Many Native American tribes used stone and pottery for cookware until later centuries, according to a 2016 article on Native American food history in the Journal of Ethnic Foods. They also sometimes hunted and ate elk and deer when it was cold because the animals provided warm hides in addition to their meat. Researchers estimate these four tribes harvested 6.8 million pounds of salmon each year, according to the Spokane Tribe of Indians. Diets for people in the Northwest also included a fat-rich fish called eulachon found in the rivers, Washington State University anthropology researcher Shannon Tushingham told WSU Insider earlier this year. Other fish like sturgeon, lamprey eels, suckers and various species of traits also helped sustain these communities. Cooks sometimes drove a wooden stake through the body of a freshly skinned salmon, and then cooked it at an angle over a campfire. Salmonid species in the Columbia and Spokane rivers, such as Chinook, sockeye and steelhead, were commonly caught and then cooked, according to the Spokane Tribe of Indians website. Tribe members would sometimes make the long trek to the plains to hunt buffalo, but salmon is widely known as the protein of choice for communities in the Inland Northwest. Salmon is considered a “First Food” for Indigenous communities of the Upper Columbia River tribes – Coeur d’Alene, Kalispel, Kootenai and Spokane, according to a report from the First Nations Health Authority, an agency in British Columbia focused on improving wellness in Indigenous communities.

So don’t worry about whether you’d be able to have your modern fall feast back in the 17th-century Pacific Northwest. The mechanized system of food production has churned over recent centuries, but when the land was occupied only by Indigenous people whose ties to the land had deep roots, the Pacific Northwest served an abundance of helpful herbs, fragrant flowers, fat-rich fish and vital vegetables that could easily make a feast. Today it’s all about Cosmic Crisp apples, winter wheat and wine grapes, but 400 years ago Washington state’s food environment looked a lot different.

Pacific northwest tribes