The Development of the Northwest Coast Culture Pattern R.G. Matson The Northwest Coast Culture is unique among ethnographic cultures and our current understanding of its development is presented as resulting from six major contributions. First, we now understand that while hunters and gatherers may have lived a life of relative ease they were under unceasing demographic pressure. Second, ideas from optimal foraging now let us understand why the inhabitants went from subsisting on large mammals to relying on small fish, and why early, very wide-spread and long lasting cultures were replaced by more regionally limited and shorter-lasting ones. Third, the combination of Binford’s «foraging» and «collecting» adaptations with Schalk’s argument that it is «storage» not procurement of salmon that is important are critical to undersanding the salmon storage economy underlying the Northwest Coast culture. Fourth, although salmon has long been seen as very important to the Northwest...