunder at the Dalles.
Modocs obtained horses early in the nineteenth century, about the time they encountered nonNatives, and by the 1830s they were aggressively raiding their neighbors for horses, slaves, and plunder. Major disease epidemics in 1833 and 1847 reduced their population considerably. Wagon trains began coming through their territory during the late 1840s, scaring the game away and disrupting their natural cycles. Hungry now, as well as anxious and resentful, they began attacking the intruders and neighboring Indians for slaves. When gold was found near their territory in 1851, miners flocked in and simply appropriated Native land, killing Indians as they liked.
The 1860s Ghost Dance brought them little comfort, and they, especially the women, drifted into debauchery during this period. In 1864, the Modocs and Klamaths ceded most of their land and moved to the Klamath Reservation. The Modocs were never comfortable there, however, and matters became worse when a food scarcity exacerbated the level of conflict with the Klamaths. They petitioned several times for their own reservation, but to no avail. In 1870, about 300 Modocs under Kintpuash (Captain Jack) reestablished a village in their former homeland on the Lost River. Increasing conflict with white settlers soon led to a military confrontation, after which the Indians escaped to the nearby lava beds.
Meanwhile, another group of Modocs under Hooker Jim also fled to the lava beds south of Tule Lake after attacking several ranches in revenge for an unprovoked army attack on their women and children. In a confrontation early in 1873, about eighty Indians held off 1,000 U. S. soldiers and irregulars. At a peace parley later that year, the Modocs killed the U. S. general and one of his negotiators. Later, another white attack was repulsed, but the Indians killed some soldiers during the negotiations. However, Modoc unity was failing, and their food was running out. Hooker Jim was captured and betrayed his people, leading troops to the hideout of Kintpuash, who was forced to surrender. At his trial, Hooker Jim provided testimony against Kintpuash and others, resulting in their being hanged. Most surviving Modocs were sent to the Quapaw Reservation in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma).
The Oklahoma Modocs became farmers and ranchers, and many adopted Christianity. Modoc tribal land ownership in Oklahoma ended in 1890 when their land was allotted to individuals. A group of forty-seven Modocs returned to the Klamath Reservation around 1905, but the reservation was terminated in 1954. Its lands were sold in 1964 and 1971. The Oklahoma Modocs lost their tribal status in 1956 as well, but they were restored in 1978.
See also Captain Jack; Ghost Dance Religion; Hooker Jim; Relocation.
See Sanpoil.
"Nez Perce," French for "pierced nose," was a name used by non-Indian traders in the nineteenth century. Ironically, the Nez Perce did not generally pierce their noses as many other local Indians did. Their Salishan neighbors called them Sahaptin or Shahaptin. Their self-designation was Nimipu, "the People," or Tsoop-Nit-Pa-Loo, "the Walking Out People." Their early historic culture also contained Great Plains and Northwest Coast elements. Nez Perce is a member of the Sahaptian division of the Penutian language family.
Before contact with non-Indians, the Nez Perce lived on about 17 million acres between the Blue and the Bitterroot Mountains in southeast Washington, northeast Oregon, and southwest Idaho. Today, most live in the counties of Clearwater, Idaho, Lewis, and Nez Perce in Idaho; Ferry and Okanogan Counties in Washington; and in regional cities and towns.
Small, local bands each had one or more villages and fishing areas. Civil chiefs led the bands, although war chiefs exercised temporary power during periods of conflict. Chiefs were generally elected, although sons often followed fathers, and wealth (in horses) became more important in the early contact period. They had no power in purely personal matters. Women could neither be nor elect chiefs. Chiefs and old men made up the village and tribal councils; decisions were made by consensus. Ultimately, tribal cohesion grew out of the necessity to defend against fighters from the Great Plains.
Bands were called by the names of streams. Each group contained at least one permanent winter village and a number of temporary fishing camps. Some subsistence areas were considered tribal property. All handmade items were the property of the maker, except that the male was entitled to all property in unusual cases of separation or divorce.
Menstruating and late-term pregnant women were strictly segregated. Young, unmarried men slept in the sweat lodges. Young men and women, especially the latter, were married by about age fourteen. Brides were commonly purchased, and polygamy was common. Abortion was rare, as was birth out of wedlock. Adultery was a capital crime. Women did most of the domestic work, including dressing skins; men's work revolved around hunting and war.
Permanent settlements were located along rivers. Winter dwellings were semisubterranean, circular wood-frame structures covered with cedar
Four Nez Perce dressed for dance on Colville Indian Reservation, ca. 1910. (Library of Congress)
Bark, sage, mats, grasses, and earth. The roof was flat or conical. Mats covered the floors. There were also teepee-like communal longhouses, up to 150 feet long, of similar construction. These houses held up to fifty families. People slept along inner walls and shared fires along the center.
Older boys and unmarried men slept and sweated in grass - and earth-covered sweat lodges; others were built for men and women to sweat in. Circular, underground menstrual huts were about twenty feet in diameter. In summer, people built temporary brush lean-tos. Some groups adopted hide teepees in the eighteenth century.
Nez Perce were seminomadic, moving with the food supply. Fish, especially salmon, was a staple, along with trout, eel, and sturgeon. Salmon was either broiled, baked, or boiled fresh or dried, smoked, and stored. Animal food included elk, deer, moose, mountain sheep, rabbits, and small game. After the Nez Perce acquired the horse, parties traveled to the Plains to hunt buffalo. Some meat was jerked for winter. Deer were run down or shot, as were other game, with a bow and arrow or killed with a spear. Some animals were hunted with the use of decoys.
Women gathered plant foods such as camas, kouse, bitterroot, wild carrot, wild onion, and
Berries. Camas, dug in the midsummer, was peeled and baked in a pit oven. Most berries were dried and stored for winter. Other food included fowl, eggs, and birds. People ate horses, lichens, and tree inner bark when there was nothing else to eat. Most food was either boiled, steamed in pits, or roasted in ashes.
Fish were speared from platforms and caught using nets, spears, small traps, and weirs. Men used various nooses, snares, nets, and deadfalls for hunting as well as bows made of mountain sheep horn. Women made a range of woven and coiled baskets, some watertight, as well as woven reed bags. They also made cups, bowls, winnowing baskets, women's caps, and mats of cattails and tule. Many baskets were made of Indian hemp, bear grass, and other grasses.
Other important raw materials included bone, horn, and wood. Many tools and items, such as mortars, pestles, knives, and mauls, were made of chipping and flaking stone and also obsidian. Mattresses were cottonwood inner bark or dry grass, blankets were elk hides, and folded skins served as pillows.
Nez Perce Indians also used a fire-hardened digging stick, a fire drill, and board and buckskin cradles. Musical instruments included rattles, flageolets, whistles, and drums. They also used a twelvemonth calendar and named four seasons.
In general, raiding and war, for booty, glory, and revenge, were very important to the Sahaptians. By virtue of their being the most powerful Plateau tribe, the Nez Perce played a central role in regional peace and war. At least after the late eighteenth century, they fought with the Flatheads, Coeur d'Alenes, and Spokans against the Blackfeet, Gros Ventres, Crows, and other Plains tribes. They also sometimes fought against these allies. The Cayuses, Umatillas, Yaki-mas, and Walla Wallas were also allies against the Shoshones, Bannocks, and other northern Great Basin tribes.
Men held intertribal dances before wars and buffalo hunts. Weapons included cedar, ash, or mountain sheep horn bows; obsidian or jasper-tipped arrows, sometimes dipped in rattlesnake venom; and spears. Elk skin shields, helmets, and armor were used for defense. The eagle feather war bonnet may or may not have come originally from the Plains. Men and horses were painted and decorated for war.
Somewhere around 1730, the Nez Perce acquired horses and began their dramatic transformation from seminomadic hunters, fishers, and gatherers to Plains-style buffalo hunters. They quickly became master horse riders and breeders. Several decades of peaceful hunting and trading ended around 1775, when the Blackfeet Indians, armed with guns they received through the fur trade, began a long period of conflict in western Montana. By 1800 or so, the Nez Perce Indians had been exposed to Euro-American technology and had heard rumors of a very powerful people to the east.
Their first encounter with non-Indians was with the Meriwether Lewis and William Clark expedition (1805). The Indians welcomed these white people as well as the hundreds of traders, missionaries, and others who poured in subsequently. The Nez Perce were involved in the fur trade during the 1820s and 1830s; they even helped to outfit settlers in the 1840s. Meanwhile, epidemics were taking a tremendous toll on their population.
In 1855, the Indians ceded several million acres of land but kept over 8 million acres for a reservation. Non-Indian miners and other intruders ignored the restrictions and moved in anyway, precipitating a crisis among the Indians over the issue of loyalty toward whites. Following gold strikes in 1860, whites wanted the Wallowa and Grande Ronde Valleys, land that equaled more than 75 percent of the reservation. In 1863, only one chief, with no authority to sell Nez Perce land, signed a treaty. The United States then used that document as an eviction notice, ending years of friendship and cooperation between the Nez Perce and whites. In the meantime, the Dreamer religion had begun influencing the Nez Perce, among others, to resist non-Native imperialism.
In 1877, the Wallowa band were unilaterally given thirty days to leave their homeland. In response to this ultimatum, some younger Indians attacked a group of whites. Young Joseph, chief with his brother, Ollikut, reluctantly sided with the resisters. When soldiers came, firing on an Indian delegation under a flag of peace, the Indians fired back. Joseph's band, about 450 Indians under the leadership of Looking Glass, knew that they could never return home or escape punishment at the hands of the United States. They decided to head for Canada.
During their two-month flight, the group traveled 1,700 miles, constantly evading and outwitting several thousand U. S. Army troops. They did fight several battles during their journey but never were defeated. They also passed through Yellowstone National Park at one point, encountering tourists but
Leaving them in peace. Joseph was just one of the leaders of this flight, but he became the most important and well-known. Many Indians died along the way.
Tired, hungry, and cold, the group was forced to surrender in early October just thirty miles from Canada. Joseph and other Nez Perce were never allowed to return to their homeland. Those who survived were exiled to Kansas and the Indian Territory (Oklahoma), where many died of disease, and finally to the Colville Reservation in Washington.
The sharply rising death rate among the Nez Perce from tuberculosis after the 1870s stemmed largely from the replacement of their traditional mat houses by "modern" wooden ones. Heavy mission-ization had by the end of the nineteenth century resulted in factionalism and considerable loss of tribal heritage. In 1971, the Nez Perce received land claims settlements of $3.5 million.
See also Dams, Fishing Rights, and Hydroelectric Power; Fur Trade; Joseph, Yonger; Long March; Women in Native Woodlands Societies.
"Okanagon" means "seeing the top, or head." Another self-designation is Isonkva'ili, "Our People." The Okanagons were the main tribe of a culturally related group of Indians that also included the Seni-jextee (Lake), Colville, and Sanpoil Indians. They are occasionally known today as the northern Okanagons (Canada) and the Sinkaietks (United States). Okanagon Indians spoke a dialect of interior Salish.
Okanagons traditionally lived in the Okanagon and Similkameen River Valleys, including Lake Okanagon, in Washington and British Columbia. Today, most Okanagons live on the Colville Reservation, on reserves in British Columbia, and in regional cities and towns.
Two geographical divisions, the Similkameen and the Okanagon proper, were each composed of between five and ten autonomous bands. Each band was led by a (usually hereditary) chief with advisory powers. The true locus of authority was found in a council of older men. War, hunt, and dance chiefs were selected as needed.
Winter dwellings were of two types. One was a conical, semisubterranean, pole-frame lodge covered with earth. This type was about ten to sixteen feet in diameter, and entry was through the roof. The people also built rectangular, mat-covered, multifamily lodges. In summer they used conical, tule mats on pole frames and, later, skin teepees. Men and women used domed sweat houses for purification; the structures were also used as living quarters for youths in spirit training.
Salmon was the main staple. Large and small game, including elk, bear, bighorn sheep, and marmot, was also important. Dogs sometimes assisted in the hunt, in which animals were often surrounded and/or driven over a cliff. Meat was roasted, boiled, or dried. Buffalo was always part of the diet but became more important when groups began using horses to hunt the herds on the Great Plains. Important plant foods included camas, bitterroot, berries, and nuts.
Men caught fish with dip nets, seine nets, traps, weirs, spears, and hook and line. Stone, bone, and antler provided the raw material for most tools. Women made cedar-bark or woven spruce root baskets with geometric designs. Some baskets were woven tight enough to hold water. Women also specialized in making woven sacks. They sewed tule mats with Indian hemp.
Okanagons undertook a gradual northward expansion following their acquisition of horses in the mideighteenth century. They first encountered non-Native traders in the early nineteenth century and Catholic Indians and missionaries shortly thereafter. The tribe was artificially divided when the United States-Canada boundary was fixed in 1846. The Sinkaietks did not participate in the Yakima War (1855-1856), although some joined in fighting the United States later in that decade.
A gold strike on the Fraser River in 1858 brought an influx of miners and increased the general level of interracial conflict. Most U. S. Okanagons settled on the Colville Reservation in 1872. The Canadian Okanagons were assigned to several small reserves.
See also Dams, Fishing Rights, and Hydroelectric Power; Horse, Economic Impact; Women in Native Woodlands Societies.
See Kalispel.
"Salish" or Flathead, comes from the fact that they did not, like many neighboring peoples, shape their babies' foreheads (they left them "flat"). Their selfdesignation was Se'lic, or "People." Traditionally, the Salish lived in western Montana, around the Rocky Mountains and Little Belt Mountains. Today, most live in the Flathead, Lake, Missoula, and Sanders Counties in Montana. The Salish spoke a dialect of Interior Salish.
All Salish-speaking Indians probably originated in British Columbia. From their base in western Montana, the Salish may have moved farther east onto the Plains before being pushed back around 1600 by the Blackfeet. The Salish continued moving westward, into north central Idaho, throughout the following two centuries.
Various bands were formed of several related families. Each band was led by a chief, possibly hereditary in earlier times, and an assistant chief, both chosen by merit. Beginning in the late prehistoric period, as tribal cohesiveness increased, the band chiefs formed a tribal council to advise a tribal chief, and later the band chiefs themselves were relegated to the status of minor chiefs or subchiefs. In addition, individuals were selected as needed to lead various activities such as hunting and war.
Rule - or lawbreakers were punished by public whipping and/or ridicule. Premarital sexual relations were frowned on; the woman could be whipped if discovered. Although some people eloped, marriage was arranged by families and formalized by cohabitation and a formal ceremony. Polygamy was common. Women were responsible for all domestic tasks.
Winter dwellings were of two types. One was a partially excavated, conical mat (cedar bark, hemp) house on a wooden frame; the other was a long communal and ceremonial lodge. Brush shelters sufficed during camping and mountain hunting trips. Bark or skin teepees gained popularity after horse ownership turned the Salish into buffalo hunters.
Beginning in the eighteenth century, buffalo, hunted on the Great Plains, became a key food item. Before this period, however, the Salish ate a number of animals including elk, deer, antelope, and small game. Fish, including trout, salmon, and whitefish, formed an important part of their diet. Plant foods included camas, bitterroot, other bulbs, roots, and berries.
Men used hook and line, nets, traps, and weirs to catch fish. Women made birchbark and woven skin containers as well as coiled cedar baskets. They also made twined grass spoons.
Around 1700 the Salish acquired horses and assumed a great deal of the culture of Plains Indians (including buffalo hunting, stronger tribal organization, and raiding). Ongoing wars with the Blackfeet as well as several smallpox epidemics combined in the eighteenth century to reduce their population significantly. They also encountered Christian Iroquois Indians during this time.
Although disease preceded their physical arrival, non-Indians began trading in Salish country shortly after the 1805 visit of the Meriwether Lewis and William Clark expedition. The missionary period began in 1841. In 1855, a major land cession (the Hellgate Treaty) established the Flathead, or Jocko, Reservation, but most Salish Indians avoided confinement until at least 1872, in part owing to their friendliness with the Americans. During these years, other tribes were placed on the reservation, and the buffalo herds diminished rapidly. Charlot, the leader of one Salish band, held out in the Bitterroot Mountains until 1891, when his people finally joined the Flathead Reservation.
The government considered terminating the reservation in the 1950s but was successfully opposed by tribal leaders. In 1960, the tribe won roughly $4.4 million in land claims settlements.
See also Buffalo; Dams, Fishing Rights, and
Hydroelectric Power; Horse, Economic Impact.
"Sanpoil" or "San Poil" is derived from a Native word possibly referring to what may have been their self-designation, Sinpauelish (Snpui'lux). They were culturally and linguistically similar to the neighboring Nespelem Indians. Late eighteenth-century San-poils lived near the Columbia and the Sanpoil Rivers, in north central Washington. The environment is one of desert and semidesert. Today, most Sanpoils live in Ferry and Okanagon Counties in Washington and in regional cities and towns. With the Nespelem, the Sanpoil spoke a particular dialect of Interior Salish.
Autonomous villages were each led by a chief and a subchief; these lifetime offices were hereditary
In theory but who were generally filled by people possessing the qualities of honesty, integrity, and diplomacy. Unlike some other Plateau groups, only men could be chiefs. The authority of Sanpoil chiefs to serve as adviser, judge, and general leader was granted mainly through consensus. As judge, the chief had authority over crimes of nonconformity such as witchcraft, sorcery, and assault. His penalty usually consisted of a fine and/or lashes on the back.
An informal assembly of all married adults confirmed a new chief and oversaw other aspects of village life. All residents of the village were considered citizens. Village size averaged about thirty to forty people, or roughly three to five extended families, although some villages had as many as 100 people. Other village leaders included a messenger, a speaker, and a salmon chief (often a shaman, with the salmon as a guardian spirit, who supervised salmon-related activities). By virtue of their ability to help or hurt people, shamans also acquired relative wealth and power from their close association with chiefs, who liked to keep them allied.
Local villages had associated, nonexclusive territories or subsistence areas. Any person was free to live anywhere she or he wanted; that is, family members could associate themselves with relatives of their settlement, relatives of a different settlement, or a settlement where they had no relatives. The winter was a time for visits and ceremonies. During that season, women also made mats and baskets, made or repaired clothing, and prepared meals while men occasionally hunted or just slept, gambled, and socialized.
People rose at dawn, in the winter and summer, and began the day by bathing in the river. In spring, groups of four or five families left the village for root-digging areas; those who had spent the winter away from the main village returned. The old and the ill generally remained in camp.
Pacifism, generosity, and interpersonal equality and autonomy were highly valued. Girls fasted and were secluded for ten days at the onset of puberty, except for a nighttime running regime. The exchange of gifts between families constituted a marriage, a relationship that was generally stable and permanent. Corpses were wrapped in tule mats or deerskin and buried with their possessions. The family burned the deceased's house and then observed various taboos and purification rites. The land of the dead was envisioned as being located at the end of the Milky Way.
Sanpoil Indians used the typical Plateau-style winter houses. One was a single-family structure, circular and semisubterranean, about ten to sixteen feet in diameter, with a flat or conical roof. People covered a wood frame with planks or mats and then a layer of grass, brush, and earth. Entry was gained through the smoke hole, which could be covered by a tule mat. The interior was also covered with a layer of grass.
They also built communal houses consisting of a pole framework covered by grass, earth, and tule mats. These houses were about sixteen feet wide, between twenty-four and sixty feet long, and about fourteen feet high, with gabled roofs. Entry was through matted double doors. Each family had an individual tule-covered section, but they shared a number of fireplaces in the central passage.
Summer houses were similar in construction, but they were smaller, single-family structures. Some more closely resembled a mere windbreak. Some groups built adjoining rectangular, flat-roofed summer mat houses/windbreaks. Mat houses were always taken down after the season. Men also built sweat lodges of grass and earth over a willow frame.
Food was much more often acquired by the family than by the village. Fish was a staple. Men caught four varieties of salmon as well as trout, sturgeon, and other fish. They fished from May through October. Although women could not approach the actual fishing areas, they cleaned and dried the fish. Dried fish and sometimes other foods made up much of the winter diet. People generally ate two meals a day in summer and one in winter.
Women gathered shellfish, salmon eggs, bulbs, roots, nuts, seeds, berries, and prickly pear. Camas was eaten raw, roasted, boiled, and made into cakes. A short ceremony was performed over the first gathered crop of the season. Men hunted most large and small game in the fall. They prepared for the hunt by sweating and singing. Women came along to help dress and carry the game. Men also hunted birds and gathered mollusks. Venison and berries were pounded with fat to make pemmican.
Fish were caught using traps, nets, spears, and weirs. Spearing required the construction and use of artificial channels and platforms. Utensils were carved from wood. Women made woven cedar, juniper, or spruce root baskets, including water containers and cooking pots. Women also made the allimportant mats of tule and other grasses, whose uses included houses, bedding (skins were also used), privacy screens, waterproofing, holding food, and
Wrapping corpses. There was also some sun-dried pottery covered with fish skin.
Severe epidemics in the late eighteenth century and in the late 1840s and early 1850s depleted the Sanpoil population considerably. Sanpoils were among the Indians who visited Catholic missionaries at Kettle Falls in 1838. By avoiding the wars of the 1850s and by consciously eschewing contact with non-Indians, they managed to remain free until 1872, when they were moved to the Colville Reservation. Even after confinement, the Sanpoils refused government tools, preferring to hunt, fish, and gather by traditional means and to conduct small-scale farming.
See also Dams, Fishing Rights, and Hydroelectric Power ; Disease, Historic and Contemporary; Women in Native Woodlands Societies; Worldviews and Values.
"Shuswap" means "to know, recognize" or "to unfold, spread." The word may also refer to relationships between people. They may once have called themselves Xatsu'll, "on the cliff where the bubbling water comes out." The people currently refer to themselves as the Great Secwepemc Nation. Shuswaps continue to live in and near their aboriginal territory in the Fraser and North and South Thompson River Valleys, British Columbia. Shuswap is a dialect of the Interior division of the Salishan language family.
The Interior Salishan people settled in their historic areas roughly 9,000 years ago. Hudson's Bay Company posts were established in the early nineteenth century. The people soon became active in the fur trade. Intertribal warfare ended in the early 1860s. About that time, the Shuswaps were decimated by epidemics, in part brought by gold miners flooding the region. Non-Natives squatted on and then claimed the land of the ailing Shuswaps. A Shuswap reserve of 176 square miles was created in 1865; it was soon reduced to one square mile. A second reserve was created in 1895. In 1945, with the Chilcotin and other groups, the Shuswaps founded the British Columbia Interior Confederation to try to persuade provincial and federal officials to be more responsive to their needs.
The Shuswaps were divided into about seven autonomous bands. All had hereditary chiefs who advised, lectured on correct behavior, and coordinated subsistence activities. There were also specialized chiefs for war, hunt, dance, and other activities.
Bands were more or less nomadic, according to their food sources. By the nineteenth century, the northern and western bands had adopted the Northwest Coast pattern of social stratification. The nobility belonged to hereditary crest groups, and commoners belonged to nonhereditary associations. Slaves were generally acquired in battle or trade. At puberty, boys undertook guardian spirit quests, whereas girls were secluded and practiced basketmaking and other skills. They also fasted and prayed, and they went out at night to run, exercise, and bathe.
Men built circular winter lodges of cedar bark and earth on a wood frame. Lodges were excavated to a depth of around six feet and ranged between twenty and thirty-five feet in diameter. The floor was covered with spruce boughs. The clan totem was carved on the center pole or on an outside pole (lower division). Larger log and plank dwellings had several rooms and housed between four and eight families. Oblong or conical mat-covered houses served as shelter in the summer.
Fish, especially salmon, was the staple in some areas. People away from rivers depended on large and small game and fowl. All groups ate roots and berries. Men caught fish with nets, basket traps, spears, weirs, and hooks. Hunting equipment included bow and arrow, traps, and spears. Utensils and some baskets were made of birchbark, coiled baskets were fashioned from cedar or spruce roots, and many tools were made of stone. People also made skin or woven grass bags. Digging sticks had wood or antler cross-handles.
World History
