A Comparative Proposal: Northwest Coast Vs. Northeastern Woodlands

Christina Juenger
Comparative Proposal
Title:
Northwest Coast Vs Northeastern Woodlands: A Comparative Essay on the Chinook and
Menomini Nations
Description:
The two nations being compared are the Menomini and the Chinook. The Menomini
Tribe lived throughout the Great Lakes region, but they now mainly reside in southern
Wisconsin. Their geo-cultural region is the Northeastern Woodlands. The Chinook tribe is from
the Northwest Coast geo-cultural region and they lived near the Columbia River in Washington.
There are some points of comparison that are interesting to research. The themes of comparisons
in this paper will include social organization, fishing/hunting/agriculture, transportation, housing,
and clothing. My information is coming from

ethnographies. The authors studied the tribes and
recorded their cultures. I chose these two books in particular because they were written around
the same time period, in the early 1900s, so the methods of collection are similar in both
ethnographies.
Annotated Bibliography:
Ray, Verne F.
1938 Lower Chinook Ethnographic Notes. Seattle: University of Washington.
The Chinook people were assumed to be extinct by the late 18th century.

Franz Boas
collected information from what was thought to be the last member of the Chinook tribes.
However, Verne Ray heard reports of two Chinook people still living in Willapa Bay and
decided to collect information from them. This book contains the information he collected from
two Chinook women and was published in 1938.
Some themes I am researching are social organization, transportation, architecture,
clothing, and fishing/hunting/agriculture. Social organization included the upper class, which
included chiefs and their families, prominent shamans, warriors, and other people of high birth.
Each village had one chief, passing from the father to their oldest son. People could move from
the middle class to the upper class through accumulation of wealth and the strength of their
personality. It was common for members of the upper and middle class to own slaves. These
slaves were treated relatively well, as long as their services were useful to their owners.
The Chinook’s transportation mostly consisted of canoes. Travel from one village to
another was done by waterways. The Chinook lived by the Columbia River, and used the

Naselle
River to enter Willapa Bay. They used the Nutka or “Chinook” canoe, which was built of white
cedar and cut out of a solid stick of timber. Canoe travel was the only mode of transportation for
the Chinook, since horses were never accepted, and snow rarely fell, meaning they had no use
for snowshoes.
All permanent houses were constructed of split cedar planks and supported on a heavy
framework of cedar timbers. They chose sites for their permanent housing based on where the
sun would shine the most and where they could have protection from the winds. The Chinook
also had sweat houses, with two types of structures: plank structure and a Plains hemispherical
hut. Sweat houses were owned by families and were used by both men and women, but at
separate times. They were not used extensively, but they were thought to cure minor ailments.
The Chinook had different clothing for men and women. During mild weather, men wore
no clothing at all, especially if they were working. For protection from the cold, they wore fur
robes. Women also wore a robe similar to the men’s and occasionally wore a shredded cedar
bark shirt whenever they were with men. The women had tattoos on their legs and arms with
dotted lines.
Fishing was the principal economic source of the Chinook. It provided a steady, plentiful
supply for both consumption and trade. Sealing and whaling were also important to the Chinook.
They used sea mammals for food and clothing. The Chinook also hunted on land, mostly for deer
and elk, and used bow and arrows. They also ate roots, fruits, stems, and nuts, which created a
balanced diet for the Chinook.
Skinner, Alanson
1921 Material Culture of the Menomini. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye
Foundation.
In the early 1900s, Alanson Skinner collected information about the Menomini for the
Museum of the American Indian, the Heye Foundation, and the American Museum of Natural
History.

This information was collected over the course of eleven years. Skinner’s ethnography
was published around the same time as Ray’s ethnography on the Chinook, so the writing style
and collecting methods are consistent between sources.
In the social organization of the Menomini, there are seven phratries with subordinate
gentres (people who are related through their male ancestor). The office of the tribal chief was
hereditary in the principal family of the Great Mythical Bear gens. War leaders and men of
notable bravery were required to guard the camp. Women had to retreat from society whenever
they were menstruating, because they were considered highly unclean. Separation of marriage
was through mutual consent.
The Menomini did most of their traveling on foot, so moccasins were important in their
culture. During winter, they would wear snowshoes for easier travel. After contact, the
Menomini started using horses as transportation. For water transportation, they used two types of
canoes: log canoe and birch-bark canoe.
There were several types of houses that the Menomini used. During winter, they used
semi-globular houses, like wigwams. Their summer lodges were made of bark with

a
quadrangular ground-plan and various roof shapes. The Menomini also used long houses, which
were favored by Iroquois and Algonquians.
The Menomini had a variety of clothing, which varied between men and women. Men
wore head dresses (roaches, headbands and sashes), shirts (either deerskin or cheap calico),
leggings, breech-cloths, tobacco pouches, and eagle-feather dance bustles. Women’s attire
included shawls of ornamented broadcloth, skirts, leggings, necklaces, and belts. Both sexes
carried knives and wore moccasins.
The Menomini did a lot of hunting on land. They hunted for deer, bears, and smaller
animals like rabbits and muskrats. They used spears, traps, deadfalls, and bows and arrows. They
also practiced in ceremonial cannibalism. Warriors ate small portions of their slain enemies from
the battle field, especially their heart. Fishing used to be an important part of their economy
before contact but now they have little access to fishing grounds. The Menomini grow various
foods like wild potatoes, corn, berries and squash.