Coeur d'Alene: Heart of the Awl, Heart of the Silver Country
Idaho
The name Coeur d'Alene is French, and it means heart of the awl. The story behind it reaches back to the early eighteen hundreds, when French-speaking fur traders in the Pacific Northwest encountered the Schitsu'umsh people, whose own name means the discovered people or those who were found here. The traders, or perhaps Iroquois guides in their employ, noted the Schitsu'umsh's reputation as sharp, shrewd traders. An awl is a pointed tool. The name, roughly translated, called them pointy-hearted. Hard bargainers.
General William Tecumseh Sherman came through in eighteen seventy-eight and ordered a military fort established on the northern shore of Lake Coeur d'Alene. Fort Coeur d'Alene, later renamed Fort Sherman, drew a small village to its eastern edge. That village was incorporated as a town in August of eighteen eighty-seven, and became a city in nineteen oh six.
What drove the real boom was silver. In eighteen eighty-one, gold was found in the North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River. By eighteen eighty-five, prospector Noah Kellogg had discovered galena, lead ore with silver, at a site that became the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mine. The Coeur d'Alene mining district would eventually produce more than one billion ounces of silver, making it the richest silver district ever found in America.
The wealth came at a cost. Mine owners cut wages. Workers organized. By eighteen eighty-seven, miners had formed the first union at Wardner. By eighteen ninety-two, tensions exploded: a Pinkerton informant was exposed inside the union, strikers seized an ore mill and packed it with explosives, and the governor called in the National Guard. Six hundred miners were confined in open-air stockades, called bullpens, without charges or hearings. The episode gave direct birth to the Western Federation of Miners, which in turn helped found the Industrial Workers of the World.
Today Coeur d'Alene is a resort town on one of the most beautiful lakes in the inland Northwest, a long way from silver wars and stockades. But the lake and the legacy share the same pointed-hearted name.
