The Spokan or Spokane people are a Native American Plateau tribe who inhabited the eastern portion of present-day Washington state and parts of northern Idaho in the United States of America.
The current Spokane Indian Reservation is located in northeastern Washington state, centered at Wellpinit (Sčecuwe). The reservation is located almost entirely in Stevens County, but also includes two small parcels of land (totaling about ) in Lincoln County, including part of the Spokane River. In total, the reservation is about .
The city of Spokane, Washington (Sʎˈetkʷ) is named after the tribe. It developed along the Spokane River, within the historic ancestral land of the tribe, but not within the reservation (see map).
The Spokane language (Npoqínišcn) belongs to the Interior Salishan language family, being a dialect of Montana Salish. Therefore they are close kin both by language and culture to the neighboring Bitterroot Salish (Flathead) (Tˈatˈʔayaqn) and Pend d'Oreilles. They were in loose alliance with other Plateau tribes - and sometimes the Kutenai (Sqlˈse), Crow Nation (Stemčiʔ) and Cree-Assiniboine (Iron Confederacy) (Ncoʕʷaqs) joined in - against their common enemy (Sˈmen), the mighty Blackfoot Confederacy (Sčqˈʷišni) and later Lakota people (Hułnʔixʷtˈusm) on the east. The precontact population of the Spokane people is estimated to be about 1,400 to 2,500 people. The populations of the tribe began to diminish after contact with settlers and traders due to mortality from new infectious diseases endemic among the Europeans, and to which the Spokane had no acquired immunity. By 1829 a Hudson Bay Company trader estimated there were about 700 Spokane people in the area. Since the early 20th century, their population has been steadily increasing: in 1985 tribal enrolled membership was reported as 1,961. In 2019 the tribe reported its population to be around 2,900 people.
Name
The name Spokane is first recorded in 1807. According to George Gibbs, the name was used by the Coeur d'Alene for one specific band of the Spokane, later transferred to all allied bands.
A number of possible interpretations of the name have been proposed. Most frequently "Sun children", "children of the Sun", or "Muddy people". According to Pritzker (2011), these interpretations are most probably popular etymologies (or "faulty translations") derived from an actual self-designation of Spoqe'ind, meaning "round head." The interpretation of "children of the Sun" was reported by Thomas Symons (1882), who attributed it to Ross Cox (1831), who mentioned the name of a chief in the region as Illim-Spokanée "Son of the Sun". The word for "Sun" is recorded as spukani for Bitterroot Salish, but as sokemm in Okanagan, and as ałdarench in Coeur d'Alene, all members of the Interior Salish branch of Salish.
The word sqeliz, meaning "people", is also recorded as an autonym.
History
For thousands of years the Spokane people lived near the Spokane River in the territory of present-day eastern Washington and northern Idaho, surviving by hunting and gathering. Spokane territory once sprawled over three million acres (12,000 km²) of land. The Spokanes lived along the river in three bands known as the Upper, Middle and Lower Spokane Indians. The Spokane bands were semi nomadic, following game and plants on a seasonal basis for nine months of the year, and settling in permanent winter villages for the other three.
The first Europeans whom the Spokane people had contact with were fur traders and explorers. The Lewis and Clark Expedition encountered the Spokane tribe in 1805. Already the Spokane people were dwindling in population from introduced Eurasian diseases, such as smallpox, which were endemic among Europeans. Shortly after the encounter with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, fur traders and settlers arrived. In 1810, the North West Company opened the Spokane House near the confluence of the Spokane and Little Spokane (Nxweme'a'tkxy - "river where the Steelhead trout run") rivers as a trade post. The Pacific Fur Company established Fort Spokane (Čˈłyaqˈ) in 1811. Much later, the structure was used as an Indian boarding school for the Spokane children, from 1898 to 1906. The Spokane took prominent part in the so called Coeur d'Alene War (Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Pend d'oreille-Paloos War) of 1858, a series of encounters between the allied Native American tribes of the Skitswish ("Coeur d'Alene"), Kalispell ("Pend'Oreille"), Spokane, Palouse and Northern Paiute against United States Army forces in Washington and Idaho which centered in ancestral Spokane territories.