The Americans who arrived on the Columbia in the 1830s and 1840s said that their power came from their God. The power was certainly there, and the zeal. From 1790 through 1840, […]
30. Weaponizing the West: Part 2
29. Weaponizing the West: Part 1
Yesterday, I spoke about how the mobility provided by horses allowed the Cayuse to translate their lush grasslands into dominance over the Central Columbia and to exact tribute in the form of […]
28. The Spiritual Power of Horses in Old Oregon
To recap: the extensive Indigenous slave trade with the Spanish in the Southwest, and a fight for new technology (the horse), drove Indigenous cultural change on the western edges of New France […]
27. Manipulating the French in the Northwest
The last time we were together, I spoke as a land of grass and rocks, enslaved to inter-human relations west of the Rocky Mountains. There’s a story out this way, that people […]
26. Enslaving the Land
Now that this story has walked a ways into life in the grassland, as opposed to life in a Euroamerican context… Converted to Apartments for Seniors and a Thai Restaurant …and now […]
25. Pandosy: How the Horseman of the Apocalypse Decided History on His Stomach
So, let’s play the history of the Pacific Northwest again. When Pandosy rode into Waillatpu late in 1847, he had just crossed the plains from Saint Louis. It was a great adventure: […]
24. A Caution from The Two Cayuse Sisters
So, let’s take a step back and see what we missed by being fully “modern” people looking at the Columbia River. Here we are… …looking south through Wallula Gap, pretty much as […]
23. Pandosy and the People of the Grass
The last few days, I have been trying to demonstrate what colonial history might have looked like when Indigenous law still ruled the Pacific Northwest. People have been here for something like […]
21. Father Pandosy, Slave-in-the-Making and White Poster Boy
On November 5, 1847, a year after the end of the Mexican-American War, a young Oblate Catholic acolyte, Charles Pandosy, stepped into this story of water at Fort Nez Perce, at the […]
20. What is a River?
Wikipedia is basic about this: A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground […]
Okanagan Okanogan 