Kaniksu

Kaniksu lies in the forest and lake country of the inland Northwest, around the Kalispel homelands linked by Lake Pend Oreille, the Pend Oreille River and Priest River. Kalispel families gathered camas bulbs and berries, hunted deer and elk, and caught fish with weirs and nets. Seasonal camps connected these resources; earth ovens prepared camas for storage, while tule and cattail mats furnished shelters. Travel by canoe, on foot and later on horseback joined river settlements with upland gathering grounds.

The fur trade reached these existing routes in the early nineteenth century. In 1809 David Thompson's North West Company party established Kullyspel House at Lake Pend Oreille. He then explored the river downstream with a voyageur and a Kalispel boy. Near the later site of Cusick, Kalispel people supplied food and information about the route in exchange for tobacco, flint and steel. Commercial exploration consequently depended on Indigenous knowledge and hospitality, bringing new goods and demands into a country already connected by travel and exchange.