A Nation Named on the Map
The Clatsop people, a Chinookan-speaking nation occupying the south side of the Columbia River near its mouth, gave their name to the expedition’s winter quarters — Fort Clatsop — and to a substantial portion of the ethnographic record produced there. Between November 1805 and March 1806, scarcely a week passes in the journals without a Clatsop visitor at the gate, a Clatsop village mentioned along a creek, or a Clatsop custom being recorded by Lewis or Clark. The volume of material is so large that this synthesis can only sketch its outlines.
The very decision to winter on the south bank of the Columbia turned on Clatsop testimony. On 24 November 1805, with the captains polling every member of the party — including Sacagawea and York — the majority voted to cross the river to investigate a site recommended by local Clatsop people. That recommendation became Fort Clatsop.
First Encounters and the Site of the Fort
Whitehouse’s account of 18 November 1805 describes the Corps pinned on the north shore by waves that “roled mountains high.” Once across, Clark on 8 December 1805 set out with five men to find a route to the sea and a salt-making site, traversing the marshes, prairies, and “Sackay Commis” flats of what is now Clatsop County. The river beside the fort, Lewis recorded on 28 January 1806, was renamed accordingly:
“The River on which Fort Clat Sop Stands we now call Netul, this being the name by which the Clatsops Call it.”
Comowool and the Daily Diplomacy of the Fort
The single most-named Clatsop individual in the journals is the chief Comowool (also spelled Comowooll, Conia, Como-wool). On 3 January 1806, Lewis recorded his first major visit:
“At 11 A.M. we were visited by our near neighbours, Chief or Tia, Como-wool; alias Conia and six Clatsops. they brought for sale some roots buries and three dogs also a small quantity of fresh blubber.”
Comowool returned repeatedly — on 17 January 1806 bringing roots and berries and accepting a moccasin awl and thread for a skimming net; on 24 January 1806 helping Drewyer and LaPage transport elk meat from near Point Adams; and on 25 January 1806 departing again at dawn. Clark on 17 January noted that Comowool gifted roots and berries freely, marking him as the expedition’s most consistent Clatsop ally.
A second named figure, the young chief Cuscalar (or Cuscalah), appears on 24 December 1805 with two young women and a brother, presenting mats and roots. When the captains could not produce the files he then asked for in return, the visit soured — a small but characteristic episode of the cross-cultural misreadings that defined the winter. Lewis met still another leader, “Tia Shah-har-war-cap,” on 10 January 1806, though that man was a Cathlamah rather than a Clatsop proper; the journals frequently pair the two nations as speaking the same language and sharing customs.
Trade: Hats, Otter Skins, and Hard Bargains
The Clatsops’ reputation in the journals is overwhelmingly that of skilled, patient, and exasperating traders. On 4 January 1806 both captains independently composed nearly identical passages on Clatsop commercial style. Clark wrote:
“they are great higlers in trade and if they Conceive you anxious to purchase will be a whole day bargaining for a hand full of roots… I once offered a Clatsop man my watch a knife, a Dollar of the Coin of U State and hand full of beeds, for a Small Sea otter Skin… he immediately Conceived it of great value, and refused to Sell unless I would give as maney more beads.”
The blue bead — “Tia com ma shuck or Chief beeds” (Clark, 17 January 1806) — was the universal solvent of Clatsop commerce, and the Corps’ supply of them was perilously thin. On 19 January 1806 the captains spent their last six fathoms of blue beads, plus white beads and a knife, to obtain a single sea otter skin.
Clatsop manufactured goods drew the captains’ admiration. The conical, brimless rain hats of cedar bark and bear grass — purchased on 19 January and again on 22 February 1806 — were singled out as remarkably waterproof and well-made. On 22 February two Clatsop women delivered hats made to measurements Lewis and Clark had earlier supplied:
“two of those hats had been made by measure which Capt Lewis and my Self had given a woman Some time Since… they fit us very well… the woodwork and sculpture of these people as well as those hats and the water proof baskits evince an ingenuity by no means common among the Aborigenes of America.”
The Whale at Ecola
Clatsop information drove one of the winter’s most memorable side journeys. When word arrived that a whale had stranded south of the Columbia, Clark organized a party in early January 1806. Sacagawea’s insistence on joining (related in the editorial summary for 6 January 1806) is well known; less remembered is that Clatsop guides and Clatsop intelligence framed the whole expedition. By 8 January, Clark was at the whale, finding only a 105-foot skeleton already stripped by the Tillamooks, and bargaining — “Close and Capricious” trade, he wrote — for blubber and oil.
Ethnography: Houses, Canoes, Burials, Smoke
The Fort Clatsop journals constitute one of the richest early ethnographic records of a Northwest Coast people. Clark and Lewis on 18 January 1806 described Clatsop plank houses 14 to 20 feet wide and up to 60 feet long, framed on split-timber posts and accommodating multiple families. Their canoes, Clark wrote on 1 February 1806, were “remarkably neat light and well addapted for rideing high waves… cut out of a solid Stick of timber” of arborvitae or fir. Their burials, described by Lewis on 9 January 1806 and observed by Clark the same day near the Tillamook villages, placed the dead in canoes raised on cross-bars between upright posts, wrapped in robes with paddles and possessions.
Lewis on 8 January 1806 marveled at Clatsop tobacco-smoking technique:
“in the act of smoking they appear to swallow it as they dran it from the pipe… they inhale it in their lungs untill they become surcharged with this vapour when they puff it out to a great distance through their nostils and mouth.”
On 30 January 1806 Clark observed that the Clatsops “never ware ligins or mockersons which the mildness of the Climate I presume has rendered in a great measure unnecessary.” On 2 February 1806 Lewis described their hand-game of hiding a small piece, played with songs, and very similar to games of the Shoshone.
Friction, Theft, and the Limits of Friendship
The relationship was not idyllic. Clark on 4 January 1806 judged the Clatsops “a mild inoffensive people but will pilfer if they have an oppertunity.” On 12 February 1806 a Clatsop man arrived bringing three dogs as restitution for elk his nation had stolen — though the dogs ran off before he could deliver them. On 18 February 1806 visiting Clatsops and Chinooks made off with an axe. On 3 February 1806 the captains worried openly that knowledge of where Drewyer’s seven elk lay would lead to their theft.
Yet the Corps depended utterly on Clatsop tolerance and trade. The captains’ New Year’s Day order of 1 January 1806 setting rules for the party’s conduct toward the Indians presupposed continuous, peaceful contact. Clatsop demonstrations of Drewyer’s marksmanship and Lewis’s air gun (24 January 1806) were calculated to deter any hostility — but the daily reality was visiting, smoking, haggling, and occasionally sleeping inside the fort.
Departure and a Final Gift
The expedition’s parting act toward the Clatsops was, characteristically, mediated through Comowool: the captains formally gave him Fort Clatsop itself as the Corps prepared to depart in late March 1806 (an act narrated in entries beyond the sample reviewed here). What the sample does show, across more than fifty entries, is a nation observed at unusual length and depth — traders, hat-makers, canoe-builders, whalers’ neighbors, hosts — recorded by every captain and several enlisted men through the wettest winter the Corps would ever know.
A Note on Sources
Within the entries provided, the Clatsops are described chiefly by Lewis and Clark, with supplementary observations from Whitehouse and from the editorial summaries that frame the Christmas, voting, and whale episodes. Ordway, Gass, and Pryor appear in the record as actors interacting with Clatsop people but are not the principal narrators of Clatsop ethnography. The density of detail reflects the captains’ deliberate use of the winter encampment as a period for systematic observation; sparser nations elsewhere in the journey received nothing comparable.
