Western American Prehistory — An Hypothesis

Abstract

Recently I published a paper, together with Warren Caldwell and Robert Crabtree, disagreeing with an old theory that the development of most of Northwest Coast culture was due to movement of inland groups down the rivers to the seacoast where they proliferated physically and culturally (Osborne, Caldwell, and Crabtree 1956). We indicated (p. 117) that we did not propose to discard an old concept but suggested, rather, further evaluation and examination of alternate hypotheses, for we felt the reconstruction of Northwest Coast prehistory was only in the hypothesis stage.