Coeur d’Alene, pronounced kur-duh-LANE, is a French name, meaning “heart of awl” or “pointed heart.” The phrase was probably first used by a chief as an insult to a trader who then mistook it for the tribe’s name. The tribe’s Native name is Skitswish, the meaning of which is unknown.
The Coeur d’Alene occupied ancestral territory that has since become northern Idaho and eastern Washington State, especially along the Spokane River and Coeur d’Alene River and around Coeur d’Alene Lake. Like other Salishan-speaking tribes of the region, such as the FLATHEAD, KALISPEL, and SPOKAN, the Coeur d’Alene are classified as part of the Plateau Culture Area (see PLATEAU INDIANS). They depended heavily on salmon fishing and the gathering of wild plant foods in addition to the hunting of small game. They lived in cone-shaped dwellings placed over pits and built out of poles covered with bark or woven mats.
The Coeur d’Alene, like other Interior Salishan tribes, had extensive contacts with non-Indians only after the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the region in 1805. They were generally peaceful toward whites and bartered their furs with them for guns, ammunition, and other trade goods. In the 1850s, however, because of treaty violations, the Coeur d’Alene joined in an uprising against settlers. The Coeur d’Alene War of 1858 grew out of the Yakama War of 1855—56 (see YAKAMA). Other tribes participating in this second rebellion included the PALOUSE, PAIUTE, and Spokan.
In May 1858, a combined force of about 1,000 Coeur d’Alene, Spokan, and Palouse attacked and routed a column of 164 federal troops under Major Edward Steptoe at Pine Creek in the western part of Washington Territory. Next, about 600 troops under Colonel George Wright rode into the field to engage the rebels. In the first week of September, the two forces met at Spokane Plain and Four Lakes. The Indians, who were not as well armed as the soldiers, suffered heavy losses.
Afterward, Wright’s force rounded up Indian dissidents, including Qualchin, one of the Yakama warriors who had precipitated the Yakama War three years earlier with an attack on white miners. Qualchin was tried, sentenced to death, and hanged. Kamiakin, his uncle, the Yakama chief who had organized the alliance of tribes, escaped to Canada, but he returned in 1861 and lived out his life on the Spokan reservation. He died in 1877, the same year that the next outbreak of violence occurred in the region, this one among the NEZ PERCE.
In 1873, a reservation was established for the Coeur d’Alene. Tribal members living on Coeur d’Alene Reservation in Benewah County, Idaho, nowadays are active in timber sales and farming. Some Coeur d’Alene live off-reservation in the region and work as professionals. As a member of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and the Upper Columbia United Tribes, the Coeur d’Alene have worked to restore natural resources despoiled by mining operations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Coeur d’Alene recently won claim to the southern third of Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho, which they consider a sacred place.
Sherman Alexie, a writer of Coeur d’Alene/Spokan heritage, along with Chris Eyre of the CHEYENNE/arapaho released a feature film about Indians, Smoke Signals, based on a story from Alexie’s 1994 book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, in 1998. Much of the movie was shot on location on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation. Alexie has written numerous books, including The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992), Reservation Blues (1995), and Ten Little Indians (2003).
World History
