The first humans to live in the Spokane area arrived between twelve to eight
thousand years ago and were hunter-gatherer societies that lived off the
plentiful game in the area. The Spokane tribe, after which the city is named
(which means "children of the sun" or "sun people" in
Salishan), are believed to be either direct descendants of the original
hunter-gatherers that settled in the region, or descendants of tribes from the
Great Plains. When asked by early white explorers, the tribe said their
ancestors came from "up North".
Early in the 19th century, the Northwest Fur Company sent two white fur
trappers
