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When the lands of the Pacific Northwest became part of the United States, native people had already lived in the region for thousands of years. Before European settlement, thousands of Native American communities lived on islands, plateaus, or valleys that they called their homeland. As you can see from the language map, many native languages were spoken throughout the area. Read about Nisqually life prior to European arrival in Cecilia Carpenter's essay "Before the White Men Came" Languages can be described as having groups and subgroups. The Salishan family group includes as many as 23 languages. This was one of the three largest family groups before European arrival in what became Washington Territory. The language map shows how Salishan-speakers lived along the upper Columbia River, and in lands across the northern part of the area into Canada, and how Coast Salish was spoken on Puget Sound. Speakers of the Penutian language group spread from the coast far into the entirely different climate and culture area of the Columbia River plateau. A few additional languages were scattered among these dominant forms. Some tribes occupied a particular homeland for many generations or for thousands of years. Other tribes, who experienced conflict with their neighbors or who suffered from large, natural disasters, moved to other areas. All tribes developed a strong oral tradition that taught each generation about their relationship to the land and about how to live there successfully. Some of the richest resources of the region were shared among different tribes and brought different people together. For example, the fisheries around The Dalles and Celilo Falls provided an important food source for many non-related groups. The gatherings at these important sites were times for different tribes to trade, share information, and develop relationships with each other. Because many native people spoke multiple languages, they could relate to other groups. Before the arrival of Europeans, native people used plants, animals, and other resources carefully such that their children and grandchildren would be able to use them as well. Caring for these resources was a way respecting the land and treating what it had to offer as gifts. Each community had responsibilities and obligations to care for the natural resources. These responsibilities and relationships with the land were different from the European idea of private property and ownership of land. The U.S.-Indian treaty negotiations and widespread settlement of the area in the mid-1800s brought two different traditions of land use into conflict with one another. At this time, settlers began to use fences to mark property boundaries or control their livestock. Perhaps more importantly, Native American people found that land they had used for centuries was now claimed by others. During the early decades of the 19th century, the area called "Oregon Country" stretched from Northern California to Alaska. The vast majority of its residents were people that European and American settlers called "Indians," now also referred to as Native Americans. Without asking the many Indian tribes, the United States and Britain agreed in 1818 that U.S. and British citizens could occupy any part of Oregon. Britain's Hudson's Bay Company, with its trading posts and farms, was the major Euro-American presence in Oregon at this time. In 1927 J.W. Pratt wrote that "One can hardly read a work on the history of the United States in the two decades before the Civil War without meeting the phrase 'manifest destiny', widely used as a convenient statement of the philosophy of territorial expansion in that period." In 1840 tens of thousands of Indians and fewer than 500 British and U.S. citizens lived in Oregon. After 1840 American settlers began to move west in great numbers. Just when job opportunities were few at home, they were hearing stories of good farm land in the Pacific Northwest. Also during the 1840s the idea of Manifest Destiny became popular. The people who believed in Manifest Destiny felt that God had given the United States, in particular, and people of Anglo-Saxon heritage in general, a right to spread its government and control North America, if not the entire Western Hemisphere. Supporters of Manifest Destiny considered this moral mission more important than laws and agreements between nations. New settlers in 1840 had no local political or legal institutions. They were part of British and American empires, separated by thousands of miles from their fellow countrymen in London, Washington or Missouri.   By 1855, disease had emptied a number of traditional Native American villages, forcing some families and groups to move and live with friends or relatives in other regions. When Lewis and Clark explored the west in the early 1800s, they recorded and mapped the location of the different people they met. Fifty years later, when Isaac Stevens asked George Gibbs to map the current location and size of these tribes, Gibbs could not find some of them. Many of the native people who had survived the widespread sickness had moved into other villages. These survivors built new lives and intermarried with other tribes. Tracking the history of these people is still a challenge for historians today. In just thirteen months, Northwest Indians were forced to give up most of their land — from northern Oregon to the Canadian border and from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The first Governor of Washington Territory, Isaac Stevens, traveled through this vast landscape convening eleven councils with Indians. The treaties made at those councils secured the land and resources for the expansion of the United States. Nevertheless, Stevens knew that the Indians, bereft of their land base and resources, needed to be able to sustain themselves, preferably without government. For that reason, the treaties provided for fishing, shellfish gathering, hunting, and harvesting in "usual and accustomed places." The treaties also provided for schools, services, and health care. Stevens single-handedly pushed Congress to ratify the treaties. Unfortunately, the reservation boundaries and the delivery of the provisions proved barely adequate for Indian survival. Native people did not lose all of their land. The treaties guaranteed that some land would be reserved for their use and that of their descendents. Unfortunately, these agreements were broken by the U. S. government numerous times during the late 1800s and into the early 1900s. The U.S. government has changed treaties without tribal permission. Also, a number of Executive Orders, or orders by the President of the United States, have taken parts of these reservations and opened them up to homesteaders. As you can see from the map illustrating current Indian reservations, reservations today are much smaller than those promised by the treaties of 1854-55. Please proceed to the Interactive Context Map » |
rior to European arrival in the Northwest, there were no empty lands. The original homelands of native groups covered the entire expanse of lands now known as Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. However, the U.S.-Indian treaties of 1854 through 1856 left local groups with only a fraction of their former homelands. Tribes ceded millions of acres in Washington Territory alone, in exchange for a guarantee or promise that their rights would be protected, that some lands would be reserved, and that many services would be provided for them. 
