Introduction

The Plateau Indians traditionally inhabited the high plateau region between the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Cascade Range and Canadian Declension Ranges on the west. It includes parts of the present-24-hour interval U.S. states of Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia. The Plateau is drained past two dandy river systems, the Fraser and the Columbia. The mural includes rolling hills, loftier flatlands, gorges, and mountains. Most precipitation falls in the mountains, leaving other areas rather dry out. Some mountain slopes are forested, but grassland and desert are more common in the region.

Traditional Culture

Peoples and Languages

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Nearly peoples of the Plateau traditionally spoke languages of the Salishan, Sahaptin, Kutenai, and Modoc and Klamath families. Tribes that spoke Salishan languages are collectively known as the Salish. They are commonly called the Interior Salish to distinguish them from their neighbors, the Coast Salish of the Northwest Coast culture area. Among the Salish tribes were the Flathead, Coeur d'Alene, Kalispel (or Pend d'Oreille), Lillooet, Shuswap, and Spokan. Early European explorers incorrectly used the term Flathead to place all Salishan-speaking peoples. Some of these groups flattened the foreheads of their babies with cradleboards. The people now called the Flathead did not do and then, nevertheless. Speakers of Sahaptin languages included the Nez Percé, Yakama, Walla Walla, and Umatilla. The Kutenai and the Modoc and Klamath language families include the Kutenai and the Modoc and Klamath peoples.

Food

The Plateau Indians relied wholly on wild foods. Line-fishing was the most important food source. The rivers were abundant in salmon, trout, eels, and other fish. The Indians dried fish on wooden racks to preserve them for the winter food supply. They supplemented the fish catch past hunting deer, elk, acquit, caribou, and small game. In the early 1700s some Plateau groups started to hunt bison (buffalo) after receiving horses from their neighbors in the Bully Basin.

Wild institute foods were another of import part of the diet. Especially important were roots and bulbs, including the starchy bulb of the camas flower. Plateau Indians also gathered bitterroot, onions, wild carrots, and parsnips and cooked them in earth ovens heated by hot stones. They harvested huckleberries, blueberries, and other berries too.

Settlements and Housing

Plateau peoples lived in permanent villages in the wintertime. A village was dwelling to between a few hundred and a thousand people, though the community could firm more than that during major events. Villages were generally located on waterways, frequently at rapids or narrows where fish were plentiful during the wintertime. During the rest of the year the Indians divided their time betwixt their villages and camps prepare in good hunting and gathering spots. When horses became available, some groups became more nomadic. They stayed in camps equally they crossed the Rocky Mountains to chase bison on the Peachy Plains.

Edward S. Curtis Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-118931)

Village houses were of 2 main types, the pit business firm and the mat-covered surface firm. Pit houses were usually circular and typically had a pit 3–six feet (1–two meters) deep. The roof was normally cone-shaped and supported by a wooden framework. The smoke pigsty in the top was also the entrance to the firm. A person climbed onto the roof and then down through the smoke hole on a ladder or notched log.

In the southern Plateau the pit business firm was somewhen replaced by the mat-covered surface house. These homes were formed by leaning together poles and covering them with grass or mats made of tule, a blazon of reed. Some of these houses were cone-shaped and lightly congenital, like tepees. They were used in the summertime, when people moved often in search of nutrient, and typically sheltered 1 family. Other mat-covered houses had an A-frame design. Much larger and more heavily built, these dwellings were used as wintertime residences for multiple families. As new goods became bachelor through trade with whites, Plateau peoples oft covered their houses with canvas instead of reed mats because the mats took a long time to brand.

In their camps Plateau peoples used a variety of houses, ranging from small, cone-shaped lodges to unproblematic windbreaks. Groups that traveled to the Plains to chase bison typically used tepees.

Clothing

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ61-119219)

Plateau peoples traditionally wore a bark breechcloth or apron and a bark poncho. In winter men wrapped their legs with fur; women had leggings of hemp. They as well used robes or blankets of rabbit or other fur. By the 1800s, through contact with the Plains Indians, all Plateau peoples used leather garments. Men wore deer- or elk-skin breechcloths, leggings, and shirts, and women wore leggings and dresses. Pilus was typically braided. Fur caps and feathered headdresses also appeared considering of the Plains influence.

Engineering and Arts

The Plateau is notable for the broad diversity of materials and technologies used past its peoples. Plateau Indians were continuously exposed to new items and ideas through merchandise with surrounding culture areas—the Plains, the Great Bowl, the Northwest Coast, and California. They excelled at adapting others' technologies to their ain purposes. For case, later on adopting use of the horse, some tribes became well respected for their breeding programs and fine herds.

Plateau peoples navigated the rivers in dugout or bark canoes. Long-distance h2o travel was limited, notwithstanding, by the many river rapids. Plateau fishermen used spears, traps, and nets. Communities also built and held in common large fish weirs (enclosures) made of stone or woods. Hunters used a bow and arrows and sometimes a short spear in their pursuit of deer, elk, bears, and other prey. In the winter they wore long and narrow snowshoes for tracking animals.

Gild

In traditional Plateau societies the hamlet was the bones unit of measurement of social organization. The method of governing each village varied from tribe to tribe. The Ntlakapamux peoples, for example, used a fairly breezy consensus organization, in which decisions were based on general agreement. The Sanpoil, on the other hand, had a more formal political structure. The village had a chief, a subchief, and a full general assembly in which every adult had a vote—except for young men who were not married. The Flathead were perhaps the most hierarchical group, with a head chief of great ability and band chiefs under him. The head master decided on matters of peace and war and was non bound by the recommendations of his quango.

In many Plateau societies chiefs and their families played a prominent role in promoting traditional values. Amid the Sinkaietk, for instance, chiefly function obligated the master and his family unit to exemplify virtuous behavior. For this group such beliefs included the placement of a female relative among the chief's advisers. Similar positions for highly respected women besides existed in other groups, such as the Coeur d'Alene.

Among some groups a sense of tribal and cultural unity reached beyond the village. These groups created representative governments, tribal chieftainships, and confederations of tribes. This was possible in part considering the rivers provided enough salmon and other fish to support a relatively dense population. However, this region was never as heavily populated or equally rigidly structured as the Northwest Coast.

Plateau civilisation emphasized the sharing of necessities. Food resource, for example, were generally shared. Communities owned line-fishing sites in mutual. Each village also had an upland area away from the river for hunting, which usually was open to people from other villages. Items that were small or could be made past one or two people were typically the belongings of individuals. Peoples whose territory neighbored that of the Northwest Coast Indians held a diversity of social events in which people exchanged holding and gifts. These events were similar to the potlatches of the Northwest Coast.

The boilerplate Plateau kin group consisted of a nuclear family (husband, wife, and children) and its closest relatives. Most Plateau peoples traced their ancestry equally through the lines of the mother and the father. Family unit life, like other aspects of Plateau lodge, was marked by ritual acts. These rituals began before nativity. Among the Sinkaietk, for example, a pregnant woman was supposed to give birth in a guild that had been constructed for this purpose. A newborn spent the day strapped in a cradleboard. The training of the kid was mostly left to the mother and grandmother. However, even every bit a pocket-sized boy a Sinkaietk could bring together his father on fishing and hunting trips, while minor girls helped their mothers around the house and in gathering wild foods. Children learned to be hardy through activities such equally pond in cold streams.

Religion

Plateau religions shared several features with native Due north American religions in general. One was animism, the belief that spirits inhabited every person, animal, plant, and object. Another was the idea that individuals could communicate personally with the spirit world. A third was the belief that people chosen shamans gained supernatural powers through their contact with the spirits.

The master rituals were the vision quest; the firstling, or starting time foods, rites; and the winter dance. The vision quest was required for boys and recommended for girls. This rite of passage ordinarily involved spending some days fasting on a mountaintop in hopes of communicating with a guardian spirit. The spirit was thought to guide the individual to a detail calling, such as hunting, warfare, or healing. Both boys and girls could become shamans, though it was seen as a more suitable occupation for males. Shamans cured diseases by extracting a bad spirit or an object that had entered the patient'southward body. On the northern Plateau they also brought back souls that had been stolen by the expressionless. Because their piece of work included healing the living and contacting the expressionless, shamans tended to be both wealthy and respected—and fifty-fifty feared.

Firstling rites celebrated and honored the offset foods that were caught or gathered in the bound. The offset-salmon ceremony celebrated the inflow of the salmon run. The beginning fish caught was ritually sliced, and pocket-sized pieces of it were distributed among the people and eaten. Then the carcass was returned to the water while people prayed and gave thank you. This ritual was believed to ensure that the salmon would return and accept a practiced run the side by side year. Some Salish had a "salmon master" who organized the ritual. The Okanagan, Ntlakapamux, and Lillooet historic similar rites for the first berries rather than the first salmon.

The winter or spirit dance was a ceremonial coming together at which participants personified their respective guardian spirits. Among the Nez Percé the dramatic performances and the songs were idea to bring warm conditions, plentiful game, and successful hunts.

European Contact and Cultural Alter

Direct contact between Plateau peoples and Euro-Americans was relatively brief at kickoff. Indians provided boats and food to the Lewis and Clark Trek, which crossed the region in 1805 and again in 1806. Early in the 1800s the fur trade brought Native American and Euro-American trappers from the east into the surface area, particularly to the northern Plateau. These groups included a number of Iroquois men who had adopted Roman Catholicism. They spread Christianity among the Flathead, who thereafter visited St. Louis to ask for missionaries to be sent to the Plateau. Missionaries were a strong force in the area from the 1820s to the '50s.

By the 1830s a religious movement known every bit the Prophet Dance emerged in the area. The participants danced to bring most the return of the dead and the renewal of the world, specially the world equally it was before European contact. The movement arose largely out of despair over the devastating loss of life acquired by epidemic diseases brought by the colonists. The Prophet Dance was a precursor of the Ghost Trip the light fantastic toe movements of the 1870s and 1890s (see Great Bowl Indians).Like the Ghost Trip the light fantastic toe, variations on the Prophet Trip the light fantastic continued into the 21st century.

By the 1840s thousands of Euro-American settlers were heading west to what would get the Oregon Territory. Many of them traveled through the Plateau, often trespassing on tribal lands. Some tribes resisted, and by the 1850s the United States had begun to negotiate state treaties with them. The treaty process was disrupted in 1857, when the discovery of gold on the Thompson River spurred a keen influx of settlers and miners. Gilded strikes were soon found on several other rivers in the region, bringing more than settlers and increasing tensions.

The rest of the 1800s was a hard period during which many Plateau tribes struggled economically. The Us and Canada introduced policies to digest, or integrate, native peoples into Euro-American culture. Tribes were confined to reservations, and they were forced to give up hunting and gathering in favor of farming. Native children were sent to boarding schools where they were ofttimes physically driveling. In addition, mining and big-scale commercial fishing depleted the salmon that were then important to the Indians.

As these changes took their cost, some native groups became more resistant to government policies. In the early 1870s a band of Modoc left their reservation and returned to their original country in far northern California. The federal authorities tried to strength the band to return to the reservation in the Modoc War of 1872–73. The Modoc held off far greater numbers of U.Southward. troops for several months earlier they were forced to give up. In 1877 hostilities betwixt settlers and the Nez Percé in Oregon led to the Nez Percé War. When a band led by Chief Joseph tried to abscond to Canada, U.S. troops tracked them through Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Though greatly outnumbered, Chief Joseph's band held off the pursuers before finally surrendering.

In the 1880s, in a process known as allotment, tribal lands were divided into parcels that were assigned to individual Indians. The remaining country was then sold, profoundly reducing native landholdings in the Plateau. The policy began a period of increasing poverty for many Plateau tribes. Allocation ended in the 1930s, when new federal policies authorized tribes to create their own governments. Many tribes wrote constitutions and elected councils during this period.

In 1954 the U.S. government terminated its relationship with the people of the Modoc and Klamath reservation. This meant that the tribe lost its federal recognition and the benefits that came with that status. Termination was a national policy; its promise was that eliminating the special human relationship between the federal regime and native peoples would encourage economic development on reservations. However, the loss of federal support for health care and schools devastated the Modoc and Klamath community. The tribes sued to regain federal recognition, which they achieved in 1986, but they did not regain their erstwhile lands.

Many other Plateau tribes also sued the governments of Canada and the United states to repossess territory. They generally claimed that the land had been taken illegally due to treaty violations or very depression bounty. A number of these suits resulted in awards in the tens of millions of dollars. Tribes besides used the courts to defend their fishing rights, especially after major dam construction on the Columbia and other rivers destroyed traditional fishing sites. Again, the tribes usually won bounty for their losses.

By the late 20th and early 21st centuries many Plateau tribes had regrouped from the economic devastation of the previous 100 years or more. Several had added tourist resorts and casinos to their existing timber, ranching, and fishing operations. Funds from these businesses were used for a variety of customs purposes, including educational activity, wellness intendance, rural evolution, and cultural preservation.