Talk:Coeur d'Alene War

BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum
Please see RE BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum re: Talk:List of United States military history events. If you think maybe I should also move some or copy some of my other stuff from NW history and BC history pages and various Indigenous peoples project article/talk pages let me know; I never mean to blog, but I'm voluble and to me everything's interconnected; never meaning to dominate a page so have made this area to post my historical rambles on. Thoughts?Skookum1 06:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment on my posting of this: if anyone has any questions or wants to debate any issues relating to Oregon Country/Columbia District/Pacific Northwest history/historical geography, colonialist or aboriginal/indigenous, please feel free to drop by the forum and start a thread/topic, or just butt in at yer leisure.Skookum1 06:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Moved reversed
Someone moved
 * "Spokane – Coeur d'Alene – Palouse War"

to


 * "Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Palouse War"

Please see the MoS on this. Tony  (talk)  10:43, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "Someone" is me, and it's because, if it exists, it's a proper name, and IMO the convention for wars in general should be a hyphen, no matter the word forms which according to MOS-ites predicate a hyphen in some cases, and a dash in (most) others, even though the relationship is generally the same in all cases - as combatants, though in this case these were allies. Proper hyphenated names are proper hyphenated names, not subject to debate or interpolation by syntactical anslysis so someone can fulfill their fetish about what a great thing the dash is and how lazy the rest of us are for not using it ("rest of us" including all the sources in so many cases it's pointless to mention the exceptions, except there are certain MOSites who prefer those sources over the preponderant majority of others, making the excuse that they weren't as advanced in those days yadayadayada).  Wars have proper names; whether this is in fact an actual name, or a Wiki made-up one, I'm not sure; I just got in from earlier and will go back in the history to see who changed this from the original Couer d'Alene title.  As I explained to Kwami there were also the Spokane War and the Palouse War, not sure if the same are meant here; the perspective that they were all one war is only that of the US side in the conflict, and may not be of the three peoples engaged against them; it's maybe only because they happened at the same time, and not because of there being a formal alliance (though all tribes in Washington Territory were united against the Americans).  This should be x-posted to NorthAmNative and to WikiProject Washington for further input from the two Wikiprojects most directly involved in the topic, where there might be a local historian, native or white, who could add further input.Skookum1 (talk) 06:42, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I've returned it to the 2008 title w dashes but no spaces until this gets worked out. As I read it, the hyphened title would concern the Spokane-Coeur and the d'Alene-Palouse, but the spacing may not (I'm not sure) be necessary, since Coeur d'Alene is a proper name. (Actually, I don't see how Coeur d'Alene is different from New York, but the 2008 version was stable for a year, so make a RfC if you like and see what people think.) — kwami (talk) 20:11, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The references are not to geographic names, but to peoples; the Spokan, the Coeur d'Alene people, the Palus people.Skookum1 (talk) 06:42, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I do agree with Skookum1 on this debate with the hyphens - however Y are we not simply calling the article "Coeur d'Alene War"? Dont think anyone would ever search/type out "Spokane–Coeur d'Alene–Paloos War" or ""Spokane – Coeur d'Alene – Palouse War" over "Coeur d'Alene War".

- plain google search - plain google search - plain google search does not see the article here on wiki so no one will ever find it thus expand it.Moxy (talk) 20:25, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with Moxy's suggestion to use the simplest name by which the topic is commonly known. That avoids having to decide how to punctuate the made-up compound, not to mention the spelling of Palouse/Paloos.  Dicklyon (talk) 20:55, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "Paloos" appears to me to be an archaic rendering of what is now p.c.-acceptable as "Palus", i.e. by the people called that/ who call themselves that. "Palouse" is another anglicization, but its more common usage is for the landform in this region, a sort of rolling dryland hills spanning Eastern Washington and a bit of western Idaho.  The war partly happened in the Palouse (the landform) but also it involved the Palus (the people).Skookum1 (talk) 06:42, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * One of our sources calls this the "Battle of Four Lakes". But "Coeur d'Alene War" is probably the most common name. Should we move it there? — kwami (talk) 21:18, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Battle of Four Lakes was only one battle in the sequence of events, it has its own article already also. And no, it shouldn't be merged anymore than the Steptoe Massacre or Battle of Seattle (1856) (the latter was  a Puget Sound area offshoot of the Yakima War, as was the Battle of Puget Sound I think (not sure about that latter, it may be a redlink - or may refer to the battles between the Haida/Tlingit/Tsimshian and US Navy in that same year - and they were not allies of Washington Territory's Native American peoples - rather they were their slavers).Skookum1 (talk) 06:42, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I would. Almost all the sources appear to agree that War is capitalized in that version, meaning it's an accepted proper name, unless the other one we made up which has no good reason to capitalize war.  Dicklyon (talk) 21:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "war" is nearly always capitalized in any Wikiepdia, despite the fashion for lower-casing things which are widely known by their full-caps versions e.g. Rock Springs Massacre, Wah Mee Massacre, where Wiki does not "follow the sources" (as MOSFOLLOW is one of those parts of MOS that get passed over by those wishing to push/ironclad key things they like).Skookum1 (talk) 06:42, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Skookum is also uncertain which name to use here. I'll go ahead and move it to the shorter/more common title; if there's a problem with that, please give reasons for the objection here. — kwami (talk) 21:46, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The shorter title is much better. And the unspaced marker, whether dash or hyphen, makes me think Spokane–Coeur is a single location. Is it? Tony   (talk)  02:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * LOL. One thign I want added to MOS is "editors unfamiliar with a subject should not undertake major changes to the article, including its title".  Where are you, Dicklyon?  Clearly not in the Pacific Northwest.  Spokane is a city, Coeur d'Alene is a city, they happen to neighbour each other, more or less, though across a state line, and though SFAIK there is no "Spokane-Coeur d'Alene Metro" the references here predate the existence of either city and are references (like the city names themselves) to the peoples by those names, who are of the Interior Salishan linguistic stock.Skookum1 (talk) 06:42, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

followup after writing User:Nloth, who started the article, apparently under the trinary name, back in 2006 (Nloth hasn't contributed since 2009 so I sent an email); I'm starting to think that what was done here was an attempt to combine the names Palouse War, Spokane War and Coeur d'Alene War, which are all the same war by different tellings/historians.....why there's not a Shoshone War (they were also allies, as were others) I'm not sure...the Bannock War is slightly different I THINK......


 * I started the article under the trinity name in response to a 2 year old request-for-article with that name. I remember having a lot of trouble finding any information about it, and I'm not familiar with it myself, so I can't help further, sorry! Nloth (talk) 11:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * However, a quick search now does find that there is a book that references it as the Coeur d'Alene War (Spokane War) (see the America's wars entry in the search http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=Spokane-Coeur+d'Alene-Palouse+War) Nloth (talk) 11:13, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Also http://books.google.com/books?ei=EEhFTY26I4KKvQOalpj6AQ&ct=result&id=B_kyAQAAIAAJ&dq=Spokane-Coeur+d'Alene-Palouse+War&q=Spokane+Coeur+d'Alene+Palouse+War#search_anchor says "Usually called the Coeur d'Alene War it could, with equal accuracy, be called the Palouse War or the Spokane War" Nloth (talk) 11:16, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The trinary name seems clearly OR - Kwami can find no sources using it - if anything, though SFAIK it's tricky using forward-slashes in titles, "Spokane/Coeur d'Alene/Paloos War" seems to have been the intent...i.e. all three names are valid and have equal weight/referencing....but the forward slashed version, even if that signified that (?) would still be OR; Spokane War and Palouse War redirect here...which is "better" is maybe for someone form WP:Wash to suggest....Skookum1 (talk) 07:27, 30 January 2011 (UTC)


 * There's nothing wrong with creating novel phrases for article titles as long as we don't present them as established terms. It's done all the time; the MOS even addresses them by saying that they don't need to be repeated in bold face in the lede as we normally do with established names used as titles. That is, OR isn't an argument against the long name, which may be preferable to picking one name out of the three (or four) and thus elevating it to a primacy it may not deserve. But that would be an argument for keeping "war" in lower case. — kwami (talk) 10:09, 30 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Given Nloth's recent comments above, it would seem we have a conflict between CommonName and NPOV. In the lede, we could say, The Coeur d'Alene War, also known as the Spokane War or the Palouse War..., but that doesn't mean we can't still use the long name as the title. The fact that we don't repeat it in the lede would be sufficient to show it's not an established name. Or we could do as one of the refs does, Coeur d'Alene War (Spokane War). — kwami (talk) 11:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I've just x-posted to the connected WPs, to see who turns up with what.....in the course of it what occurred to me - and here goes ME proposing the use of endash or emdash, though I won't type them here (can't be bothered, quite frankly, I was raised on typewriter keyboards and intend to stay that way; at 55 old habits are hard to break, especially when someone else is ordering you to...), Spokane War - Coeur d'Alene War - Palouse War which to me best indicates it's known by all three (whichever it is that's to be used there endash, emdash or slash - ?). Doing a lower-case combination "Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Palouse war" just looks wrong and in context looks like Spokane (city) was at war with Coeur d'Alene (city) over the Palouse (region) [both are located in the Palouse, or near it anyway].  The order that they're mentioned in could maybe be derived from their google sequencing, such that the most common usage comes first.....HH Bancroft is the "period authority", i.e. the main contemporary historian for the Pacific Northwest for this period, stateside anyway, and I'd recommend his usage may be considered to be the prevailing one, in terms of how this was referred to in those times; I've seen all three in references in histories of British Columbia and sometimes in literature (Paul St. Pierre's Breaking Smith's Quarterhorse, where an elderly Indian Ol' Antoine (pron. "Antwine", played in the movie Smith! by Chief Dan George) is talked about having fought in the Coeur d'Alene War.  I've seen the Palouse War term less often, it's a toss-up for me between Spokane War and Coeur d'Alene War as to which is the primary name, i.e. which should come first; only googlehits knows for sure, I suppose - unless we get a regional historian who may know of a modern standard for this.  http://www.historylink.org is a very good Washington history site and it may be worth asking them.Skookum1 (talk) 18:51, 30 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Ok after much looking around ...In my library (Ottawa U) (looked at about 20 books) - I see that Coeur d'Alene War is the one used more often when it comes to modern terms. Like Nloth said -->Most books before 1950 say all three names, but still use "Coeur d'Alene War" first . This seems to be because some historians  break the war up into battles and dont what to confuse readers -Like the so called    "Battle of Spokane" and  "Battle at Palouse River" - "Coeur d'Alene War" seems to be  used as the overall name of  the end "wars/combined battles" of the greater Yakima War.

And the internet seem to like Coeur d'Alene War best aswell Palouse War - About 6,780 results Spokane War - About 131,000 results Coeur d'Alene War - About 336,000 results

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