User:Voltaire's Vaquero/Chinookan



Chinookan peoples include several groups of indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest in the United States speaking the Chinookan languages. In the early 19th century, the Chinookan-speaking peoples resided along the lower and middle Columbia River in present-day Oregon and Washington. The Chinook tribes were those encountered by the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805 on the lower Columbia.

Since the late 20th century, the Chinook Indian Nation, made up of 2700 members of several peoples, has worked to obtain federal recognition. It gained this in 2001 but, after President George W. Bush took office, his political appointees revoked that status in 2002. The tribe continues to seek recognition.

Historic culture


The Chinookan peoples were not nomadic but rather occupied traditional tribal geographic areas. They had a society marked by social stratification consisting of a number of distinct social castes of greater or lesser status. Upper castes included shamans, warriors, and successful traders, and were a minority of the community population compared to common members of the tribal group. Members of the superior castes are said to have practiced social isolation, limiting contact with commoners and forbidding play between the children of the different social groups.

Some Chinookan peoples practiced slavery, a practice borrowed from the northernmost tribes of the Pacific Northwest. They encouraged their slaves, taken as captives in warfare, to practice thievery on behalf of their masters. The latter refrained from such practices as unworthy of high status.

At birth some Chinookan tribes would flatten children's heads by binding them under pressure between boards, a process said to have been initiated when the infant was about 3 months old and to have continued until the child was about one year of age. This served as a means of marking social hierarchy; flat-headed community members were ranked above those with round heads. Those with flattened and deformed skulls refused to enslave other individuals who were similarly marked, thereby reinforcing the association of a round head with servility. The Chinook were known colloquially by early white explorers in the region as "Flathead Indians."

Living near the coast of the Pacific Ocean, they were skilled elk hunters and fishermen. The most popular fish was salmon. Owing partly to their settled living patterns, the Chinook and other coastal tribes had relatively little conflict over land as they did not migrate through each other's territories. In the manner of numerous settled tribes, they resided in long houses. More than fifty people, related through extended kinship, often resided in one long house.

Today


The Chinook Indian Nation has engaged in a continuing effort since the late 20th century to secure formal recognition as a sovereign tribe by the U.S. federal government. In 2001, the U.S. Department of Interior recognized the Chinook Indian Nation, a confederation of the Cathlamet, Clatsop, Lower Chinook, Whkaikum and Willapa Indians, as a tribe during the last months of the administration of President Bill Clinton. After the administration changed under President George W. Bush, his new political appointees reviewed the materials and, in 2002, revoked this status, in what was a highly unusual action. Efforts by Brian Baird, D-Wash. from Washington's 3rd congressional district, to gain passage of legislation to achieve recognition in 2011 were not successful.

The Chinook Indian Nation's offices are in Bay Center, Washington. The tribe holds an Annual Winter Gathering at the plankhouse in Ridgefield, Washington. It also holds an Annual First Salmon Ceremony at Chinook Point (Fort Columbia) on the North Shore of the Columbia River.

List of Chinookan peoples
Chinookan-speaking groups include:
 * Cathlahmahs
 * Cathlamet
 * Chahcowah
 * Chilluckittequaw
 * Clackamas
 * Clatsop
 * Clowwewalla
 * Cushook
 * Echelut (Wasco-Wishram)
 * Kilooklaniuck
 * Multnomah
 * Skillot
 * Wahkikum (Wac-ki-cum)
 * Wappato or Wapato
 * Wascopa
 * Watlata (Cascade or Wishram).
 * Shoalwater

Most surviving Chinook live in the towns of Bay Center, Chinook, and Ilwaco in southwest Washington and in Astoria, Oregon. Books written about the Chinook include Boston Jane: An Adventure by Jennifer L. Holm

Famous Chinooks

 * Chief Comcomly
 * Charles Cultee, the principal informant employed by Franz Boas for his work published as Chinook Texts
 * Ranald MacDonald, a half-Chinook, born in Fort Astoria, Oregon, to Archibald McDonald, a Scottish Hudson's Bay Company fur trader, and Raven, chief Concomly's daughter, was the first Westerner to teach English in Japan, in 1847–1848, including educating Einosuke Moriyama, one of the chief interpreters that would later handle the negotiations between Commodore Perry and the Tokugawa Shogunate
 * J. Christopher Stevens, American diplomat and lawyer who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Libya from June 2012 to September 2012. He was killed when the U.S. consulate was attacked in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012
 * Catherine Troeh, historian, artist, activist and advocate for Native American rights and culture. She was a member and elder of the Chinook tribe and a direct descendant of Chief Comcomly
 * Chief Tumulth, signed the treaty that created the Grand Ronde Reservation and was later killed by Gen. Philip Sheridan

Clatsop
The Clatsop are a small tribe of Chinookan-speaking Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. In the early 19th century they inhabited an area of the northwestern coast of present-day Oregon from the mouth of the Columbia River south to Tillamook Head, Oregon.

Language
Clatsop in the original language is łät’cαp, which means "place of dried salmon". Clatsop was originally the name of a single settlement, later applied to the tribe as a whole.

The Clatsop dialect used by the tribe is an extinct dialect of the Lower Chinookan language. Most Clatsops spoke Chinook Jargon by the time Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery made contact with them. Some spoke Nehalem, reflecting intermarriage and cohabitation with that tribe.

Chinook Jargon is a trade language, and was once used throughout much of the Pacific Northwest. Many place names in the area come from the Chinook Jargon, for example, Ecola Creek and Park &mdash; "whale".

History
The tribe is first reported in the 1792 journals of Robert Gray and was later encountered at the mouth of Columbia in 1805 by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The expedition named their last encampment Fort Clatsop after the tribe, whose nearest major village was approximately seven miles (12 km) away. The tribe later gave its name to Clatsop County, Oregon. According to the journals of William Clark, the Clatsop comprised about 200 people living in three separate villages of large cedar-plank houses. Clatsop members regularly visited the fort for trading purposes.

The tribe had designated headmen(or"chiefs") but was socially flexible, with individual families affiliating with one another in small villages and seasonal camps located near food sources.

The Clatsop shared salmon, berries, and hunting tips with the Corps of Discovery. In contrast to the Corps' interactions with the Plains Indians the previous winter, their interaction with the Clatsop was more limited. The two groups did not mingle for social occasions and the fort was opened to trading only 24 days during the winter. Part of the reason may have been the existing relationship between the British and the coastal tribes, resulting in a demand by the Clatsop and Chinook for higher prices for their goods at a time when the Corps' supply of "Indian Gifts" had dwindled. Only two Clatsop, Coboway and Cuscalar, appear regularly in the corps members' journals.

In an 1851 treaty, the Clatsop tribe ceded 90 percent of their land to the U.S. Government. This treaty was one of many in the Northwest that were never ratified by Congress. Unlike other tribes, the members were not required to move to a reservation, and in fact, they were one of the only tribes in Oregon that was the focus of an organized effort to remove tribes to reservations.

The 200 members who have recently organized as the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederation are scattered across Oregon and southwestern Washington. The last known speaker of the Tillamook language died in 1972. Individual Clatsop-Nehalem applied for membership with both the Confederated Tribes of Siletz and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde but were turned down. In January 2001, the Chinook tribe (of which the Clatsop were included) gained official recognition through an executive order by President William Jefferson Clinton, but this restoration of status specifically excluded the Clatsop members of the Chinook rolls. The Chinook's legal status was reversed by the Bush administration soon after taking office. The bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 2004–2006 provided renewed interest in the status of the Clatsop and Chinook.

The Clatsop have no formal recognition today and have struggled in recent years to retain their identity. Some of the remaining members now form an unofficial confederation, the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes of Oregon, with the Salishan-speaking Nehalem (Tillamook) tribe that once inhabited the area around Tillamook Bay. Many Clatsop also remain enrolled with the Chinook Tribe. Other tribes in the region, such as Quinault, Siletz, and Grand Ronde, also have a number enrollees of some partial Clatsop descent. Other Clatsop descendants, unaffiliated, continue to maintain their culture and ceremonies as family and small community units, as in the past.

Museum exhibits
The Tillamook County Pioneer Museum in Tillamook contains exhibits on the history of the Clatsop.

Clackamas
The Clackamas Indians are a tribe of Native Americans of the U.S. state of Oregon who traditionally lived along the Clackamas River in the Willamette Valley. Lewis and Clark estimated their population at 1800 in 1806. At the time the tribe lived in 11 villages and subsisted on fish and roots.

By 1855, the 88 surviving members of the tribe were relocated to Grand Ronde, Oregon, first to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation; later they blended in the general population.

Descendants of the Clackamas belong to the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon.

Like others of the Chinookan peoples, they practiced head flattening. From infancy the head was compressed between boards, thus sloping the forehead backward.

They are the technical owners of the Willamette Meteorite.

Language
The now-extinct language spoken by the Clackamas is also known as Clackamas, and is one of the Chinookan languages, specifically a variety of Upper Chinook. It is closely related to the still-living (but highly endangered) Wasco-Wishram language, which is another variety of Upper Chinook.

A number of toponyms around the Columbia River derive from Clackamas, notably:
 * Various places called Clackamas themselves;
 * Various places called Willamette.

Multnomah
The Multnomah were a tribe of Chinookan people who lived in the area of Portland, Oregon, in the United States through the early 19th century. Multnomah villages were located throughout the Portland basin and on both sides of the Columbia River. The Multnomah spoke a dialect of the Upper Chinookan language in the Oregon Penutian family.

History
The Multnomah and the related Clackamas tribe lived in a series of villages along the river near the mouth of the Willamette River on the Columbia (the Willamette was also called the "Multnomah" in the early 19th century). According to archaeologists, the villages in the area were home to approximately 3,400 people year-round, and as many as 8,000 during fishing and wappato-harvesting seasons (wappato is a marsh-grown plant like a potato or onion and a staple food).

One of the larger villages, Cathlapotle was located in present-day Clark County, Washington at the confluence of the Lewis River with the Columbia and was visited by the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805. According to their journals, Lewis and Clark found 14 houses in the village, most of them ranging from 14-by-20 ft (4.3 m by 6.0 m) to about 40-by-100 ft (12 m by 30 m). They reported that approximately 900 people lived in the villages. The Cathlacomatup were a group of Multnomah that resided along the Multnomah Channel at the Wappatoo Inlet. Lewis & Clark came into contact with the Cathalacomatup in 1805.

In 1830, a disease generally thought to have been malaria devastated the Multnomah villages. Within five years, Cathlapotle was abandoned and was briefly inhabited by the Cowlitz tribe.

Culture
The houses of the Multnomah, like the other Chinookan peoples, were largely longhouses made of Western Redcedar planks. The size of a home depended on the wealth of the owner, with the larger houses furnishing living quarters for up to 100 people. Within each house, a particular family had a separate cubicle separated by woven mats. Each family had its own fire, with the families also sharing a communal central fire in the household.

The Multnomah diet included salmon, eels, sturgeon, elk, water birds and especially wapato.

The Kathlamet people are a tribe of Native American people with a historic homeland along the Columbia River in what is today southwestern Washington state. The Kathlamet people originally spoke the Kathlamet language, a dialect of the Chinookan language. They were also called "Guasámas, or Guithlamethl, by the Clackamas", and "Kwillu'chini, by the Chinook."

Lewis and Clark reported "that about 300 Cathlamet occupied nine plank houses on the south side of the Columbia River", and lived between Tongue Point and Puget Island in Clatsop County, Oregon. On the north side, they lived "from the mouth of Grays Bay to a little east of Oak Point." Their villages were: Clark wrote: November 11th Monday 1805 About 12 o'clock 5 Indians came down in a canoe, the wind very high from the S.W., with most tremendous waves breaking with great violence against the shores. Rain falling in torrents, we are all wet as usual and our situation is truly a disagreeable one. We purchased of the Indians 13 red char which we found to be an excellent fish. We have seen those Indians above and are of a nation who reside above and on the opposite side who call themselves (Calt-har-ma). They are badly clad & ill made, small and speak a language much resembling the last nation. One of those men had on a sailor's jacket and pantaloons and made signs that he got those clothes from the white people who lived below the point &c. Those people left us and crossed the river (which is about 5 miles wide at this place) through the highest waves I ever saw a small vessels ride. Those Indians are certainly the best canoe navigators I ever saw. "In early January 1806 Cathlamet Chief Shahharwarcap, together with 11 men, visited Fort Clatsop". "About 1810 the Cathlamets moved across the Columbia and joined the Wahkiakums in a village at the present site of Cathlamet." About 50-60 Cathlamet remained in 1849.
 * Ika'naiak, on the north side of the Columbia River at the mouth of Coal Creek Slough just east of Oak Point.
 * Ilo'humin, on the north side of Columbia River opposite Puget Island and near the mouth of Alockman Creek.
 * Kathla'amat, on the south side of Columbia River about 4 miles below Puget Island.
 * Ta'nas ilu', on Tanas Ilahee Island on the south side of the Columbia River.
 * Wa'kaiyakam, across Alockman Creek opposite Ilo'humin.

"The last speakers of Kathlamet died in the 1930's," and the tribe is no longer distinct from the Chinook people.

Queen Sally's Spring in Cathlamet, Washington is named after the former head of the Kathlamet people, who told stories about her memories of Lewis and Clark as a young girl.