The salmon came up to the river in full force up to the time . . . when the Washington Water Power Company built Little Falls Dam. . . When Little Falls Dam went in, it stopped the salmon from migrating up river when it was finished in 1911. The salmon carried on for quite a few years after that below the dam . . . until Grand Coulee went in and that was the end of it.
— Alex Sherwood, former chairman of the Spokane Tribal Council, 1973, quoted in “Compilation of Information on Salmon and Steelhead Total Run Size, Catch and Hydropower Related Losses in the Upper Columbia River Basin, Above Grand Coulee Dam.”
The Spokane Indians used their abundant fisheries in a trade network that connected them to the Plains Indians in the east, to the Chinook in the west and the Sahaptins in the south. The First Salmon ceremony, a common first foods celebration among fishing cultures, reveals the importance of salmon to the Spokane. Their elaborate storage methods (dried salmon was stored in tule bags which were hung in ponderosa pines, piled on rock islands, or buried in pits) reveals the practicality which guided food preservation efforts. After the introduction of the horse, Spokanes occasionally fished from mounted positions with spears.
When the Washington Water Power Company built a dam at the Little Spokane Falls in 1911, it cut off the native fishing site at Spokane Falls. Later, the high Grand Coulee Dam (1941) destroyed the salmon runs upriver from it (it did not have a fish ladder) and inundated Kettle Falls, an important fishing site for the Spokane and other Indians. In 1994, the federal government compensated the Spokane for their lost fisheries and land under the Grand Coulee Settlement Act.
