The Northwest Coast Cultural Area runs for roughly 1,500 miles, from southeast Alaska in the north to northwestern California in the south.  Its width is only about 200 miles wide, spanning the coastal regions of this long strip.

This vast narrow region is dominated by temperate rain forest, that thrives on the relatively mild climate (tempered by the Japanese Current) and an average of 160 inches of rain per year that feeds great rivers that flow west to the sea.

The Indian people who resided (and still reside) along the immediate shores of the Pacific east into the valleys enjoyed common lifeways despite their linguistic differences.

They spoke more than thirty distinct languages (and numerable dialects) from four important language families:

– Na-Dene (Athapaskan)

– Penutian

– Salish

– Wakashan

Though they worked hard to secure and maintain supplies of firewood, repair their fishing traps, weirs (Nootka), and nets (Chinook nets were sometimes 500 feet long), and engage in extensive hunting and gathering activities, nature was abundant.

Like the Indians of California, the Native Peoples of the Northwest often manipulated their environment by annually they set fire to the meadows, opening and shaping the landscapes of the river valleys.  Possessing surplus time and wealth, the Northwest Coast Indians developed distinct and elaborate arts.

The Chinooks of the Columbia River carved beautiful, high prowed canoes with animal effigies on their bows and installed wooden spirit figures at shrines and grave-sites.  The Tututni and Chetco peoples of the south coast at the borders of present-day California and Oregon traded with their neighbors for goods that included the materials to make massive obsidian blades that indicated wealth and status.

They also created exquisite twined and decorated baskets of beargrass, maidenhair fern, and wild hazel bark.  Like many other Indian groups these people regularly sent young persons coming of age, on vision quests to sacred sites on high ground and atop mountain peaks.

The Indians of the Pacific Northwest had routes of trade and commerce stretching from northern California and to coastal Washington and British Columbia. This trade involved in the flow of dentalium shell currency, elk hide armor, slaves, and various food items.  Their lifeways echoed the strong traditions of art, ceremony, social class distinction, with an emphasis on wealth.

East of the Cascade range running from northern California, Oregon and Washington, the Indians of the interior had access to unequaled riparian resources.  Most notably the Columbia River and its tributaries were filled with fish.  For at least 10,000 years Celilo Falls, where the Columbia dropped over a series of basalt ledges, was the major Northwest Coast fishery.

So extensive were the salmon harvests that the various tribes that gathered at Celilo controlled one of the greatest centers of trade in the entire West.  The commerce of Celilo was varied.

– From the coast: dugout canoes, paddles, cattail matting, prized shells, and marine foodstuffs.

– From the south: war captives for use as slaves, obsidian, and horses.

– From the east: bear grass for baskets, buffalo hides and saddles and glass trade beads (Hudson Bay Company beads and others), weapons, metal-tipped tools, and cotton and woolen cloth and clothing.

– With respect to this relationship, the first salmon caught was placed on an upstream-facing altar, later to be roasted and eaten after ritual observances were made.

– Once eaten by everyone present, the salmon bones were returned to the stream to regenerate into more salmon.

The first non-Indian contacts with the Northwest Coast Indians were probably Chinese mariners and explorers of 1,000 years ago or more.

Non-Indian contacts with Northwest Coast Indians:

The first European contact with the Northwest Coast Indians was probably not recorded.

Such an event may have occurred if one of the Manila Galleons made landfall after 1565, when the Spanish, after several years of probing for a route, realized that they could send a vessel northeast from the Philippines to catch the Japanese Current and follow it to North America.

These galleons (at least one each year for about 250 years) did not normally make landfall north south of Cape Mendocino in northern California, some did so farther north.  The San Francisco Xavier, one of 30 vessels that failed to make its Acapulco destination, likely wrecked in 1707 on the Nehalem sand spit near the base of Neahkahnie Mountain.  The Tillamook Indians have accounts of unusual strangers, and discoveries of Spanish trade goods indicate that a wayward galleon may have crashed into the shore.

As early as 1543 Bartolome Ferrelo, a surviving captain of the ill-fated expedition led by Juan Rodrigues Cabrillo, may have sailed as far north as the Oregon-California border.  Ferrelo and his men sought the fabled Straits of Anian – a passage through the continent that was also known as the “Northwest Passage.”  Cape Ferrelo on the south coast of Oregon bears his name.  In search of the Strait of Anian in 1579, Francis Drake reached the Oregon coast near Coos Bay before turning south again.  Sebastian Vizcaino, sailing for Spain in 1603, sighted and named Cape Sebastian north of the California border within the Northwest Coast cultural area.  The next outside contact came much later, during the mid-eighteenth century, as European nation-states increasingly competed with each other for empires and resources.

Russian explorers and traders expanded their interests in the Aleutian Islands and coastal Alaska between 1728 and 1769.  Following the Alaskan discoveries of Danish explorer Vitus Bering in 1741 (working for Russia), Russian fur hunters swept into the region, destroying Aleut villages, enslaving the natives, and securing riches in furs for Asian and European markets.

By the 1760s, officials in New Spain became concerned that the Russians might encroach upon their outlying colonies in Baja and Alta California, and elsewhere.  Thus Viceroy Antonio de Bucareli in 1769 dispatched Gaspar de Portola by sea and Juan Batista de Anza by land with priests, soldiers, and families of workers to establish a new borderland--Alta California.  Within two decades these Spanish colonists had a chain of missions, presidios, and pueblos extending from San Diego to San Francisco Bay.  Having secured the northwestern regions of New Spain, the viceroy ordered (in 1775) a series of maritime expeditions to explore the coastline northward.

The voyages of Juan Perez, Bruno Hezeta, and Bodega y Quadra gave Europeans a greater understanding of the northwest coast of North America.  July 18, 1774: Juán Pérez landed at Vancouver Island.  Juan Pérez originally sailed from the Port San Blas on the Baja Peninsula on January 25, 1774.  The Spaniards first sighted land on July 18, 1774, and in the following days, off the northern Queen Charlotte Islands, the expedition made its first contact with Indians.  Haida Indians took the initiative and paddled out to the Spanish vessel to press for trade, often surrounding the Santiago with many dugout canoes.  Pérez and his second-in-command, Esteban José Martinez, were impressed with the size and fine craftsmanship of the Indian vessels.  One chieftain who had come to trade in a large canoe paddled by 22 men together chanted a welcome song.  This chieftain was attracted by Martinez's red cap and he offered his blanket in exchange.  The Spanish officer admired the quality of workmanship in the blanket, which he observed (in a typically prejudicial European manner) was “most elegant for having been made by a people without culture.”

Despite such attitudes, it was evident to all of the Spaniards that they had encountered a highly developed civilization.  Although the Indians made every effort to invite Pérez ashore, he resisted the prospect of putting into an uncharted harbor with his cumbersome ship.  Still, without landing to take official possession of the coast for Spain, Pérez turned south and entered what was to become Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island.  This time the expedition made efforts to dispatch a landing party, but the weather turned for the worse.  The officers and crew passed some difficult hours before they could get the ship out of danger and back into open water.  As with the previous encounters with the Indians, the native people were quite bold in their efforts to trade with the Europeans.  They paddled out to acquire California abalone shells and some silver spoons (which were found by Captain Cook when he arrived at Nootka Sound four years later).
Pérez then returned to San Blas without touching land.  The next Spanish contact with the Northwest Coast Indians was not peaceful.

July 14, 1775 The Juán Francisco Bodega y Quadra expedition was attacked by the Quinault Indians.

Recognizing the difficulties (due to the use of one heavy ship) and failures of the Pérez expedition and because Perez had failed to officially claim the Northwest Coast for Spain by making a landing, another expedition was undertaken in 1775.

Bruno Hezeta commanded the frigate Santiago while Juan Francisco la Bodega y Quadra became captain of the schooner Sonora after a senior officer went insane after the expedition’s departure from San Blas on March 16, 1775.  By mid-July both vessels reached the Washington coast.  Storms, delays in the California ports, scurvy and other illnesses, problems with the Sonora, and other matters slowed their progress.  On July 14, 1775 both vessels set anchored, while Bodega sent a party of seven well-armed men ashore to obtain fresh water and firewood.  Friendly up until this point the Indians had been friendly until this point, but as they came out of the surf, about 300 Indians attacked them from a secluded place in the forest near shore, killing all seven Spaniards.  Bodega then opened fire from his schooner with muskets and swivel guns, but was out of range to make any hits.  Bodega had no other boat and the Santiago was anchored a too far a distance to know of the problem and be of assistance.  Encouraged by their success, the Indians then attacked the schooner, but since they were by then within shooting range, they were repelled.

This turn of events was enough to convince Bruno Hezeta of the Santiago that the expedition should return to Mexico, but Bodega refused to turn back without fulfilling his instructions to make an official claim for Spain.  The two vessels thus separated with Hezeta returning south while Bodega sailed north into Alaskan waters, reaching approximately 58 degrees latitude.  There, suffering from scurvy, malnutrition, and water shortages, he discovered Bucareli Sound, making certain that he landed to claim the Northwest Coast for Spain.

March 30, 1778: the James Cook expedition received a warm welcome at Nootka sound.

In 1778 British Captain and world explorer James Cook, commanding the H.M.S. Resolution, landed along the central Oregon coast.  A renowned mariner who had sailed around the world and twice before explored the Pacific, Cook was sent to find the Northwest Passage, a mythical sea route through the continent.  In this search Cook sailed north to the Arctic Ocean, charting much of the coastline enroute.  In response to this British intrusion into their territory, Spain responded sent Ignacio de Arteaga and Bodega y Quadra to explore coastal Alaska in 1779.  The French also became involved in the quest to set foot in the Northwest and find the Northwest Passage.

In the 1780s a French expedition led by Jean François de Galaup, comte de Laperouse surveyed the coast of Alaska before continuing on to Siberia Japan, China, Australia, and the southwest Pacific region.  In 1791 another Spanish expedition led by the Italian explorer Alessandro Malaspina investigated the shores of the Northwest, charting its coastline, collecting specimens of natural history and artifacts from the native cultures, and assessing the prospects for new colonies.

Private exploration and the fur trade:

Significant to the European exploration of the Northwest were the many independent mariners, dispatched not by their governments but by investors who sought wealth through the fur trade.

In example of its promise for wealth, Cook's men discovered when they reached China in 1779 that a sea otter pelt purchased in the Northwest with a few iron nails or brass buttons brought a thousand-fold return when bartered to the merchants of the Pearl River delta.

Captain John Meares of England and Captain Robert Gray of Boston both sailed the Northwest Coast in 1788-89 and traded with natives who paddled out to sea in their canoes.  On his second voyage to the Northwest Coast in 1792, Gray decided to risk a dangerous crossing at the mouth of the Columbia River.  Although this great river was encountered by Hezeta and nameed Rio San Roque, no mariner (other than the Indians) had actually entered it; Gray did, naming it “Columbia” in honor of his ship, the Columbia Rediviva.

Several weeks later Gray met the British Explorer Captain George Vancouver (and on of Cook’s officers on two earlier voyages) and his expedition that searched for the Northwest Passage and made the official British claim to the Nootka Sound (Vancouver Island).  Gray’s descriptions of the Columbia River and its inhabitants led to Vancouver’s exploration (he sent Lt. William Broughton) of the Columbia as far as the Columbia Gorge, finally putting to rest the idea that the waterway passed through the North American continent as the last hope for being the Northwest Passage.

By 1800 more than 300 non-Indian vessels from more than twelve different countries had sailed to the Northwest Coast.

The logs of James Cook, John Meares, Robert Gray, John Boit, and Robert Haswell, as well as eight diaries of George Vancouver's crew recorded the first impressions of the land and its people in language typical of such entries:

“They were of a middling size with mild pleasing features & nowise sullen or distrustful in their behaviour,” wrote Dr. Archibald Menzies in 1792 when describing the Quah-to-mah Indians near Cape Blanco.

A most significant event of this era was the November, 1805 arrival at the mouth of the Columbia River of the exploring party under the command of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.  Dispatched in 1804 by President Thomas Jefferson, this military expedition was financed at public expense and underwritten in part by the American Philosophical Society.  Ostensibly the party was to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Territory.  Jefferson, however, wanted to find a water route, so far as practical, for the transit of commerce across the North American continent.  An enthusiastic student of nature and indigenous societies, Jefferson laid out detailed instructions for the explorers to observe the flora, fauna, geology, climate, and Indian cultures.  They were to map the land, take temperatures of hot springs, note locations of major geographical features, record Indian vocabularies, and open diplomatic relations along the way between the various tribes and the United States.

Changes picked up momentum by 1808, when Simon Fraser and other employees of the British North West Company, a fur-trading enterprise based in Montreal, crossed the Rockies and descended what he thought to be the Columbia, and what came to be known as the Fraser River (in British Columbia) to the Pacific Ocean.  David Thompson, a skilled cartographer also in the employ of the North West Company, followed a few years later.  He and his party crossed the Rockies and descended the Columbia.  When they reached the ocean in 1811, they founded an American fur trade post on the river’s south shore.

The Pacific Fur Company had already established a toehold, the first permanent Euro-American settlement in the region, at Astoria, named after its sponsor, John Jacob Astor, the German emigrant who prospered as a middleman in the fur trade and New York real estate speculator.  Astor had paid close attention to reports of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and decided that there was much money to be made by establishing a post near the ocean shore in the Pacific Northwest.

According to Astor’s plan, trappers and traders would then secure furs inland to supply his rich fur trade in Canton China.  His warehouses on the lower Pearl River would then exchange otter pelts for silks and porcelains for the American market in a trade circuit employing Astor’s sailing vessels to supply both his Columbia River post and the Russian American Company in Alaska.  These ambitions led Astor to found the American Fur Company for the Rocky Mountain region in 1808, the Pacific Fur Company for the Columbia watershed in 1810, and the South West Company in 1811.

By his successes in the fur trade, Astor became one of the first millionaires in U.S. history, but his Pacific Northwest venture was a failure.  The Pacific Fur Company's outpost appeared substantial when David Thompson arrived at its doorstep in 1812, but the fort’s existence proved fragile, as supplies infrequently arrived.  The men at Astoria were driven by starvation to establish Willamette Post in the lower Willamette Valley.  The connections with China were infrequent at best.  When the men at Astoria learned of the outbreak of the War of 1812, they became concerned that a British naval vessel might enter the river and seize their post.  Thus, in 1813, they sold out to the British-owned North West Company, thus ending Astor's dreams for the Pacific Fur Company.  The Astoria outpost was thus renamed “Fort George” (after King George III).  Astor’s investment ended up being of considerable interest to the United States, however.  With the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent (December 1814) that ended the war with Great Britain, the language of the treaty stating that all conditions would revert to "status ante bellum" was interpreted by the Americans to mean that the American claim to the Oregon Country, made legitimate by the construction of the fort at Astoria, remained intact.

To reinforce this prospect the U.S. Navy occupied the Columbia River inn 1818, declaring the American possession of both shores of the river mouth.  Later that year American forces symbolically asserted the same idea when they raised the American flag over Fort George.  During the 1810s the competition between the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company (f. 1670), the older, larger rival for control of the fur trade, erupted into bloodshed in the Red River Valley in Canada, resulting in a parliamentary decision in 1821 to force the merging of these two companies.  The Hudson's Bay Company dominated the merged corporation, and or the next 25 years the Hudson's Bay Company helped shape the destiny of the region.

The Hudson's Bay Company had a single concern: profit. To satisfy investors interested in return on their money, the directors in London named George Simpson to manage the company’s field operations.  Simpson, in turn, named Dr. John McLoughlin, a former North West Company employee, to serve as Chief Factor in the watershed of the Columbia River.  The directions of Simpson and steady hand of McLoughlin proved highly significant in the history of the Northwest Coast.  Collectively they agreed on a simple, effective set of policies: peace with the Indian tribes, fair prices for furs secured through trade, and self-sufficiency for the posts in the region.

The Oregon Country was so far from European centers of commerce and political authority that the company workers in the region had to provide for their own well-being.  Vessels could bring in tools and trade goods, but they could not provide food to sustain the nearly 600 men working for the company and their families.  Simpson and McLoughlin thus developed the post system.  Fort Vancouver, founded in 1822 near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, was the hub.  The spokes of connection reached to Fort George at the mouth of the Columbia, Fort Umpqua in southwestern Oregon, Fort Boise on the western Snake Plain in Idaho, and to Fort Nisqually, Fort Okanogan, and Fort Walla Walla in Washington.

A series of more distant forts in British Columbia and southeast Alaska completed the system.

Post traders were encouraged to plant crops, lay out orchards, and raise livestock for the sustenance of the system.  Simpson and McLoughlin also instituted a “brigade system,” in addition to the posts where nearby Indian tribes bartered furs for trade goods.  Thus the company outfitted brigades of 20 to 50 or more employees who, with their Indian wives and children, went into the field to trap and trade for months.  These brigades penetrated the far reaches of the Northwest, from Alaska to the Sacramento Valley of California.

The plan of ecological disruption perpetuated by these fur trapping brigades of the company was part of a plan to create an area so devoid of furs that American fur trappers crossing the Rockies would become discouraged and turn back.  The Hudson's Bay Company largely succeeded in all these objectives.  Simpson and McLoughlin also established a coastal maritime trade that brought manufactured items to native villages along coast, north to Alaska.  They opened retail stores in Yerba Buena (San Francisco) and Honolulu and offered lumber cut at the company mill on the north bank of the Columbia as well as salted salmon from Pillar Rock and Cascades fisheries on the river.  They established the Puget Sound Agricultural Company with farms at Nisqually and Cowlitz Landing.  The company also had great impact on the Indian tribes by spreading manufactured goods, thus hastening cultural change.  It also introduced new diseases.  Most of the firm's employees, including Hawaii and Polynesian natives, married native women creating a mixed-blood population.  The children of these relationships had connections with both local and foreign worlds and often grew up bilingual or multilingual.  As a pidgin based on the Chinook language became an important language of commerce, the company spread it throughout the Northwest Coast region.

This trade vocabulary of nearly 1,000 words was founded on the Chinookan language of the Columbia River. It became the primary means of communication across tribal lines and with Euro-Americans throughout the region.

U.S. Americans soon became interested in the success potentials of the region.

In the 1820s Hall Jackson Kelley, a Massachusetts schoolteacher, began promoting American colonization of the region through printed circulars and pamphlets that celebrated its potentials.  Wyeth's plans echoed those of John Jacob Astor.   In 1832 he set out to cross the continent with uniformed associates to cross the continent and locate forts in the Oregon Country.  Wyeth’s plan was to supply his land-based traders from western stations and ship furs and salmon to Asia, but in the end, desertions reduced his party to 11.  Living up to his reputation, John McLoughlin played the good host and extended the hospitality of Fort Vancouver to the American but did little to encourage his enterprise.

In 1834 Wyeth returned to Oregon. He traveled with companions overland, driving wagons across the Great Plains and to South Pass, the subsequent route of the Oregon Trail, and in 1836 he gave up.  The government of the United States maintained special interests in the “Oregon Country.”  It founded its claims on the “doctrine of the right of discovery.”  Although Robert Gray was a mariner for a private fur-trading company, he sailed under a “sea letter” issued by President George Washington.  His crossing of the bar of the Columbia initiated the U.S. claim to having “discovered” Oregon.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition was a military expedition financed and directed by the government, and founded Fort Clatsop, though occupied less than five months in 1805-06, it was deemed to be an American outpost.  Moreover, the Pacific Fur Company's Fort Astoria was an American venture, and the U.S. through the actions of Captain Biddle and John Prevost asserted national interests in 1818 pursuant to the terms of the Treaty of Ghent.

In 1818 the United States and Great Britain met in diplomatic conference to try to resolve their interests in the Oregon Country.  The negotiators, at loggerheads over the extension of the 49th parallel to the Pacific, reached a compromise. In the Convention of 1818 they agreed to shared spheres of interest in the Columbia watershed, deferring the question of sovereignty for the time being.

In the 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty, whereby Spain ceded Florida to the U.S., American negotiators secured all of the Spanish "discovery rights" north of the 42nd parallel--the northern boundary of California.  In 1824 the United States negotiated an agreement permitting trade for ten years in Alaska and fixing Russia's southern boundary at 50° 40', far top the north.

Slowly, steadily, the United States had narrowed the field among the nations vying for control of the Oregon Country.  Great Britain, the United States, and the Indian tribes remained as competitors.

American "discovery rights" gained Supreme Court sanction when, in 1823, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in a matter involving former Indian lands. Marshall concluded in Johnson v. McIntosh that because natives were wanderers over the face of the earth, their rights were impaired and subordinate to the "discovery rights" of Europeans.  According to the Marshall Court, while tribes retained an occupancy right, title was not vested in them.  The Marshall ruling became a convenient justification to dispossess hundreds of tribes of their homelands.

President Andrew Jackson, an expansionist with interests in the West, attempted in 1835 and 1836 to purchase the California north of San Francisco for $500,000 and $3,500,000 from Mexico.  After exploring the coasts of South America, Australia, and Hawaii, a naval expedition in 1841 sailed to Puget Sound and the Columbia River.

In 1842 Thomas Hart Benton, senator from Missouri and for more than 20 years a champion of American expansion, secured congressional funding for his son-in-law, John Charles Fremont, to explore west to South Pass.  The following year Fremont, a member of the U.S. Topographical Engineers, set out again, guided by Kit Carson, to follow overland emigrants across the Oregon Trail.  Fremont kept a diary and collected minerals, plants, and zoological specimens.  In the margins of the maps prepared for the expedition were notations on fords, grazing sites, camping locations, and the availability of firewood.  Fremont's wife, Jessie, turned her husband's diaries into highly popular books published by the Government Printing Office in large numbers.  The Fremont narratives with maps included became a major publicity piece for the Pacific Northwest and a most popular travelers’ guide to the trail.  As a result, white settlers traveled in increasing numbers from the eastern United States to the Oregon Country, impacting the native peoples.  The expansion of white settlement in the Pacific Northwest followed.

As the inevitable conflicts over land ensued between Indians and whites, Native Americans were removed to reservations.  While Congress was considering treaties that ceded lands to the U.S. government, the Bureau of Indian Affairs began urging the Indians to remove to their new reservations and take up an agrarian lifestyle.  Few Indians wanted to engage in farm labor or give up their habits of fishing, hunting, and gathering.  Meanwhile the flow of emigrants increased and their settlements spread east from The Dalles along the Columbia River.  Pioneer cabins lined the shores of the Columbia Gorge, threatening to disrupt the age-old Indian fisheries.

When the discovery of gold on the Fraser and Thompson rivers in British Columbia and in the Colville district on the north-central plateau became known, the influx of miners led to an eruption of troubles and, in time, to the Yakima Indian War of 1855-58.  The forces of the U.S. Army, supplemented by companies of Oregon Volunteers, defeated the Indian bands of warriors.  The 1850s were a decade of transition for Northwest Coast Indians.

Steadily the Indian numbers diminished, their food sources were destroyed, and their lands appropriated.