Native American Nations / Chinookan Peoples / The Clatsops

The Clatsops

By Kristopher K. Townsend

Coyote was coming. He came to Gōt’a’t. There he met a heavy surf. He was afraid that he might be drifted away and went up to the spruce trees. He stayed there a long time. Then be took some sand and threw it upon that surf: ”This shall be a prairie and no surf. The future generations shall walk on this prairie. Thus Clatsop became a prairie. The surf became a prairie.

At Niā’xaqcē a creek originated. He went and built a house at Niā’xaqcē. He went out and stayed at the mouth of Niā’xaqcē.

—As told by Charles Cultee (q’əltí)[1]Franz Boas, Chinook Texts (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1894), 101.

The Clatsops’ Plain

A Chinook Lodge (1846–47)

Paul Kane (1810–1871)

A family around a fire in a large square room

Watercolor and pencil on paper, 5 1/8 x 7 1/4 inches (13 x 18.4 cm). Courtesy Stark Museum of Art, bequest of H.J. Lutcher Stark, 1965.

The lodge in this figure was likely a Skilloot lodge near the mouth of the Cowlitz River. It is unlikely that the artist traveled any further down the river. He described Chinookan Peoples:

During the season the Chinooks are engaged in gathering camas and fishing, they live in lodges constructed by means of a few poles covered with mats made of rushes, which can be easily moved from place to place; but in the villages they build permanent huts of split cedar boards. . . . In the centre of this lodge the fire is made, and the smoke escapes through a hole left in the roof for that purpose.

The fire is obtained by means of a small flat piece of dry cedar, in which a small hollow is cut, with a channel for the ignited charcoal to run over; this piece the Indian sits on to hold it steady, while he rapidly twirls a round stick of the same wood between the palms of his hands, with the point pressed into the hollow of the flat piece. In a very short time sparks begin to fall through the channel upon finely frayed cedar bark placed underneath, which they soon ignite. There is a great deal of knack in doing this, but those who are used to it will light a fire in a very short time.[2]Paul Kane, Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America . . . . (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859), 187–89. See also Chinookan Houses and Making Fire.

Clark visited Clatsop lodges like these at present-day Seaside, Oregon. When building Fort Clatsop, men were dispatched to collect cedar boards from other empty villages. Those planks were used as roofing. For more on the give and take between the expedition and Clatsops, see Clatsop Give and Take.

For the Chinookan peoples, Coyote joins other beings from the Myth Age: Blue Jay, Salmon, and Grizzly Woman among others. The creek where he built his legendary house—today’s Neacoxie Creek—flows north to south bisecting nearly the length of the Clatsop Plain. A village at the estuary created by the ocean, Neacoxie Creek and the larger Necanicum River is Ne-ah-coxie Village. Nearby were three other Clatsop villages, and for a short time, a salt works built by soldiers from the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The Neacoxie for a time parallels the Skipanon River. The latter conveniently flows north to the Columbia where there were at least three more Clatsop Villages. One was located along Tansy Creek the 1851 meeting site of what are known as the Tansy Point Treaties—a significant event in the history of Chinookan Peoples.[3]David V. Ellis, Chinookan Peoples of the Lower Columbia, ed. Robert T. Boyd, et al. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013), 44; Henry B. Zenk, Yvonne P. Hajda, and Robert T. Boyd, … Continue reading

Chinookan Slaves

During the 1805–06 winter at Fort Clatsop, the Clatsops were the expedition’s nearest neighbors, and interactions were numerous. On the last day of February 1806, Clatsop Cuscalar and his wife came to the fort to sell eulachon, sturgeon, a beaver robe, and some roots. They also offered to sell a slave—a “good looking boy of about 10 years of age” wrote Lewis—for “beeds & a gun” wrote Clark. Slaves were pervasive throughout Clatsop, Chinookan, and Coastal nations and were acquired mostly through trade. Slaves were not allowed to flatten their heads (see Chinookan Head Flattening) and a person’s wealth could be gauged by the number of ’round heads’ paddling the canoe.[4]Hadja, Chinookan Peoples . . ., 157–158; Michael Silverstein, Handbook of North American Indians: Northwest Coast Vol. 7, ed. Wayne Suttles (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian … Continue reading

The captains reported that the Clatsop adopted their slaves and “treat[ed] them very much as their own children.” The historical record is very different. Slave adoption was rare and slaves who became ill were often neglected.[5]Hadja, Chinookan Peoples . . ., 158. During his 1824–25 inspection tour of Canada and the Hudson’s Bay Columbia Department, Governor-in-Chief George Simpson wrote:

Slaves form the principal article of traffick on the whole of this Coast and constitute the greater part of their Riches; they are made to Fish, hunt, draw Wood & Water in short all the drudgery falls on them; they feed in common with the Family of their proprietors and intermarry with their own class, but lead a life of misery, indeed I conceive a Columbia Slave to be the most unfortunate Wretch in existence; the proprietors exercise the most absolute authority over them even to Life and Death and on the most trifling fault wound and maim them shockingly.[6]George Simpson, Fur Trade and Empire: George Simpson’s Journal, ed. Frederic Merk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 101.

European Diseases

On 7 February 1806, Lewis recorded what they had learned about smallpox among the Chinookan peoples:

The small pox has distroyed a great number of the natives in this quarter. it prevailed about 4 years since among the Clatsops and distroy several hundred of them, four of their chiefs fell victyms to it’s ravages. those Clatsops are deposited in their canoes on the bay a few miles below us. I think the late ravages of the small pox may well account for the number of remains of vilages which we find deserted on the river and Sea coast in this quarter.—

The 1801 epidemic had come from the Northern Rockies. The year and direction of an earlier epidemic, also reported in the Lewis and Clark journals, is harder to define. Ethno-historian Robert Boyd finds that recently discovered oral tradition supports the theory that the first epidemic, in the early 1780’s, came from contact with ships. Another theory has that epidemic coming from Plains Indians. Boyd states that it is also possible the epidemic struck from both directions.[7]Robert T. Boyd, Chinookan Peoples . . ., 236.

In addition to recurring waves of smallpox, alcoholism and malaria also plagued Chinookan peoples. The “fever and ague” or “intermittent fever” broke out in 1830 among both the Chinook and the Fort Vancouver employees. The malaria may have come from the ships Owyhee and Convoy or from traders who had previous contact with malarial tribes along the Mississippi.[8]Robert T. Boyd, Handbook . . ., 138.

Based on population counts, including those of Lewis and Clark in their Estimate of the Western Indians, populations declined as much as 92% from European diseases. Clatsop and Chinookan survivors were left with “a heritage of fear” which traders sometimes used to their advantage.[9]Robert T. Boyd, Chinookan Peoples . . ., 237.

Return to Neacoxie

At the Necanicum River estuary complex, Clark recorded four houses comprised of both Clatsops and Tillamooks, an affiliation that continues today. In 2001, they formed the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes. Like the Chinooks, they have not been able to obtain federal recognition. In May 2020, the confederation obtained the 18.6 acre Neawanna Point Habitat Preserve on the Necanicum Estuary. Now renamed Ne-ah-coxie Village, this saltmarsh and forest is once again owned and shared by Clatsop and Nehalem Tillamook.[10]Robert H. Ruby, John A. Brown, and Cary C. Collins, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 42; “Clatsop-Nehalem tribes … Continue reading

 

Selected Pages and Encounters

Notes

Notes
↑1 Franz Boas, Chinook Texts (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1894), 101.
↑2 Paul Kane, Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America . . . . (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859), 187–89. See also Chinookan Houses and Making Fire.
↑3 David V. Ellis, Chinookan Peoples of the Lower Columbia, ed. Robert T. Boyd, et al. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013), 44; Henry B. Zenk, Yvonne P. Hajda, and Robert T. Boyd, “Chinookan Villages of the Lower Columbia,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, 2016, Vol. 117, No. 1, 8–9. For more on the Tansy Point Treaties, see Chinooks.
↑4 Hadja, Chinookan Peoples . . ., 157–158; Michael Silverstein, Handbook of North American Indians: Northwest Coast Vol. 7, ed. Wayne Suttles (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 542–43.
↑5 Hadja, Chinookan Peoples . . ., 158.
↑6 George Simpson, Fur Trade and Empire: George Simpson’s Journal, ed. Frederic Merk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 101.
↑7 Robert T. Boyd, Chinookan Peoples . . ., 236.
↑8 Robert T. Boyd, Handbook . . ., 138.
↑9 Robert T. Boyd, Chinookan Peoples . . ., 237.
↑10 Robert H. Ruby, John A. Brown, and Cary C. Collins, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 42; “Clatsop-Nehalem tribes ‘dreaming again’ with return of ancestral land,” https://www.opb.org/article/2020/12/15/oregon-native-tribes-clatsop-seaside-land/, accessed 24 Feb 2021.

Discover More

  • The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
  • The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
  • The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.

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Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).