Rick Rubin, a writer by trade and historian at heart, combines years of research with his journalist's eye for detail and poet's ear to create one of the most compelling and readable histories of the Native American people of the lower Columbia River. Rubin conveys information about the people's daily life, spiritual beliefs, mythologies, and how the introduction of white settlers into the region forever changed their culture.

Thanks in large part to the abundant salmon runs the Chinook-speakers residing along the lower Columbia River were among the wealthiest in North America. Master fisherman and expert canoeists it was not uncommon for a single canoe and crew to net two tons of succulent Chinook salmon on a single outgoing tide. A thickset people with artificially flattened heads, anarchistic politics, and a highly stratified society, they spoke a language unconnected to any known language on earth. Yet despite all their wealth and accomplishments they were all but completely wiped out in a few short decades after whites first landed on their shores.