A resurgent Columbia River: an introduction / William L. Lang and Robert C. Carriker -- What ever happened to the first peoples of the Columbia? / Eugene S. Hunn -- "Dr. McKay's Chinook address May 11 1892": a commemoration in Chinook jargon of the first Columbia River centennial / Henry Zenk -- Riverplaces as sacred geography: the pictographs and petroglyphs of the Mid-Columbia River / William D. Layman -- On the Columbia: the ruling presence of this place / James P. Ronda -- "This perilous situation between hope and despair": meetings along the great river of the west / Patricia Nelson Limerick -- "They have no father, and they will not mind me": families and the river / Lillian Schlissel -- Changing cultural inventions of the Columbia / Richard W. Etulain -- What has happened to the Columbia? a great river's fate in the twentieth century / William L. Lang