The Hagerman Valley Historical Museum is a small (1,200 square foot) museum in Hagerman, Idaho. One of the exhibits in this museum is Indian Arts of the West. Arrowhead collections, such as the one shown above, are common in small museums. While they are interesting, from an archaeological perspective they tell us little about the … Continued
Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour cleverly located at the intersection of religion and politics. This is an open thread where we can share our thoughts and comments about the day. We are going to start today with some American Indian jewelry from the Southwest. Like peoples throughout the world, the Native peoples of … Continued
The Fort Dalles Museum in the Dalles, Oregon, has a number of old photographs documenting Indian fishing on the Columbia River prior to the completion of the Dalles Dam which inundated the traditional fishing areas. Background For more than 15,000 years Indian people have lived adjacent to the Columbia River. The river provided them with … Continued
The San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands, California, has a display on early California Indians entitled Life in a Rock Shelter. The earliest peoples in southern California lived a hunting, fishing, and gathering way of life. Archaeologist William Wallace, in his chapter of post-Pleistocene archaeology in the Handbook of North American Indians, sums it up … Continued
The Fort Dalles Museum in The Dalles, Oregon, has a collection of American Indian artifacts on display in the dining room of the Surgeon’s Quarters. The stone tools shown appear to be primarily pestles and manos used for processing seeds and grains. Included in this batch of stone tools are some hammer stones which have … Continued
The Cahuilla homeland in California was bounded on the north by the San Bernardino Mountains; on the south by the northern Borrego Desert; on the east by the Colorado Desert; on the west by the present-day city of Riverside. The designation Cahuilla is said to mean “masters” or “powerful ones.” As a tribal designation, Cahuilla … Continued
In major museums, only a small fraction of the artifacts held by the museum are on display and interpreted for the public. Most of the museum’s artifacts are in vaults where they are available only to researchers. The Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History maintains a Visible Vault in which visitors can view hundreds … Continued
Prior to the European invasion, the people of the Northwest Coast lived in large, multi-family houses built with planks on a post and beam frame which were usually arranged in a single row facing the water. The shaded area on the map shown above shows the Northwest Coast culture area. This map is on display … Continued
The Plateau Culture Area is the area between the Cascade Mountains and the Rocky Mountains in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, and Western Montana. From north to south it runs from the Fraser River in the north to the Blue Mountains in the south. Much of the area is classified as semi-arid. Part of it … Continued
In 1850, the United States Congress passed the Oregon Donation Land Law which granted non-Indians the right to occupy lands in the Oregon territory regardless of the Indians who might be living there. The following year, non-Indian settlement began at what would become Pendleton, Oregon. The Oregon Donation Land Law ignored American Indian land rights. … Continued
