The dramatic nature of Northwest Coast culture matched the grandeur of its setting, a narrow, island-fringed coastal strip stretching from southern Alaska to northern California. To the west, a rugged range of precipitous mountains plunges almost directly into the Pacific where cold Arctic waters mix with the warm Japanese current to produce a mild but damp climate.  From earliest times native peoples drew their subsistence from both sea and forest.

Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia, Charles M. Russell (1864–1926)

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