The Treaty Trail - Home Page

The Treaty Trail is a neat little website at Washington History Online. It includes an overview of the 1850s treaties, short biographies of the major participant, and a little flash movie introduction. It is designed for use in the public school, but could be a handy reference for anyone.

Bill Youngs pointed out to me the other day that we are fast approaching the sesquicentennial of the dramatic and tragic events of 1858. Is anyone planning a conference or other memorial activity? I would hate to see a major opportunity for raising historic awareness slip away.

Snap Shots™

Snap Shots™ is a free utility that turns hyperlinks into pop-up screen shots when you mouse over them. I installed it on this blog, mouse over a hyperlink and you will see the effect.

[Caveat: I don't know if this works on Macs, the computer choice of many metrosexual historians.]

Qualchan Hanging Site Resource Roundup

The hanging site of Qualchan and the other Indians along Hangman Creek is a moving site. What internet resources are available concerning this historic event? Bill and I will gather them here and perhaps then create a static webpage about the event and the site.

• The Spokane Outdoors Hangman Creek site has a photo, directions, and some historic info.
• Historian A.J. Splawn's classic volume Ka-mi-akin, the Last Hero of the Yakimas (1917) is available in its entirety through Google Books.

Hangman Creek

Hangman Creek is a page from the SpokaneOutdoors.com website that includes a picture of the marker, a modern drawing of Qualchan being hanged, directions to the site, and some background information.

Putting Photos and Markers into Google Earth

Google Earth Community: Historic Sites in Eastern Washington is our first attempt to load contemporary photos of historic sites into Google Earth. Install Google Earth on your computer, click on the link, and you will see what we are trying to do. Suggestions welcome!

Edit: Try this link.

A Saturday Drive

Here are some photos from a drive south and east of Cheney that Bill and I made yesterday. Our initial goal was to find the Mullan Road marker that I vaguely remembered seeing some years ago. We were initially guided by this PDF map of Spokane County historic sites. The next step is to try and figure out how to present some of these pictures geographically on the web--as part of a Google Earth layer perhaps?

Be Your Own Ken Burns (but less maudlin!)

Check out this wonderful little web documentary about the history of hoboes in Spokane, Washington. Produced by Jim Kershner of the Spokesman Review. It is a nice demonstration of how new technologies make it possible for anyone with a computer and some photographs to create a documentary. Kershener doesn't say so but I am pretty sure it was created with Photo Story 3, a simple free program from Microsoft.

Update! Colin Mulvany writes: Actually, I used Final Cut Pro 5 to add the motion on the photographs and produce the show. These type of stories are fun to do. Jim and I find a local historic topic that we can match with photos from the newspaper's and other local archives. He writes and voices the narrative and I produce the show. That said, you don't need a program as advanced as Apple's Final Cut to do shows like these. There are plenty of consumer level program that do motion on pictures.

Welcome to Northwest History

This weblog is a place where historians Larry Cebula, of Missouri Southern State University, and Bill Youngs of Eastern Washington University will experiment with ways to present history on the web. We will focus on the area we know and love best, the stretch of country between the Cascades and the Rocky Mountains known as the Columbia Plateau. Or as we prefer, the Inland Empire.