This is the first comprehensive overview of the Native people of Puget Sound, who speak a Coast Salishan language called Lushootseed. They originally lived in communal cedar plank houses clustered along rivers and bays. Their complex, continually evolving religious attitudes and rituals were woven into daily life, the cycle of seasons, and long-term activities. Despite changes brought on by modern influences and Christianity, traditional beliefs still infuse Lushootseed life.Drawing on established written sources and his own two decades of fieldwork, Miller depicts the Lushootseed people in...

These collected myths and tales of the Indians of the Pacific Northwest-the Klamath, Nez Perce, Tillamook, Modoc, Shastan, Chinook, Flathead, Clatsop, and other tribes-were first published in 1910. Here are their stories concerning the creation of the universe, the theft of fire and daylight, the death and rebirth of salmon, and especially, the formation of such geographical features as The Dalles, the Columbia River, the Yukon River, and Mounts Shasta, Hood, Rainier, Baker, and Adams. Katharine Berry Judson began with native oral tradition in retelling these stories. They represent, as Jay...

Mourning Dove was the pen name of Christine Quintasket, a member of the Colville Federated Tribes of eastern Washington State. She was the author of Cogewea, The Half-Blood (one of the first novels to be published by a Native American woman) and Coyote Stories, both reprinted as Bison Books. Jay Miller, formerly assistant director and editor at the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, Newberry Library, Chicago, now is an independent scholar and writer in Seattle. He is the compiler of Earthmaker: Tribal Stories from Native North America.