When Lewis and Clark reached the northwest tip of what is now Oregon in 1805 they found some 400 Clatsop living in several villages on the southern side of the Columbia River and south down the Pacific Coast to Tillamook Head. Their neighbors, the Chinook, lived on the northern banks of the Columbia and on the Pacific Coast, while the Nehalem, the northernmost band of the Tillamook, lived on the Oregon coast at Tillamook Head south to Kilchis Point. They were all wealthy and shrewd traders, masterful canoe builders, with few enemies, and they treated Lewis and Clark with "extrodeanary friendship."
The captains found the tribal people talkative, inquisitive, intelligent, and possessing excellent memories of trading ships visiting the area. The tribes used a trade jargon, a mixture of several tribal languages, to communicate with other tribes in a vast trade network from Alaska in the north, down the Pacific Coast, and up the Columbia River to the east. The trade language, originating with the Nootka (Nuu-Chuh-Nuth) people in the north, included Chehalis, Nisqually, Lummi, Makah, Kathlamet, Chinook, Clatsop, Kalapuya, and other tribal languages. English words were added after contact with 18th century mariners. When supplemented with sign language, Lewis and Clark were able to communicate with all the coastal people. The trade language is known today as the Chinook Jargon.
“At this place we had wintered”
The Corps of Discovery wintered at Fort Clatsop from December 7, 1805, until March 23, 1806. During that time, Clatsop and Chinook Indians, whom Clark described as close bargainers, came to the fort almost daily to visit and trade. The captains wrote often in their journals of these tribes’ appearances, habits, living conditions, lodges and abilities as hunters and fishermen.
Friendly relations prevailed between the Clatsop and the explorers through-out the winter. When the Corps departed on March 23, 1806, Lewis and Clark left the fort and all of its furnishings to Coboway, one of the Clatsop leaders, who “has been much more kind an[d] hospitable to us than any other Indian in this neighbourhood.”
On January 8, 1806, Captain Clark and a small party of men were visiting some Tillamook and Clatsop people near the Necanicum River (in today’s Seaside, Oregon). In the evening, McNeal went off with a woman, through an arrangement by a Tillamook man – a man who intended to kill McNeal and take his possessions.
Middle Village - Station Camp, has interpretive panels to inform visitors on the Chinook Indian Nation history, as well as telling the story of early contact, the Corps of Discovery, and the town of McGowan.
On November 15, 1805, after a year and a half of traveling west, the Corps finally saw the Pacific Ocean near Chinook Point. Intense thunderstorms finally subsided on the 15th, which allowed them to move four miles west toward Chinook Point. Boards from a temporarily deserted Chinook Indian village nearby were used to erect shelters. For the next 10 days the Corps used Chinook Point as a base camp to explore the surrounding area, and find a site for their winter encampment.
Named for the abundance of Tansy Ragwort that grows here, Tansy Point in Warrenton, Oregon, has a long history of human occupation. Before the arrival of Europeans, Chinook villages stretched along the numerous waterways that fed into the Columbia River, including the area at Tansy Point. It was here, on November 24, 1805, that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Corps of Discovery paused to take a vote on their next campsite.
Sites:Cultural Resources, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Lewis and Clark National Historical Park
In 1840, Celiast Smith, a Clatsop woman, returned to her homeland at the mouth of the Columbia River after two decades. It was a moment of immense joy, as people rushed into the river to bring her ashore. Today, Celiast’s long and eventful life can be traced through three different objects: a shellfish basket speaks to her youth and homeland; a thimble represents her defiance against colonial structures; and a family plate captures her ongoing legacy among her descendants.
In Sept. 1930, the largest gathering of intertribal indigenous leaders ever filmed was held to document American Indian Sign Language. But, this wasn’t the first time AISL was mentioned in the American historical record.
During the long winter of 1804-1805 at Fort Mandan, William Clark painstakingly summarized what was known about the Plains Indian tribes. This enormous chart was his attempt to collect a vast amount of information into a neat, systematic format. If he only had a PC with Excel!
The footwear of the Corps of Discovery initially included Euro-American styles of shoes and boots. But according to Robert J. Moore Jr. in his book “Lewis & Clark, Tailor Made, Trail Worn,” the leather shoes of the Expedition were likely some of the first items the men exchanged for Indian styles of footwear.
Sites:Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail
In traditional Hidatsa society, women constructed, owned, and maintained the earthlodge, or awadi. The elaborately designed structure was home to between ten and twenty people, often sisters and their families spanning several generations. Today, shallow depressions mark the locations of the earthlodge villages at Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site in North Dakota.
The men of the Expedition were eager to find the Shoshone Indians in mid-August 1805. But while they searched for the Native people, Captain Lewis noticed near Pattee Creek “a species of honeysuckle much in it’s growth and leaf like the small honeysuckle of the Missouri only reather larger and bears a globular berry as large as a garden pea and as white as was.”
