Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/410

 that are too narrow, like the local villages and band. Our purpose is not to give final expression to the political divisions of the Washington natives but to set down where they lived." (p. 6). The map "attempts to assign tribal location and boundaries as of the early nineteenth century." (p. 6).

The divisions of the state are discussed in the following order, the Northwestern Area, the Southeastern Area, the Lower Columbia Area, the Southwestern Interior, the Coastal Area, and the Puget Sound Area. The territories occupied in each case are determined by reference to early explorers, reports of field workers of earlier times and those who have brought the information down to the present. The difficulty of resolving conflicts in these sources is obvious and frequently the writer has simply to choose the one which seems to be the most reasonable and provide a target at which those who come after him may shoot. The problem is also complicated by the mobility of the Indian groups under pressure from the whites and perhaps other Indians. What were boundaries in 1830 may not have been in 1730. This is especially true for the southern part of the state,

The author accepts Teit's theory of Sahaptin migrations from east central Oregon with the consequent disruption of established territories of the interior Salish. This theory is based mainly on linguistic evidence and tradition of occupation of other territories at an earlier time. While this theory is plausible it is still theory and much of the sharing of linguistic elements might perhaps be accounted for by ordinary diffusion.

The map could have been improved by a legend indicating the significance of the solid and broken lines. The publication of the map on a single folded sheet would have facilitated its use.

This reviewer is inclined to feel that Dr. Spier's method of using not only contemporary field workers' reports but that of early explorers is preferable to that of reliance on the memories of contemporary informants among the pitiful remnants of once numerous tribes. Ray (Pacific Northwest Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 2. April 1936, p. 3) deprecates the method of reliance on documents in favor of contemporary informants, with the result that a time element must limit his study. Where boundaries have shifted and cultures have been disrupted the sole reliance on the notoriously unstable memory of man for information concerning territories which are now almost legendary is highly unsatisfactory. Both methods as the author has used are to be desired as sources and mutual checks. To these must be added the final check, archaeology, where a time sequence is involved.

We now have a series of studies of tribal distributions for the Pacific coast states (although that for Oregon by Mr. Joel V. Berreman, M.A. thesis at the University of Oregon, is still in manuscript).

Dr. Spier has made a valuable contribution to northwest history and his study should prove as he hopes one of those dynamic hypotheses which will call forth a whole series of studies until we have the real solution to the problem he has attacked.

, 1936, issue of Civil Engineering is made up of papers read at the annual convention of the American Society of Civil Engineers at Portland in July. As an introductory article Dr. O. O. Winther writes on "Highlights in the History of Oregon." Other articles of general interest are "Improving the Columbia for Navigation," by Colonel Thomas M. Robins; "Construction Plant at Grand Coulee Dam," by C. D. Riddle; "Highway Design Applied to the State Sys-