Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast in the context of "Jōmon period"

The Isthmo-Colombian Area is defined as a cultural area encompassing those territories occupied predominantly by speakers of the Misumalpan and Chibchan languages at the time of European contact. It includes portions of the Central American isthmus like eastern Honduras, the Mosquitia region, Panama, and northern Colombia.

Nuu-chah-nulth (nuučaan̓uɫ), a.k.a. Nootka (/ˈnuːtkə/), is a Wakashan language in the Pacific Northwest of North America on the west coast of Vancouver Island, from Barkley Sound to Quatsino Sound in British Columbia by the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples. Nuu-chah-nulth is a Southern Wakashan language related to Nitinaht and Makah.

It is the first language of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast to have documentary written materials describing it. In the 1780s, Captains Vancouver, Quadra, and other European explorers and traders frequented Nootka Sound and the other Nuu-chah-nulth communities, making reports of their voyages. From 1803 to 1805 John R. Jewitt, an English blacksmith, was held captive by chief Maquinna at Nootka Sound. He made an effort to learn the language, and in 1815 published a memoir with a brief glossary of its terms.

A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single or multi-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America.

Many were built from timber and often represent the earliest form of permanent structure in many cultures. Types include the Neolithic long house of Europe, the Norman Medieval Longhouses that evolved in Western Britain (Tŷ Hir) and Northern France (Longère), and the various types of longhouse built by different cultures among the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Totem poles (Haida: gyáaʼaang) are monumental carvings found in western Canada and the northwestern United States. They are a type of Indigenous Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually made from large trees, mostly western red cedar, by First Nations and Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, and the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia.

The word totem derives from the Algonquian word odoodem [oˈtuːtɛm] meaning "(his) kinship group". The carvings may symbolize or commemorate ancestors, cultural beliefs that recount familiar legends, clan lineages, or notable events. The poles may also serve as functional architectural features, welcome signs for village visitors, mortuary vessels for the remains of deceased ancestors, or as a means to publicly ridicule someone. They may embody a historical narrative of significance to the people carving and installing the pole. Given the complexity and symbolic meanings of these various carvings, their placement and importance lies in the observer's knowledge and connection to the meanings of the figures and the culture in which they are embedded. Contrary to common misconception, they are not worshipped or the subject of spiritual practice, nor were they were used by all Indigenous peoples in the Americas.

Johnson Creek is a 25-mile (40 km) tributary of the Willamette River in the Portland metropolitan area of the U.S. state of Oregon. Part of the drainage basin of the Columbia River, its catchment consists of 54 square miles (140 km) of mostly urban land occupied by about 180,000 people as of 2012. Passing through the cities of Gresham, Portland, and Milwaukie, the creek flows generally west from the foothills of the Cascade Range through sediments deposited by glacial floods on a substrate of basalt. Though polluted, it is free-flowing along its main stem and provides habitat for salmon and other migrating fish.

Prior to European settlement, the watershed was heavily forested and was used by Native Americans of the Chinook band for fishing and hunting. In the 19th century, non-Native American settlers cleared much of the land for farming, and the stream is named for one of these newcomers, William Johnson, who in 1846 built a water-powered sawmill along the creek. By the early 20th century, a rail line parallel to the stream encouraged further residential and commercial development. As urban density increased in the floodplain, seasonal floods grew more damaging. In the 1930s the Works Progress Administration of the federal government lined the lower 15 miles (24 km) of Johnson Creek with rock to control the floods. Despite this, the creek flooded 37 times between 1941 and 2006. Since the 1990s, regional planners have tried to reduce flooding by controlling stormwater runoff, creating stream meanders, reducing erosion, replacing impervious surfaces, and protecting riparian buffers.

The Provisional Government of Oregon was a popularly elected settler government created in the Oregon Country (1818-1846), in the Pacific Northwest region of the western portion of the continent of North America. Its formation had been advanced at the Champoeg Meetings since February 17, 1841, and it existed from May 2, 1843 until March 3, 1849, and provided a legal system and a common defense amongst the mostly American pioneers settling an area then inhabited by the many Indigenous Nations. Much of the region's geography and many of the Natives were not known by people of European descent until several exploratory tours and expeditions were authorized at the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries, such as Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery going northwest in 1804-1806, and United States Army Lt. Zebulon Pike and his party first journeying north, then later to the far southwest.

The Organic Laws of Oregon were adopted in 1843 with its preamble stating that settlers only agreed to the laws "until such time as the United States of America extend their jurisdiction over us". According to a message from the government in 1844, the rising settler population was beginning to flourish among the "savages", who were "the chief obstruction to the entrance of civilization" in a land of "ignorance and idolatry".