Indian Tribes of the American Northwest

The Indians who lived in today’s northwestern United States represented three distinct cultures based on their geography. The arid, mountainous region of present-day Utah, Nevada, and southern Wyoming make up what archeologists refer to as the Great Basin. The tribes of the Plateau Culture lived to the north, in western Montana, Idaho, eastern Oregon, and eastern Washington. Those who lived along the Pacific coast—from northern California to southeastern Alaska—are referred to as the Northwest Coast Culture.

These regions were marked by drastic contrasts in lifestyle and wealth. Most of these differences resulted primarily from culture but physical geography played a role in shaping each of them. 

According to Gallup, Sachs, and Mellinger, location and climate have large effects on income growth through their effects on transportation costs, disease, and agricultural productivity—among other reasons.[1]

The Great Basin

Native American Indians never densely populated the Great Basin. When the Spanish first explored the area known as the Great Basin they found only small tribes, who hunted and gathered for a living, whose location often depended on the season and food source availability.[2] 

At that time, the area was populated by five main groups: the Shoshone, the Paiute, the Ute, the Bannock, and the Washoe. 

The Paiute and Shoshone were further scattered into several different tribes, later identified by Europeans by their location. Linguistic uniformity was a unique feature of the Great Basin Indians. With the exception of the Washoe in the Lake Tahoe area, who like the Chumash in California spoke a Hokan language, all of the Great Basin tribes spoke one of six languages in the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan family.[3]

Because of the arid territory, the tribes of the Great Basin lived mostly a life of subsistence from seeds, nuts, berries, and roots, which were dug up with a digging stick.[4] As in most Native American cultures, hunting also played a major role in the Great Basin diet. The Southern Paiute located in present-day, southern Utah and Nevada did grow beans, maize, and squash but this was mostly limited to the stream banks, which were few and far between.[5]

Hides and furs were used and sometimes combined with plants to provide clothing.[6] Communal hunts for rabbits were common, similar to communal antelope hunts to the north. But, compared with neighboring regions, the Indian tribes of the Great Basin lived primitive lives, which resulted in widespread hunger through much of the year.[7]

Organization on a scale larger than the village was only temporary for these tribes.[8] The Great Basin Indians lived in tepees, which were much smaller and less advanced than those popularized by the Great Plains Indians. The walls were usually covered by thatch or brush, although they sometimes used hide and bark as well. The high level of mobility of the tribes in this area caused them to design theit tepees to be hastily built and taken down.[9]

When the horse spread north in the wake of the Spanish invasion to the south, the animal transformed the lifestyle of the Plains Indians and improved their standard of living by making hunting and defense easier. 

The Shoshone and Paiutes to the west, however, ate any horses they found, because the horses competed for the herbs and plants that those tribes themselves ate.[10] 

Much of their poverty, however, can be attributed to the fact that they were landlocked, and while geography is not the sole determining factor of prosperity or poverty, it can and does play a role in providing advantages and disadvantages.[11] 

The Indians of the Great Basin were among the poorest and primitive in North America, and the infertile land, sparse hunting, and lack of access to major waterways, no doubt, contributed to this by putting them at a disadvantage that their neighbors to the north did not have.

The Plateau

The Plateau is bordered by the Rockies to the east and Cascade Mountains to the West. It stretches about midway through Idaho and Oregon to the south and into Canada to the north. The people of the Plateau were divided into two linguistic families, the Saphatin, of the Penutian family, to the south and the Salish to the north.[12] 

The governments of these tribes were loose and tied to the local village, with hunting and fishing territory being shared among villages—and even among tribes—with little or no objection. This contrasted starkly with Eastern tribes, who often banned speakers of foreign languages from their territory.[13] When the Blackfeet moved into the region from the East, the Nez Perce and the Salishian Coeur d‘Alenes took up a much more structured form of government, in which they took private property more seriously and guarded tribal boundaries more closely.

These people of the Plateau typically lived in pit houses that tended to be slightly more elaborate than those of the primitive Southwest. In some ways, they were a cross between the wigwam, pit house, and tepee. They consisted of a pit four to five feet deep, with thatched roofs covered with earth from the pit for insulation, with numerous poles supporting the structure. A ladder led through the smokehole, which was how they entered and exited the dwelling. Sometimes several families could live in one of these dwellings. During warm weather, they normally slept outdoors.[14]

The Plateau Indians were mostly peaceful, lacking both the warrior culture of the nomadic Plains Indians and the fierce territorialism of the Northwest Coast tribes.[15] Although their artwork was not as sophisticated as the Northwest Coast, coiled baskets and soft woven bags produced by the people of the Plateau region show that they were capable of expert craftsmanship. The harsh environment in which they lived likely prevented them from fully developing their artistic talents.[16] 

Fishing constituted the mainstay of those living in the western Plateau; while those living to the east and north hunted big game such as moose, elk, and deer like their sub-Arctic and Plains neighbors, with wild plants also making an important part of their diet.[17]

Trade flourished in the Plateau because of the Columbia River and its tributaries that connected the Plateau Indians with the wealthy tribes on the Northwest Coast. This also put them in a strategic position to be middlemen in the slave and horse trade between the Plains and Northwest Coast tribes once the horse was introduced. 

The horse was introduced into this region until the 18th century, and some tribes, such as the Yakimas and Nez Perces, became expert breeders. The buckskin, skin-covered tepees, and feathered headdresses spread to the Plateau Indians, beginning in 18th century but especially in the 19th century, as the horse made cross-country travel and trade far more accessible. The isolation that many of the Indian peoples experienced for millennia faded with the introduction of the horse culture.[18]

Northwest Coast

If a European in the late Middle Ages or Early Modern era traveled from the Atlantic Coast of Western Europe eastward, the further he traveled, the less sophisticated the societies he met would have become—until he reached East Asia. 

He would see pockets of cultural gems here and there in Central Europe but once he entered Orthodox Eastern Europe, he would encounter societies little changed for thousands of years. As he crossed the Asian steppes, he would find splintered, nomadic tribes of fierce warriors, but little sophistication. Upon reaching China, however, he would be as shocked as Marco Polo at the level of advancement—a level in some aspects superior to that of Western Europe. 

The same held true in North America. Had someone traversed the breadth of the North American continent at the time of Columbus’s landing, in 1492, he would have seen a scaled-down version of Eurasia in North America‘s pattern of cultural advancement. 

The Indian tribes east of the Mississippi enjoyed plentiful agriculture, and for their continent, fairly advanced societies. But, upon reaching the Prairie and Plains, the tribes became smaller, simpler, and more sparse. Upon arriving in the Plateau and Great Basin, the traveler would probably have been so depressed at the level of underdevelopment he would doubtless have assumed that only woefully impoverished tribes, suffering from cold and hunger, could be found on the West Coast. This, however, was very far from the reality of the coastal tribes.[19]

Because these tribes’ lands were the last to be settled by Americans, little is known among the general American population of the Indians of the Northwest Coast. This area included what is now northern California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Vancouver, the Aleutian Islands, and southern Alaska. But it was here that the most advanced form of Native American culture thrived north of the Rio Grande at the time of European discovery, which will be the subject of my next post.

….

The Northwestern Indian tribes differed greatly from the tribes throughout the rest of North America. The cultures of the Plateau and Great Basin, when compared with the cultures of the Northwest Coast, were so different from one another they could have been on separate continents. These tribes benefited from trade with the Northwest Coast but at the time of European exploration of the East Coast and Mexico did not have much tribal organization and tended to be nomadic like the Basin and Plains cultures.

The Great Basin tribes mostly acquired their food by hunting small game like rabbits, picking berries, and digging for roots. The tribes of the Plateau fared slightly better in hunting game, as they had more abundance. They  also adopted many of architectural techniques of their neighbors to the east and west as contact with other tribes increased. The horse greatly aided them in increasing contact and trade with their neighbors and caused them to more strictly guard their property and lands. 

Originally published in the North Alabama Historical Review.

Notes 

[1] John Luke Gallup, Jeffrey Sachs, with Andrew Mellinger, ―Geography and Economic Development,‖ Center for International Development at Harvard Universtiy Working Paper No. 1, 1999, 2, 5.

[2] The Native People of North America: Great Basin Culture,‖ Cabrillo College, March 9, 2000, accessed February 22, 2014, http://cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/noamer_basin.html.

[3] Ibid.

[4] James A. Maxwell, America’s Fascinating Indian Heritage, (New York: Reader‘s Digest, 1990), 251-255.

[5] Alice Beck Kehoe, North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981), 341-346.

[6] Harold E. Driver, Indians of North America, (1961: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago), 148.

[7] Ibid, 30.

[8] Driver, 328.

[9] Ibid., 118.

[10] Kehoe, 355.

[11] Gallup, Sachs, and Mellinger, 2, 5.

[12] Alice Beck Kehoe, North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981). 359.

[13] Harold E. Driver, Indians of North America, (1961: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago), 335.

[14] Kehoe, 357-360.

[15] Driver, 15.

[16] Phillip Drucker, Cultures of the North Pacific Coast, (1965: Chandler Publishing Company, San Francisco, CA), 109.

[17] Driver, 27.

[18] Kehoe, 357-360.

[19] Kehoe, 402