Home > Courses > TIME AND CULTURE IN THE NORTHWEST | Mary Collins

Introduction to the Landscapes and People of the Northwest

1. The Culture Area Concept and Culture Areas in the Northwest
   1. The "Culture Area Concept" grew out of
      1. Need for organizing information
      2. Recognition of correlation between cultural characteristics and environment
      3. Based on cultures at time or contact or first anthropological study, "ethnographic period"
      4. Cultural Areas more or less equal to Natural Areas
   2. Two Culture Areas in Washington and surrounding areas
      1. Northwest Coast
         1. SE Alaska to northern California
         2. Environment
            1. Steep, narrow coast line
            2. Mountains
            3. Moist
            4. Dense forest
            5. North colder, south warmer
         3. Hunters and gathers but not your typical hunter/gatherer
            1. Food resources
               • Primarily marine oriented
               • Sea mammal especially whales and sea lions
               • Fish marine and anadromous esp. halibut and salmon
               • Shellfish
               • Also non-marine fish, plants and mammals
               • Especially deer, elk
               • Mountain goat for wool\weaving and horn
               • Wool dogs
            2. Wood important resource
               • Cedar, yew, and others
               • Boats
                 • Different sizes and styles, including enormous whaling and war canoes
               • Houses
               • Cedar plank houses
                 • Arranged in villages/towns
                 • Semi-portable (tied together not nailed!)
                 • Elaborately decorated with painting and carvings
               • Containers (no pottery)
                 • Bowls
                 • Bent wood boxes
            3. Complex social organization
               • Semi to fully sedentary
               • "Affluent foragers"
               • Ranked society
               • Inherited leadership roles
               • Noble families
               • Commoner class
               • Slaves, war captives
            4. Fabulous art tradition
               • Painting, carving, music and dance
      2. Plateau
         1. Crest of the Cascades to crest of the Rockies, Fraser river drainage to the Columbia River drainage
         2. Great deal of environmental diversity
            1. Mountains and plains
            2. Forests and deserts
         3. More typical hunters and gathers
            1. Fish, salmon
               • Major and minor fishing localities
            2. Non-anadromous fish
            3. Plants
               • Especially roots, camas, bitterroot
            4. Hunting probably third ranked resource, deer, elk
            5. Fiber important resource
               • Basketry
               • Matting
               • Bedding
               • Houses
               • Burial shrouds
         4. More mobile than NW Coast
            1. Winter villages
               • In major river valleys near mouths of tributaries
               • Same group of people returned to same winter village location
               • Group identity related to location, cemeteries
         5. More egalitarian
            1. Special occasion leaders
            2. Semi-hereditary
            3. Lots of inter-group dependency
            4. Shared resources
         6. "Ethnographic" cultures, especially southern Plateau very much influenced by horses
            1. Circa 1730
            2. More Plains like
               • Bison hunting forays
            3. Greater ability to travel further and carry more

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© 2003-04 MATRIX
Project Director: Anne Pyburn
Indiana University Bloomington