The Coeur d'Alene Tribe ( ;Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh also Skitswish; ) are a Native American tribe and one of five federally recognized tribes in the state of Idaho. The Coeur d'Alene have sovereign control of their Coeur d'Alene Reservation, which includes a significant portion of Lake Coeur d'Alene and its submerged lands.

In Idaho v. United States (2001), the United States Supreme Court ruled against the state's claim of the submerged lands of the lower third of Lake Coeur d'Alene and related waters of the St. Joe River. It said that the Coeur d'Alene were the traditional owners and that the Executive Branch and Congress had clearly included this area in their reservation, with compensation for ceded territory. This area was designated in 1983 by the Environmental Protection Agency as Bunker Hill Mine and Smelting Complex, the nation's second-largest Superfund site for cleanup.

Concerned at the slow pace of progress, in 1991 the tribe filed suit against mining companies for damages and cleanup costs, joined in 1996 by the United States and in 2011 by the state of Idaho. Settlements were reached with major defendants in 2008 and 2011, providing funds to be used in removal of hazardous wastes and restoration of habitat and natural resources.

Historically the Coeur d'Alene occupied a territory of 3.5 million acres in present-day northern Idaho, Eastern Washington and Western Montana. They lived in villages along the Coeur d'Alene, St. Joe, Clark Fork, and Spokane rivers, as well as sites on the shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene, Lake Pend Oreille, and Hayden Lake. Their native language is Snchitsu'umshtsn, an Interior Salishan language. They are one of the Salish language peoples, which tribes occupy areas of the inland plateau and the coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest.

Name The French name Cœur d'Alêne translates to "heart of an awl". The name is first recorded by the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1805) and was later popularly said to have been given by French traders to one of the chiefs of the tribe noted for his stinginess.Mooney, J. (1908). Coeur d'Alêne Indians. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company (newadvent.org) The alternative name Skitswish is recorded by Alexander Henry the younger in 1810 (as Skeetshue) and by George Gibbs in Pacific Railroad Report vol. 1 (1853). This is an exonym used by the Sahaptin.The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, vol. 7 (1991) p. 219, fn. 1.

The self-designation Schi̲tsu'umsh is reported from Coeur d'Alene phrasebooks since the 1970s.Gary B. Palmer, Khwi' Khwe Guł Schi̲tsu'umsh = "These Are The Coeur d'Alene People" : A Book Of Coeur d'Alene Personal Names (1987). A modern speaker of Coeur d'Alene was reported as interpreting this name as "the discovered people".Handbook of North American Indians vol. 12 (1998), p. 325. "A modern Coeur d'Alene speaker has translated the name as the discovered people from čic- 'find' and -umš 'people' (Nicodemus 1975)."

The federally recognized tribe was named the Coeur D'Alene Tribe of the Coeur D'Alene Reservation, but they shortened it to Coeur D'Alene Tribe.

Geography Historically, the Coeur d'Alene lived in what would become the Panhandle region of Idaho and neighboring areas of what is today eastern Washington and western Montana, occupying an area of more than of grass-covered hills, camas-prairie, forested mountains, lakes, marshes, and river habitat. The territory extended from the southern end of Lake Pend Oreille in the north, running along the Bitterroot Range of Montana in the east, to the Palouse and North Fork of the Clearwater River in the south, to Steptoe Butte and up to just east of Spokane Falls in the west. At the center of this region was Lake Coeur d'Alene. The abundant natural resources included trout, salmon, and whitefish. The tribe supplemented hunting and gathering activities by fishing the St. Joe and Spokane rivers. They used gaff hooks, spears, nets, traps and angled for fish.

History

An Interior Salish peoples, the Coeur d'Alene people first encountered Europeans in 1793. Then their economy was based on fishing, hunting, and plant gathering, with seasonal migratory patterns and retreating to clustered semi-subterranean dwellings during the winter months. The precontact lifeways of Interior Salish peoples are not widely written about, but available evidence favors the possibility of a recent expansion from the coast to the interior, possibly related to an increase in coastal population about 600 to 900 years ago.M. Dale Kinkade, Prehistory of Salishan languages, University of British Columbia (2009); M. Ritchie et al., "Beyond culture history: Coast Salish Settlement Patterning and Demography in the Fraser Valley, BC," Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Volume 43 (September 2016), 140-54.

The earliest written description of the Coeur d'Alene people comes from the journals of Alexander Henry the younger, a fur trader with the North West Company. He and British explorer David Thompson traded and traveled in their lands from 1810 to 1814. He wrote about the Coeur d'Alene:

Ross Cox, a clerk with the Pacific Fur Company and then the North West Company, spent considerable time at the trading post of Spokane House between 1812 and 1817:

Many of the tribe were converted to Roman Catholicism in 1842 by Fr. Pierre-Jean De Smet, a Belgian Jesuit missionary from St. Louis, Missouri, who was active throughout the Northwest. The twin towns of De Smet and Tensed (originally Temsed), Idaho, are named for him. The United States acquired this territory in 1846 by treaty with Great Britain. European-American settlers and other immigrants began to move from the United States into parts of the territory in the 1840s. After the Indian defeat in the Skitswish War of May–September 1858, many more speculators were attracted after the discovery of silver in 1863 in the north Panhandle near the city of Coeur d'Alene. Mining and development revealed this to be an area of the second-largest silver deposits in the United States.

In 1873 the Coeur d'Alene lands were reduced to approximately when President Ulysses S. Grant established the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation by executive order. Chief Peter Moctelme traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with the President to discuss his disagreement of allotments. Upon ratification, Chief Peter Moctelme's land was reduced by 1/3 and sold to white settlers. The US agreement with the tribe "expressly included part of the St. Joe River (then called the St. Joseph), and all of Lake Coeur d'Alene except a sliver cut off by the northern boundary."

As of 1885, Congress had neither ratified the 1873 agreement nor compensated the Tribe. This inaction prompted the Tribe to petition the Government again, to "make with us a proper treaty of peace and friendship ... by which your petitioners may be properly and fully compensated for such portion of their lands not now reserved to them; [and] that their present reserve may be confirmed to them." Successive government acts put a reservation boundary across Lake Coeur d'Alene, rather than following customary practice of using the high water line, and reduced the size of the reservation to near Plummer, south of the town of Coeur d'Alene.

20th century to present

Due to extensive mining and smelting operations in the Panhandle during the 19th and 20th centuries, there was hazardous waste in water discharges and pollution in air emissions. The mining industry "left several thousand acres of land and tributaries, connected to the Coeur d'Alene Basin, contaminated with heavy metals." These mining operations have contributed "an estimated 100 million tons of mine waste to the river system."

In the early 21st century, the federally recognized Tribe has approximately 2,000 enrolled citizens. The Tribe manages the sovereign Coeur d'Alene Reservation, which includes the lower third of Lake Coeur d'Alene and the Saint Joe River, and their submerged lands.

In 1935, Ignace Garry was one of a group of chiefs who managed the tribe. In 1949 he was selected as the last traditional chief of the Coeur d'Alene; he served until his death in 1965. During this period the tribe worked to restore its government under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. It gained approval of a written constitution in 1949 and elected representatives to the Tribal Council. In the 1950s, the tribe was one of several that came under termination pressure by the United States Congress.

Within Idaho, in the late 20th century the Coeur d'Alene organized with the four other federally recognized tribes in the state to form the Five Tribes Council, including the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, Nez Perce, Shoshone-Bannock, and Shoshone-Paiute.

Government The tribe reorganized under a written constitution approved by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, United States Department of Interior, on September 2, 1949, and amended in 1961. The constitution provides for an elected Tribal Council to serve as the legislature and governing body of the Tribe. It defined all tribal members of voting age as the General Council. At the time, the Tribe was still governed by Ignace Garry, the last traditional chief. The seven members of the tribal council are elected by citizens of the tribe to 3-year terms; with staggered expiration years. The elected head of the tribe is the chairman.

Since 2005, the chairman has been Chief James Allan ("Chief" is his given first name). Born in 1972 in Spokane, Allan grew up in Idaho on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation and graduated from Eastern Washington University in Cheney. He served in administrative and elected positions in the tribe and with the National Congress of American Indians in Washington, DC before being elected as chairman."Tribal Council: Chief Bio" , Coeur d'Alene Tribe website

Joseph Garry, son of Chief Ignace, was the first Native American to be elected to the Idaho state legislature. He also served as chairman of the tribe for 10 years. In 1984 his niece, Jeanne Givens, was the first Native American woman to be elected to the Idaho state legislature, serving two terms.Maureen Dolan, "The last traditional chief", CDA Press, November 10, 2010; accessed May 30, 2016

The Coeur d'Alene Tribe operates a health care facility, which opened as the Benewah Medical Center in 1998 and was later renamed Marimn Health. The center was described by the Indian Health Service as a national model for Indian Health Care and rural health care. The clinic provides comprehensive primary care services including dental, mental health services, and community health outreach services to both the Native American population and general community."Area Offices: Portland; Tribe: Coeur d'Alene" , US Indian Health Service

Economy

Tribal businesses include the Coeur d'Alene Casino, Hotel, and Circling Raven Golf Club in southwestern Kootenai County, about northwest of Worley and south of the city of Coeur d'Alene, via U.S. Route 95. Tribal gaming employs about 500 and generates about $20 million in profits annually, funding programs, contributing to economic development.

The tribe also operates the Benewah Automotive Center, the Benewah Market, the first three floors of the Coeur d'Alene Resort, and Ace Hardware, which are located a few miles south of Worley at Plummer, in northwestern Benewah County. The tribe has invested in two businesses, a manufacturing plant (BERG Integrated Systems), and a bakery (HearthBread Bakery), in both of which the tribe owns a majority share.

The tribal farm covers about . It produces wheat, barley, peas, lentils, and canola. It also harvests timber among its natural resources.

Culture