Clatsop Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

Doug Durr on Clatsop and Chinookan Land Management

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:08 +0000

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome to the ten voices in the qu Discovery 2 tell you guys a little bit about us if you haven’t joined us before we are a traveling exhibit we’ve been traveling the trail since January of 2003 when we started out at oneill at Thomas Jefferson’s home made our way Westward to the Pacific Ocean and next year we’ll be doing the return trip back to St Louis we’ll open up March 13th in St Helen’s Oregon um as well U we call this the T voices because we bring in people from all over the country to do programs for us to tell ly Clark Story as long with the Native American story as well the over 50 different tribes they met along the way today we have with us Doug durur who’s from the University of Washington and he’s going to be talking about the classup and the halum living on the land so please welcome Doug hello and thank you very much for showing up today uh as was said my name is dou dur and I’m a researcher with the University of Washington I work with tribes all over the West um trying to document things like traditional environmental knowledge and uh historical knowledge knowledge tied to particular places on the landscape and I do this through the University of Washington through other connections working directly with American Indian tribes around the western part of North America uh through the University of Washington through the University of Victoria where I’m at professor as well of the University uh Victoria uh School of Environmental Studies and the classic theum though from here of uh the people who lived here are particular interest um because this is home to me here this is where I’m from and uh the part of my family where we have a written record they wash a Shore here in the 1840s and develop connections with the tribes living here uh they wash a Shore and actually take up homesteads here in Seaside just as ston from the large Village that was out here and so we had these long connections going back and so those con connections continue today and uh we know though that these these people who are here clap flip primarily but also the nalum or Northern tum people who were up here some of the time sh know people from up North they were here for a very very long period of time they learned a lot about how to live in this place and there’s been a lot that we have learned we being people from the outside being my family being researchers had learned from these families uh about how to live here and how to live here well and so over the years the class of people the people who lived here in Seaside have been scattered in a number of different directions and today we have people who class of food went North some of them went up across the river and those people ultimately became hard of of what we now now know as the chinuk nation or the qual nation further north and we had people who got scattered to the South as settlers came through and started to move into the area we ended up going south and some of those people became part of what became the CET tribe the grand Ron tribe and the class of nalen people who are a mixture of people from different communities up in down the coast and so the class of people today have scattered the people who lived here the descendants of the people who lived here have scattered and yet they’re still around in fact I’d like to ask if there’s anybody here who’s a descendant of class of Chinook people anybody interesting first talk I’ve given in a while but we haven’t had a few of those folks here there are a lot of them around and even though we tend to think about these people having disappeared this is what you hear in all the textbooks the truth is they survived and they adapted they married into other tribes but they also married into the white families coming in from the outside and they became a seamless part of the community and today ironically when I do the numbers I see that the uh the number of people living today who are descended from the communities right here in the seaside is is larger than the number of people who is here who were here when Louis and Clark were here they have more living descendants today that doesn’t mean that the the class of people are all uh living exactly as they did 200 years ago but they haven’t disappeared theyve become part of a much more complex sort of social fabric like there and so I’ve had the the uh privilege of working with a lot of their their elders and working a lot with the written materials things that their grandparents and great grandparents told people who were passing through the area and so it’s on the basis of that information that I talk today uh about the history of this very immediate area here and this way of life that has in some ways been swept away even if the people themselves carry on today but I think it’s very important if you leave here to to know that at very least these people haven’t disappeared it isn’t an extinct people like you’re reading all the textbooks we really have descendants all over some living here in Seaside some still practicing certain parts of their cultural tradition but that being said I’m going to talk a lot about people as they lived in the past I’m not going to talk so so much about how modern day Classics drive around in SUVs and go to the grocery store and do things there though that’s what they do but instead talk a little bit about just how these people liveed here on the land we know that there were several large villages right here in the Seaside area right along the title Flats right along where the estuaries are and the people of this area fundamentally were people of that Estuary and in uary is a place where we have the fresh water come down and mix into the ocean and you get water that’s a little bit salt a little bit fresh all mixed together and you get all kinds of things happening there that’s where the salmon first come in and where you can catch the salmon that’s where the clams are all the different clams of plats of people here survived on are all found there in that Estuary a lot of other fish that you don’t hear as much about the flounder they had distinctive ways of catching flounder right out here you got out in the mechanic Estuary in the mouth there you can see all that those shallow areas and the flounder used to be thick there and the some people can still remember seeing their grandmothers go out and catch those fish by coming up and jumping on them you can actually get them because they’re nice flat fish and so you can catch them under your feet and you can hold them until you can reach down to the SN one and so there were all kinds of things like that to be found there the roots that grow in the tide flat almost everything that grows in the tide flat had some traditional use and unfortunately this time of the year there isn’t a lot of those things out out there there aren’t those things out there to see on the landscape I try to gather plants to show you and most of the plants I wanted to show you have turned around and washed away because it’s the wrong time of the year um and what this means too is that even though Lewis and Clark were here at this time of the year observing things very carefully they missed a lot because they were only here for a narrow period of time which is ordinarily a very wet rainy period of time I’ll have to take my word for that and so all the things they needed really were clustered around that Estuary we have this the SLO Edge grows on the SLO right on one those title Flats also called the basket sge people use this to make basketry and The Roots can be used for that but also these pieces can be stripped and woven together and turned into nice mats and that kind of thing so part of why I’m standing down here is so if anybody’s interested you can hand these things around so you can get a feel for them slle Edge that’s right or basket sge carrots of nuta for those who are taking notes it’s a uh a plant that grows all over we have a couple of types of SES that grow in side plats and the roots of these to this day there are some tribal Elders who still take care of these plants they go into there and they churn up the soil around where these plants grow they pull out only the roots they need and then they turn up the soil some more all around the perimeter what that does is it allows those roots to expand without a lot of friction without hitting rocks without hitting solid dirt and what that does is make nice long long roots and those roots are the best ones to use for making baskets and so there’s a lot of that kind of knowledge that still persists today the tops can also be madeit into various things too but uh there’s that management of the land really is tied to taking care of those roots making sure that those work a lot of food plants can be found there in the tide Flats as well one that I can’t show you here but which is all over is a plant that the Halen people at least we know I don’t know what it was called in classa but the Halen people called it Yeta and it’s a root that uh comes up has a flower kind of like a buttercup and you’ll see it out in the tie flass here if you know how to cook the roots and this is about the right time to gather it tastes just like a sweet potato and it was one of the primary starch foods that was going to offset all that sand and clams and everything else that people laid here very important plant and when you go out at the right time of the year and you look out over those tide Flats it’s like it’s like you’re in your SUV driving to the grocery store it’s everything you need out there you have all the plants to eat all the plants to make your baskets all the plants you need to do med medicinal work all those things out there on the tide flaps and there on the tide flaps too people traditionally fished around here and up and down this Coast we have some hint of what the how that worked there’s one Elder I’ve had the opportunity to work with Joe scoval who’s who was one of the last people raised in the community that was sometimes called squat town hobsonville down on Northern T Bay and uh some of his ancestors came from the village here in Seaside but by the time that the 20th century rolled around a lot of them were moving north and south and these people went South down to till Bay and that family has stories about how the hereditary Chiefs in that Community would take care of the fish as they would come up through those tide Flats they had strong beliefs that these fish were sensient beings like ourselves willing to make the decision to come up and and to give their life so that we might live here and so they didn’t want to disturb that they didn’t want to offend the fish by catching too many fish by using the fish wastefully and so the hereditary Chiefs would walk up and down the long Shoreline as people were fishing and they would regulate that they would tell people when they were going to set in the Nets they had they were going to they would tell people when they would stop fishing when they would pull those Nets out when they would stop fishing because they knew that they had reached a point where they could take care of their own needs for food they could take care of their needs for trade but they weren’t going to take much more than that because they knew that if they did that according to their Traditions the fish would choose not to come back not so much because you would overe exploit them which is how our modern day resource managers might try to explain that same thing but because the fish had felt violated by that that has overstepped our balance that out that gone outside of our relationship that we have with those fish and we know that probably over a very long period of time these people had the opportunity to witness cause and effect they saw the people a couple Villages down catch too many fish the fish don’t come back much after you keep pulling out too many fish year after year after year and those fish don’t come back and you learn that and that becomes part of your oral tradition part of your stories that you then pass on to your children and to your grandchildren to make sure that they’re okay to make sure that not only do you maintain that relationship but to make sure that your family survives that they have food to eat in Generations ahead so it’s important that that knowledge gets passed along Within These traditions and in fact doing the work I do up and down the coast has been amazing for me to encounter a few I worked with a few Elders who were raised very traditionally raised by families where they didn’t speak English raised by families that intentionally went out of their way to not teach the children things about the outside world and uh I I’ve sat there with Elders who who are just from a little ways up the coast speaking in broken English about how their great grandparents taught them that there were certain things to do with the fish one of the things I do in addition to working with tribes as I help with salmon habitat restoration work and we know that we can take very good care of those streams we can stop all the fishing we can make those the water quality just perfect get everything right and still sometimes the fish don’t come back now one of the reasons the fish don’t come back is because if the stream has lost all of its salmon there are no sandon carcasses in the water to feed the little bugs and if there are no little bugs there’s nothing to feed the fish it’s a very interesting thing salmon leave here they’re little tiny fish like this they swim out in the ocean they come back like this so they’re feeding on things out there in the water shrimp and little fish and all of that stuff that they accumulate in their bodies comes back up with them and it comes into these streams and they spawn and they die and their bodies are used to feed all the little things in the Stream we found that hundreds of different species depend on those carcasses for their survival and one of the species that depends on those carcasses for their survival are the young salmon themselves because they eat the bugs that eat their own their own family and so we have now gotten to the point of sem habitat restoration where we take carcasses from places like uh Seafood operations take those carcasses and put them in the water and the fish start to come back because there’s something that you’re getting the nutrients kickstarted within that system and so it’s fascinating me to work with tribal Elders who say to me and again great grandparents born in the mid 19th century who never heard anything about this modern science they will tell their grandchildren we’ve been told that we have to put the carcasses back in the water we do that because the fish need that so they can come back their physical body becomes part of the body of the Next Generation if we don’t do that the fish won’t be able to come back and if you don’t do that they’ll be offended and they will refuse to come back and that’s interesting because this is Cutting Edge science I’m talking about with this fish carage stuff and here we have confirmation of voice coming in from the 19th century to tell us how to do it right and for me that’s exciting because I can take that back to these resource specialist water day scientists and say look what the tribal Elders are telling us they’re telling us we have to do these certain things in relation to the fish and most people who come from a natural resource background think that we’re going to tell them well you have to chant certain words and spin in circles three times that’s not the kind of knowledge that’s coming down to me from these people it’s very practical knowledge it’s how do you keep your family living how do you survive how do you keep your children alive how do you keep your grandchildren alive so that’s the kind of knowledge that gets passed down through these oral Traditions it’s a form of scientific knowledge but it’s being passed down in a society where you don’t have writing so you teach children these things at the very early age and teach them how to navigate those things and to survive also down here around the uh well I’ll double back to that point a little bit I think that that’s an important point in terms of how to navigate and how to survive but I it should move up now from the title Flats move up a little bit higher the edge of the title flats that area between the ocean and the big forests back here and we know that the people right here in this area class of people T people Cho people all took care of the land in various ways and one of those ways was to burn the plants out from along the edge of that contact point between the forest and the tide flats and we know that the areas around the perimeters of the big Villages as you went further out those areas were full of good berry picking areas areas where people took care of those berry patches and made sure that those things grow well a lot of the berries that you find around here will do okay they will survive if they’re down under the forest canopy but they’re not going to thrive they’re not going to uh put on many berries they’re not going to really do uh put out enough berries you can actually feed your own family and so what we see here is that there’s a tradition of burning the edges of the forest going out and starting those fires and clearing back those edges a little bit and so we have stories from the elders passed down about all around the edges of what is now Seaside as you go around back along the edges of the hills sort of in that area between the the tidle flats and back in the trees all that area being excellent very picking at one time that was an excellent place to go buy a house I guess a lot of suburban yards there now bar picking areas are kind of few and far between but those areas were very very important and there’s still places around today where you can go and see evidence of that if you walk across the land here in Eola Park there’s some some little areas where you’ll still see berries growing and it seems strange cuz the forest should be covering it but it’s not Forest is back a little ways now the forest is moving in slowly taking over those areas now because nobody’s taking care of that land but you can still find those places nion Mountain you go a little further south in oswal West State Park South of us here as you drive through that area if you’re heading south along the highway 101 you look back on the south side that Hill slope still doesn’t have many treats on it trees are moving in fast because nobody’s burning it anymore but that whole hill slope used to be burned and there are excellent places there still to go pick thimbleberries and things like that because people took care of those places for years and years and years and years knowing that those plants would come back up also in those areas where some some plants like Camas I wanted to show you one of those but you know there’s one of these plants that was said to be among the most important in the diets of all the people along the North Coast it’s a plant that’s very pretty it has a blue flower that comes up in the springtime and it’s so pretty in fact the gardeners buy it now have both catalogs right there with their tulips and they put those in their yard and those blue flowers come up and they they’re spectacular they come up for just a little while and they go to seed and drop back down and the bulb is edible and if you can bake that you know how to do that right it’s very sweet very tasty and a lot of the elders around turn of the previous Century reported the Anthropologist coming through that the cus was their most important one of their most important plants right up there with that YCO rout I was telling you about on the tide Flats had also this plant grew right along the edges sort of wet margins where people were burning to take care of it and why I have all this buildup to tell you about this great ch plan just because I can’t find you any to show you anymore because they were taking care of it and nobody’s out there anymore taking care of it nobody’s burning those places to keep the forest back and the places where it was growing have also been built over and today canas is an extremely rare plant on this part of the coast it’s it is rare enough that people say from The Nature Conservancy other organizations that take care of rare plants be kind of excited when they see it around here it’s a plant that’s been rapidly disappearing in and yet 100 years ago Elders were saying they remember remember it was a staple plant they knew all about how to dig it where you could go get it fields that used to be full of it early explorers coming through here describe these Meadows and blue flowers in the springtime that were spectacular and without people taking care of those places without burning back the forest vegetation along the edges and people coming in building over the tops of those places bringing in livestock early on pigs love camet that get in they boot up for those C bulbs they dig up the ground and they heat up big patches and in fact in some parts of the the Northwest settlers coming in and reoccupying those C patches actually started off Wars there are fairly significant battles that took place in eastern Oregon when tribes Chas plots that they taken care of for Generation after generation were being uh occupied by people coming in with livestock for the for the outsider they would see those things they’ say what a great Meadow it’s a nice natural spot I’ll set my set my animals Lo not realizing what kind of investment of Labor and personal energy and all those things that went into that particular piece of land that looks so nice it looks like a nice natural Meadow H the WAP the WAP that’s a good question the WAP doesn’t really grow down here on the coast it grows a few of them grow here on the coast but the big WAP grounds were further up the Columbia River the WAP is a fascinating plant and even though it’s not from this area I’ll go ahead and tell you a little bit about it because it’s so close that’s right and it was available in large quantities to trade from just up River the real Central core of WAP Gathering along this entire Coast is the Zone from about Portland to Long View what some people call wapo Valley historically that’s another plant that’s becoming increasingly rare although here and there on his is like savi’s Island outside of Portland you still see WAP growing in some of these natural little SES and WAP it’s actually um Chinese food you have uh little white things um waterest is it relative of that uh Sagittarius they’re both the same no but they’re both the same genus and so if you want an idea of what that’s like it’s kind of people call it the Indian potato around here sometimes but it’s the same it’s the same basic size little round bull blet that grows in Wetland areas uh up on the Columbia in fact it grows it likes a very specific kind of wetland area which is a real interesting thing it’s one of the things the science books I was talking about estuaries here were the salt water all mixes and textbooks never talk with you much about intertitle freshwater wedings but that’s that’s in fact what the wapo really likes cuz the Columbia River it hits that incoming tide and what happens is you get salt water in the mouth of the Columbia River but the further up you go you no longer get much salt water but what you get is the tide still affecting the river level so the river all the way up into Portland is going up and down and up and down with the tide even though there’s no salt water that gets that far up and so the WAP is sort of uniquely suited for that kind of environment where you have the water levels going up and down and up and down it’s actually a plant that can grow right in the water so you have to Buble it in the mud and then a long stem coming up in the leaves and a pretty little white flower up on the top and those were gathered by the chinookan people from just a little bit up River and Classics down here had families up there they had kinship ties to the people all the way up the river and trade ties and everything else and so they traded things down here that they had for wapo from just up the river they were they were slightly different people but they spoke more or less the same language and uh they had these kinds of connections and so people down here for example would have things they would gather whale oil was an important commodity and seal meat and seal oil things you can get down here along the Waterfront they also me very good canoes down here sometimes those are traded further up River and they would trade those for a variety of different things and WAP would be one of those things they could get also for that matter some of the people from down here here seem to have had uh kind of de facto plant Gathering rights up River because of those Family Ties and so they you actually hear stories clear into the late 19th century of people jumping in canoes from all the communities along the coast and going up the columia both to fish salmon at some of the falls all the way up to uh Bonville solo area but also Gathering wa as that came back down through and so it wasn’t a plant that really grow grew much here here but it was one that was close enough and they had access to so it was a very important part of the trading economy here and those car pick up on that um it’s also a very good plant to store so most of the plants that Louis and cl are talking about they’re not actually seeing people out Gathering much of this stuff because it’s the winter time it’s not the time to gather berries it’s not the time to gather most of these plants but they are seeing those plants coming through and those WAP are being traded all up and down the river all through the winter time taking care of people so okay right it can be propagated here yeah it does well in we setting so you can put it if you have a pond in your yard you can get some going a nice muddy base if if the water isn’t too stagnant you need a little bit of flushing and then I’ll go further back up into the mountains and come back down for a while and then we can open up for more more questions here these are good questions but taking things up further into the mountains some of the big mountains unfortunately we can’t see it here but if you were to just walk out anywhere Seaside look up you can see these big mountains all around here we have CLE mountain and we have Sugarloaf Mountain and we have onion Peak and we have Angora Peak these are all these this Ridge of mountains about 3,000 ft high at the tops going more or less from Northeast to Southwest terminating hitting the ocean where the a mountain is and the tops of those Peaks are high enough that everything’s a little bit different up there and we know that while I’m talking about the people of this part of the world spending a lot of time down along the tide flat spending a lot of time around these estuaries certain times of the year summer being a good time to do this people Tre further up into the mountains and up there you have plants that you just don’t find down here in fact there are some plants that are endemic to the tops of those Peaks right up here you don’t find them anywhere else on Earth because they’re completely isolated from other mountain ranges all around this area so they become completely isolated but people would go up there and gather plants for medicines they would gather a certain kind of grass be grass that’s especially tough and sharp very good for making real rigorous baskets real tough ones also people would use that for making designs on bask B because it takes D well so you can dye at a certain color and do all the ornate basket work and up on these ridges along the Coast Range here people also went up and um well gathered onions onion Peak is called onion Peak because of the fact that the whole side of that thing it’s all private Timberland on the way up there so it’s hard to go look at this but you stand at the base of some of these Baltic outc crops that go up 500 ft above your head and it’s real rough and each little pocket on the side of that rock has a little bit of dirt and each little bit of dirt has an onion going out the side of it it’s a pretty cool spot and people would go up there to gather large quantities of these onions which are can be eaten just like our own onions the top meat like green onions little bulb can be used like a wet and so that was being gathered up there but also there were hunting areas up there elk hunting areas and uh we even have stories about people going out and hunting the ridgetops kind of like you hear about the Buffalo further east people would actually flush those elk off the tops of the cliffs chase them places where they knew they would have to go around some Corner around another rock and then oh there’s a blind corner there that goes off the edge of the cliff and people knew where those things were and they would chase the elk over the edge some of those Cliffs are actually high enough it’s hard for me to imagine hard for me to imagine picking up the elk at the bottom but that was done and also up the tops of those mountains you have a lot of different places that were being visited for ritual purposes as well a lot of other important places like that a lot of stories tied to each one of those Peaks and so all of that was part of this continuous process of using the land year after year going in these Cycles going to these different places and taking care of different areas as people move around and so each part of these Journeys that people would take across the landscape cumulatively provided them with all the things they needed all the food they need all the medicine for the clothing they needed and so forth and so I may actually um cut things a little bit short here I do want to get into to questions and I also see the executor showing up but um I should say though as a closing though that this all this knowledge I’m talking about I guess it’s it’s interesting people talk with me about these kinds of tribal traditions and are they relevant today and I I they often seem to think that this is kind of antiquated stuff it’s something out of the distant past but like I’m suggesting there are a lot of things can be learned from this sort of knowledge we’re looking at uh ways of taking care of the fish we have stories about simple things that seem fairly basic to us and yet they tell you how to uh how to take care of your family I was mentioning the importance of of not overe exploiting the fish because of not not just the sort of big cosmological concern about the fish but because of the Practical necessity you need those fish to come back you need to maintain that kind of relationship with those fish in order to keep yourself fed we also have stories about uh for example tsunamis here there’s a story about um about a tsunami takes place down near Indian Beach or uh ecola Point down south towards can Eola Park that area about a tsunami coming in and there’s a the place called the baskets there a lot of lot of rocks that look like overturned baskets if you look out there from Nia point in Nia State Park and the stories describe people seeing all of the the water is sweeping out and we know now having seen what’s taking place with tsunami is happening around the world we know that the water sweeps out first when a tsunami is going to happen that’s the dip before the crest comes and so the water starts to drop and drop and drop and drop and you hear this story all over the world actually because there are different times in history where people see that happen and they don’t know what that means and they get really excited because you can go out in places you’ve never gone on to before and so there’s a story from who knows how far back I assume it describes a real event a real tsunami because it’s so accurate but they describe that water starting to fall going down and down and down and down and the people in the communities down in that area we know there are several Villages down near can Beach get excited about that and they tell their young women look their muscles all over the Rocks it’s a great time for Gathering because look at all those places can get to that you never were able to get to before and all the young women go out into the rocks and start Gathering and all of a sudden we see that wave come up and it sweeps up and we know this has happened many times before on this Coast because we find the sand we find the drift logs sometimes a mile or two Inland and that wave comes in and it takes them all and in the story then only a few people survive they go up up high and survive and when they come back down they stand on the beach and and they cry for the young people who have been lost they cry for all those people and if any of you know Canon Beach you know that one of the things that’s always in the tourist brochures is as you walk over the sand it makes this squeaking sound as you walk and people talked about that is the crying Sands of Canon Beach and in this story they explain that they say those are the crying Sands that’s the sound of those people crying for the people that were lost out there in that tsunami and when you tell stories like that to young people you don’t need to drill them on what to do in the event of a tsunami when you tell young people stories like that you don’t have to worry about them getting excited and running out to check out what’s going on down there because they have this powerful lesson and not only do they have this powerful lesson but every time they walk up the beach they’re thinking about that lesson they’re hearing that sound in that sand they’re being reminded of that story you’ve told them and that’s pretty powerful because it teaches people how what to do and how to survive and we know that because these tsunamis do happen every 3 500 years in this stretch of Coastline there are times when you actually have to worry about that when suddenly after maybe a whole generation hasn’t seen it that water starts to drop back and I tell you that now I tell you this story coming back from who knows how many generations of of class ofum of people you see that water dropping keep that in mind and get get to High Ground so that knowledge is passed down in that way the knowledge has passed down in other ways and one of the things when you go to boy scout camp they teach you around this part of the world you can always eat the blueberries find a blueberry out in the wood is almost always edible white berries you don’t usually want to mess with those and in fact in the oral traditions of the tribes right here they talk about the white berries as being the berries dead people dead people who died eat those white berries that’s their food so you don’t mess with that and then as your Todd in Boy Scout camp those red berries you kind of have to know your berries some red berries are good some red berries are very good some red berries are poisonous or at least when makeing very sick and here too the elders came up with a way of dealing with this he tells stories about Helo around here the wild woman kind of like zonaa North uh if you know that name like a Bigfoot character but a woman sharp teeth sticks mos in her hair extremely strong extremely strong and dangerous and liable to even eat children and there stories say those berries are hello berries all the berries that are red out in the forest she thinks are hers and so you never eat those berries in the forest if you’re out in the forest walking around you don’t just pop one of those in your mouth the only place where it’s safe to eat a red berry is if you take all your berries and go back home with the rest of your family inside your inside your long house that’s the safe place to eat those berries because otherwise she’s out there in the woods she’ll see you eat her berries and she’ll get upset and she’ll come after you but what does that do effectively that makes sure that every time that little kids are out in the woods Gathering red berries they don’t just start eating them randomly out in the woods they bring it all home where their parents are where their grandparents are to watch what they’re eating to make sure it’s okay so a lot of these stories too you go through and read stories in in collections of tribal tales and it’s like well that’s what’s this crazy stuff about some wild woman who likes to eat children and thinks the red berries are hers that’s that’s crazy but the more you look at this stuff the more you understand what actually out there on the ground the real hazards to children out there on the landscape that’s where this stuff is coming from and a lot of that stuff is pretty sophisticated it reflects the fact that people spent generation after generation figuring out how this stuff works and then how do you tell children something about that or how do you explain to your community about that in a way that’s going to stay with them that’s going to remind them that’s going to keep them safe for generations to come and looking after those those children and grandchildren and so I think that there is a lot that we can still learn from this oral tradition and not just the tribal people although for them it is an important part of their Heritage but I think that this oral tradition you know the class of people when Louis and Clark came here we know that they were very good at sharing they took good care of their guests they kept an eye on Louis and Clark they made sure they had food coming and going and and uh they did the same for a lot of families they did for my family they did it for all the different explorers coming through early on you know and I find today the elders who are still Tred tied into these Traditions are happy to see the rest of us paying attention to them because it’s we all live here now we all still we live in this place we share this landscape with the people who lived here for Generation after generation after generation in a way those mountains we see around us that walk in front of us those are the things we share with those past Generations as well as concern about our children concern about our grandchildren those fundamental human things and the point of view of these Elders is you now have to live on this land you now have to take care of this land too you have to take care of your children and grandchildren and so we can all gain things from this we can all be inheritors of this oral tradition reflecting generation after generation and experimentation having on the land having to deal with the consequences if you over harvest the fish if you eat the wrong Berry if you run out and the tsunami is coming in and now we are all inheritors of that and stories have been passed on to me verbally they came to my ears now they come out of my mouth to your ears they’re all part of your knowledge as well so you all have that tradition as part of your knowledge too and so the old tradition continues and just as I said the classic people aren’t extinct they have descendence all over so too their oral tradition is carry on but in ways they probably could never have imagined so anyway I open it up for questions I heard that did everybody else he was asking is there a time when youth are trained uh to tell stories and the truth is that storytelling is is a fundamental focal point of social life within the traditional way and that especially at this time of the year as we get into the winter and again it’s hard for me to help you envision this because we’re having W winter or we’re not having winter weather we’re having weather that’s kind of like our Springtime but ordinarily we have and we will probably in a couple of days in fact if you stick around we’ll have wind blowing wind often howling out of the South as these fronts come in off the ocean rain falling horizontally it’s a very good time to go indoors and tell stories and for this reason actually one of the sets of stories I didn’t even really get into today but it’s very important in terms of this kind of teaching I’m talking about is a whole series of stories among the tribes about south wind who is in fact their trickster character uh like coyote further east or Raven further north south wind is here all the time in the winter blowing making your house rattle making the smoke back up and bow into your home and so you can’t forget about south wind south wind is everywhere and south wind is the one in the stories who creates a lot of the land forms out there on the ground and teaches people about how to live and how not to live and he’ll steal somebody’s fish for example and then run down the beach ways and fall asleep because he so full he has to sort of sleep it off and he’ll wake up incased in rock and he’ll have to break his way out of that rock calling upon the the generosity of various people who just about had it with him and it’s a long negotiation process to get chipped out of that rock so there those rocks are at the mouth of t m Bay and every time somebody goes in and out of that bay they’re reminded of that story you don’t take somebody’s food like that without permission you don’t take things that people and if you do you’re going to spend a lot of time negotiating yourself out of a pit or out of a chunk of rock to come to the surface so that knowledge is all there on the landscape but the South Winds would be blowing all winter long while these stories are being told so a lot of this knowledge is being discussed being passed along around the fires in the winter time and in fact in this part of the world more so than in some other tribes I’ve worked with some tribes stories are told and then children learn those stories just by hearing them over and over again here there was so much of a premium placed on passing down the information very accurately that they would actually drill children sometimes in learning these stories line by line so that they would they would learn learn them wrot so that the next story teller would know those stories just perfectly and for that reason it’s really interesting because I can go back to old archival accounts somebody interviewing One Elder in 1900 another Elder in 1930 and you can almost get the exact same wording boom boom boom boom boom and it’s that kind of cultural knowledge we don’t do that so much in our society with stories we do that with songs we can say oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh but we don’t teach children to sing well you know it’s really great to jump in a sleigh and ride down through the snow with a horse one his best kind of fun you get that kind of Rhythm to it and and those things stick in your head and so that’s the way that those things are being passed on to the children but it’s really from from infancy on they’re being exposed to these stories and then some stories being told out on the landscape when the landscape feature is there that story is tied to that landscape feature but an interesting thing one last thing I should mention about the south wind stories is that there there was a belief that you shouldn’t talk about south wind you shouldn’t retell the south wind cycle out of season because you’d be inviting Misfortune you in fact would cause it to go back to wintertime because that’s a wintertime story so you start telling South Wind Stories the wind may go south on and you’ll be uh having to puddle indoors again because that’s that’s the time so many questions here question how long does the uh did the waves stay out in a tsunami before they come in how did they have enough time to go out there and and Fiddle around shelves you we don’t have a geologist or do we have a geologist in the crowd it’s a few minutes few minutes not very long and it depends on the the size of the wave and the variety of things but it’s a few minutes I heard from an earlier presentation the importance of the cedar tree that’s right and I was wondering if there’s any Traditions you can share in terms of relationship with the either Force management Cedar well that’s that’s a good point I brought along some cedar I brought along several pieces of trees people thought I was going to give like a wreath making demonstration or something but all hand this these are two pieces of Cedar uh gather actually gathered right in the middle of an area that I know was in a halem cedar Gathering area at one time the cedar trees there there’s so much there I could do a whole separate talk to on the cedar trees because cedar trees were the source of the wood for the houses the canoes the bark can be peeled off and if you pound it just right and soften it up the fibers come loose and it’s almost like cotton you can weed things with it uh you can weave baskets and hats and all sorts of things The Greenery has medicinal uses and so almost everything uh that a person might hope for in terms of material culture in terms of those items you want to make for your living are found in a cedar tree and there were a lot of different relationships with those cedar trees that are worth mentioning I’ll just T touch on a couple here again just like fish the traditional world view is that these these cedar trees are they they give themselves willingly so that we may have those things and so people didn’t kill cedar tree unless they absolutely had to and so for example around here people would take planks off the sides of the trees without killing a whole tree or they take cedar bark off the side of the tree that’s actually possible you can come up to these cedar trees and up in British Columbia I’ll still find places where people still have done this recently enough you can find the scars on the side of the tree you can come up to the side of the tree put in some wedges hit them up and it has such a long straight Rin that starts to split off the tree a little bit and because these people had a lot a lot a lot of patience I guess you say the tree sways back and forth and over time that splits a little bit and then maybe come back the next day and boom notos wedges up a little bit more and that tream keeps doing that until finally pop they take off that whole plank cedar bark is the same way you’re going to make clothing out of it you only take what you need off of one side of the tree and over time that cedar bark closes up the tree heals that up it takes a long time that that can be done and if people were taking these things there actually certain things you apologies you make to this gear streak saying you know I’m sorry I’m doing this to you but I really need this for my family and we’ll do this respectfully and we’ll still takeing care of and take that stuff home I should also say that the the cedar trees for the canoes and other Woods where you really needed good strong wood people would often go way up into the interior it’s another use of the mountains I didn’t mention even though there were cedar trees down here people often went way in Inland because the cedar trees growing on the real Rocky higher elevation areas they had to struggle they grow slower because it’s colder rockier and what that means when it grows slower is that the Rings are tighter less growth each year less build up new wood and so from a if you’re a canoe Builder that’s a good thing because that means you have really tight grain wood very strong wood and so people would actually go way in the interior and chop these trees down I work with one Elder up north who still remembers doing this with his grandfather where they went clear up a mountain and they knocked over the tree and then it hangs up on the brush and they chop the brush and it takes about a day and then the tree slides halfway down the hill you go down the hill and they set have another base camp they clear the brush there out of the way Push It Rock it and pretty soon it slides the rest of the way down to the water front and then they can start working on cano takes two or three days to get that log down to the water and then they floated down the river down to the village where they work on so that wood was the premium stuff and there were stories that children would be taught again about these plants which I won’t even get into but there are stories about the cedar trees at different times and the spruce trees and all the other trees when they’re still speaking being asked actually by that same Wild Woman character you know uh she has gotten her face tattooed and she wants to ask them what what they think of it of course she’s pretty horrific looking anyway and now she’s got her face tattooed and she asks each of the trees in turn what do you think of my new tattoos and henlock tree which I don’t have here has the bad sense to tell her what he really thinks and she says in the future your wood is going to be totally useless when winds blow you fall right over nobody will make medicine out of you you’re not good for much of anything but cedar tree has t cedar tree knows what to say he says I think you look great this is always the right answer isn’t it he says I think you look great with that those tattoos and she says very good and you’re going to have strong wood in the time to come when people people are here this is before people arrive people will make canoes out of you they’ll make medicine out of your out of your Greenery they’ll make clothing out of your bar and you’ll be honored by all these people who will show you this kind of respect and so same thing happens with Spruce this tree is everywhere around here Spruce very Pokey I’ll hand these around Spruce also has a good sense to say fairly positive think Spruce is not given as many attributes as Cedar but Spruce it’s a great tree and a lot of the uses are medicinal pitch very important medicine uh spruce trees in some cases people go and put ceremonial regelia in the branches because it’s a powerful tree and you want those things out of the mundang world off the dirt off the ground and in some cases people even bury people up in trees up in the branches of these spruce trees with broad lateral branches sticking out and they laid those canoes or boxes right in the arms of that tree to take care of them so that’s very Poky by the way I warn you that a lot of the native names for this plant up and down the coast translate to the plant that really really really hurts when you grab onto it so as this goes around before War that’s why I’ve stripped the stems for you this will be our last question okay can you give us a glimpse of what it was like for families living in the long house seasonally how it would change yeah the the long houses around here they varied in size a lot there was the winter long house where the larger families gathered together and those were all made out of these big cedar planks they were often big open rooms some of the really big ones were as big as this the interior of this tent and you’d have extended families in them often two or three fires in a row down the middle some kind of large broad bench structure around the perimeter which served as sleeping platforms and often there were places to store things underneath that over the top of that and so forth and then there were rooms often partitioned off with small poles and uh woven Maps made out of various grasses even sometimes these guys and so you have whole extended families there in the winter time you it’s sort of a combined residential space and storage space because there’s so much it it’s not the time of year when you’re Gathering food it’s the time you’re living off the stored Provisions so there were boxes all over often big what they call bent wood boxes made out of sear planks that will be taken off the tree heat it up and then bent so that you take a single Plank and you bend it and you bend it until you get a box and then you put the top and bottom on and you get a nice wooden box and people will be living off out of the food or off the food in those boxes and those boxes would be decked out on those platforms and under those platforms and above those platforms around where people were gathered and so in the winter time people were living off of those telling the stories around the fires and holding winter ceremonials often when the biggest homes which happen to be the homes of the more powerful families um we’re hosting potash kind of events where they’re exchanging goods thank you and uh and also um sham shamanistic uh work where they’re going through and bringing in shamanist new healing work and that kind of thing in the winter and there as we get into the springtime people begin to mobilize they go to fishing places and plank Gathering areas and so there fewer people there at the at the larger houses but then you have temporary encampments smaller houses um there are temporary encampments like this that used to be all over the place and you can still see where some of them are as you walk over the landscape um and some of those were they look like shle simple shed structures often like the size of a garden shed sometimes where you have a family just sleeping for a couple of nights uh doing some fishing doing some plant Gathering maybe a simple shed slope like this rather than like this and um and they would move around between different locations where they had fishing stations and so forth and then people moving up into the interior as well sometimes in the hottest days of summer people sleeping out with kind of mat coverings again those woven mats being used over pole Frame Works way of the Interior fishing stations and so forth in the big Villages though at that time people would still be there um sometimes people would pop the boards off the roof so you got better areation and uh sometimes if people are going to go for a major fishing junket they might even pull some of the boards off and take them with them to go lean up to make the walls of the other structure they’re going to live in so they’d actually pick up those boards takes a lot of work to get one of those sear blanks off of a tree so you don’t just have you know a bunch of them here A bunch of them there a bunch of them here you sometimes have to take some with you to to go where you want to go and so in those different places you’d have smaller groups of family and then in the larger house you’d have a few people still hanging out usually elderly children those kinds of things Sing close to home and then as you get into the winter time then everybody begins to regroup and sometimes people who haven’t seen each other for quite a while for weeks or months would regroup and those extended families are back together in a larger village where they spend the year rest of the year say we’re out of time we should be questions for Mario stick

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Chief Cliff Snyder on Chinook and Clatsop history at Fort Clatsop

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:57 +0000

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome to the core of Discovery 2 and the ten many voices for those of you who are not familiar with us we are a child exhibit with’ been traveling the Louis and Park Trail since January of 2003 and made our way Westward to the Pacific Ocean we’ll also be doing the return trip next year in 2006 back to St Louis from the coast we call this the ten many voices cuz we people from all over the country to do programs and theend voices about L Clark and we also bring in charal presenters to talk about their tribe today we have with us Chief greay wolf Cliff Snider who is an honorary chief of the Shimmer and he’s going to be talking about the triel history at the end of the trail so please welcome Cliff Snider is this working can you hear me well here we are at the end of the trail and uh I want to tell you that I’ve been traveling with myin the last 3 days at the smiter in Portland Fort Vancouver and in order to C disappointment I see some of my people who have been following me all around and it’s good to see them here and I want to also tell you that I didn’t do a rain dance this week and that’s the reason why we have such good I want to say to youya clo is a chinook Indian word for hello or goodby much like aloa and I also want to say that I sometimes I fear following Roger wendley if any of you were here at the last presentation he puts such a great show and we’ve done things all across America all the way from here to monachello I would like to say also that I don’t go through the acts like he does but I will probably be doing a lot of reading off of my notes and I think you can understand that and it is a custom of most of the tribes Across the Nation to welcome visitors into their area and I’d like to take the honor at this point to welcome you to the Eternal homeland of the clat of Indian tribe who lived just a few miles from here in fact they had Villages right out here uh where the rivers go into the ocean above Seaside and geart and the class of tribe history actually goes back over 10,000 years by carbon dating and I’m using that in the same text I would the chook Indian tribe because all that separated us was a river we intermarried and uh we visited each other and we had the same language chin pan language and so nowadays you make territories this is Washington this is Oregon the river runs between but in those days we were just all Indians living here at that particular time to the south of us we had the Kil you’ve heard about the whale story uh and Below them were the nalum and uh then on the other side of the Columbia River were the lower Chinooks and then the claps of course were the ones that kept Len par at for clap during that winter of 056 and that was the second longest place that they stayed on their entire trip the first one of course was a man Fort mandad and we’ll get to that later and the third one was last month when I was visiting the T of many voices in CIA Idaho on the Clearwater River that was the third place they stayed the longest on their return trip I would like to take one minute and I don’t know if he’s back there in the audience some place to talk talk about a man who is a director of the ten many voices and core Discovery too I worked with him for 25 years on the chinuk Indian Council even though he is a cloud of Indian his name is Dick bash and he works with Daryl Martin and they are running this wonderful wonderful core Discovery all across America and the people who work here I tell you when I visit with them in different places they I’ve never seen one group of people worked as hard as they do to put on a great show dck bad okay big bash currently is the uh uh ceide resident and chard Baker who preceded him is now the head of Mount Rushmore so I’ve been working with some really neat people across uh in 2003 monachello uh Gerard Baker asked me to be the first educational speaker on the tour dick bash gave the first blessing and so we were right there at Mello and in Virginia in Charlottesville from the very beginning and here we are again at the end of the trail I feel very blessed to be a manello cameia Seaside and I guess in a few weeks I’ll be back in Forth Vancouver when we come back and uh I want to say something about Nick bash we don’t say great in the Indian language like great great great great like the white people do we just say great grandfather or grandfather well dick bash’s grandfather was Chief K or kable who was in The Young Bay area around asor the river and port platza and he’s the one that helped the uh B Clark contingent make it through that terrible winter of op 0405 well I’m getting mixed up on my days but anyway that before they return anyway uh when when LS and Clark left Fort CL and headed back to Jefferson they presented caway with fourth clat pel and that was kind of famous the last few weeks to understand because uh it burned down accidentally and so many times I’ve had my picture taken there and done interviews that it’s going it’s a great loss for me but in the other hand they’re finding artifacts there and they might rebuild it and it might be better than ever thank God we have Nick bash to okay uh one thing that uh we want to say about the classs in that time and you if you’re all oregonians or have been here a long time you know how much it rains he mentioned and for you people who are new from last presentation L Clark spent that winter here and and it rained every day except for 12 days and only six of those days that they even see a glimmer of sunshine so I think we’re very fortunate today I guess a couple of weeks ago when I were walking the ASO Bridge across there and doing some Louis and Clark activities and I imagine some of you were there I think you’d got rained up pretty hard now today my story is going to be a little different from the ones that you might have been reading about on this 8,000 Mi trip across America I’m going to be giving you the view from the Indian Villages look at these people coming who are they I’m going to give you the view the view that these are strangers in our land and it’s not going to be the same thing that you read about in The White Man’s history books so be prepared today to get a different version I would like to ask you though if I could see a show a hands how many of you have a trace of Indian blood in your veins would you please raise your hand wonderful there two or three I must tell you if you are part of Indian and people find this out all the time I know I ask kids this all the time I’m talking to the schools where the teachers are how many of you are Indians and said yeah my dad’s an Indian but they never say they are for some reason but if and all possible when I was a small boy walking down the street with my mother holding her hand people had passed by she was a half GRE indan but she told me never to tell anybody that you’re part Indian because of discrimination factors now we don’t see that today and after playing football at or State catching passes onehanded and being a All America golf coach and things like that wherever I go being an Indian I’m the one that’s different and being being different is my greatest asset in the world that’s one of the reasons I’ve even here today because I’m part of India so follow your bud lines back there if you’re younger uh sometimes there might be some educational opportuni there be very proud of your heritage and those are my days of being called floating Feather by my coaches in Oregon State and now my story how many of you studied uh anything about the Louis Clark trip most of you know the whole story then uh some of how many have read ger and they’re really up on everything there’s still a few of you okay the reason I’m asking you that is because sometimes when I’m talking to high school kids or grade school kids they haven’t had that experience but sometimes I find people in the audience who know a lot more about it for example like Roger he’s had all these journals and he’s been studying for years I have to get mine through Legends and talking to other Indians on the trail and sometimes they’ll tell me stories that aren’t in the white man’s history hisory books and you not something that coming along the trail and trying to relate these stories remember there was sign language but the Indians couldn’t write and so it would be very difficult for them to portray their history down to the line now I might to say that the way the Legends and the true stories are handed down comes through the campfires at night during the winter when they’re sitting around and the elders are teaching the young about what has happened and that’s how the history was handed down for example I told you you told her she told him told him back there got back to me the story would be slightly changed and we did it again the next night it would change again and by time the next year or so it would hardly seem like it would be the same story but here’s my son I talk to my son I tell him to repeat the story back to me okay he repeats it back to me no you have it wrong you do it again you do it again okay we’ll start tomorrow you come back and you do it again and I keep doing that and doing it doing it so that way when he tells his son the story is the same as when I told him and so that’s why when you read the history books it’s all written out and it goes on for ages but the Indian stories are handed down by Legends and so today we’ll talk about that but actually my reflections of this whole business of Louis Park goes clear back to president Jefferson and who set out to buy a little town on the mouth of the Mississippi River called New Orleans and I guess you’ve been reading about New Orleans and watching that on TV lately quite a bit but to get New Orleans was to uh dominate The River traffic on the Pacific so in negotiating with uh France who had just acquired that territory from Spain he found out that Napoleon of all people wanted to sell some land over here because he wanted to pay off his War debts you know Napoleon was always at War and so Jefferson sent an emissary over and they decided on what we now call the Louisiana Purchase and you know how much that was 3 cents an acre little less than we’re paying today around Seaside up there it amounted to $15 million for all the land from the uh East Coast to the Rocky Mountains 15 million well that was smaller than the the budget of the United States at that time when I was in CIA they asked the other speaker about how they pay off those that how do you get rid of it you know where did that money come from and I think President Jefferson died owing a lot of money I don’t think it probably ever got paid for but anyway we acquired the land and that was double double the size of America at that time remember at that time there only 17 states in the union and we only had 15 stars on the flag and when Louis and Clark were handing out Flags it wasn’t really a true emblem of what was really happening now I miss I did a war Cano over in IO a short time back and I told them how legs were handled down but I told him now I’m 80 years old and so I have to write things down so when I’m turning Pages I’ll hope you excuse me for a minute because I don’t want to leave anything out anyway Jefferson picked Mary weather Lewis and then Clark to explore this new region and he knew about uh a little bit about what was going to happen but really he didn’t know what was going to happen with the Indian tribes he knew that some French Trappers had gone up the Missouri River and he thought maybe there might be a river passage all the way to the Pacific coast McKenzie had done something similar up in Canada before that and the information he received back he knew there were different people out there some of them had never seen a white man so he didn’t know whether they’re going to be friendly or whether they’re going to be treacherous and just wipe out the whole Expedition the only knowledge he has Is that real close to monello and I just love the time when I got chance to be in that area and meet with those people cuz actually it was a sister city of uh the friends of Pacific here across the asor in Long Beach and so I got to go back with them too and see that particular area but the mon tribe was back there they’re unrecognized today like that she looks unrecognized by the way I want to tell you even though we’re unrecognized tribe of the United States government we got recognized under the Clinton Administration after 30 years of work and then the new Administration came along they took it away again but I want to tell you something we still recognize the United States government he didn’t know about like I said about being friendly or being Mass but I want you to just come with me and try and visualize in your mind remember on our trip in the bus and we’re going up to Columbia River and we were talking about visualizing what they went through as they came down and you almost get a clear picture even though it’s changed and there dams and things like that things have changed and almost every speaker talks about all the horrible things they went through they talk about the Bears they talk about the river problems they talk about Great Falls Taking a month to get around 19 miles I was there I went to the Buffalo Jump and I know how sticky that mud could be I don’t know how they did all those things but mainly I just want to say like groger said it was the Indians that helped them all the way now the Expedition had started out and of course they couldn’t begin until everything was finalized with France with Napoleon so they kind of sat in wood billies for a while I finally got into St Louis they little dancing and celebration and then they took out now for the next few hundred miles they start running into the oage Indians and the kapoo Indians I always think of that comic strip with the kapoo joy juice I didn’t know there Indians like the kiko but anyway they were and they just went for several hundred miles they run into the shauni Indians who are friendly no problem there and uh they were kind of curious about Lewis and Clark but they didn’t offer any resistance usually they went in their camps and they just uh did some talking tried to counsel him tell him that the white great white father was back in Washington and then in Iowa they ran into the uh otos I had the honor of making the uh reflection speech of the ver speech on the Lewis Park Trail in Omaha and near there was I got a chance to go to Council Bluffs and leis and Clark held her first First Council in with Indians where they just sat down around the council part and uh what they talked about was the great white father that now he was in charge of this land and now they would have to be subservient to him and not trade with any other Nation except America I don’t know how that sounds to you right now but that’s the way I was going at that particular time to cancel talked a little bit about the lotas we get into Lota country first of all you get into the Yankton Sue and of course there been a white man or two had been to that area at this point they still haven’t got to a place where the Indians had never seen a white man so they picked them up on a carrier it was covered with skins and carried them into camp and they had a big feast and they fiddled and they had a great time and that was swell so they decid okay it’s not going to be a bad trip at all well the other lotas the Tetons who were just up the river a aways and you heard about black Buffalo I can’t remember the other chief’s name they were just having a problem with L and Clark what they wanted to do because they had seen some white Trappers come through there is control it trade so they made High demands of tobacco alcohol Goods of every kind in order to let them go by and actually leis and Clark trained their cannons on them Clark decided to pull out his sword and I’m not going through the whole story so some of you read about it but anyway they finally left and good they left a couple of Chiefs and some of the women ride down the river ways with them and that seemed to satisfy them and they went on so here we are in a situation where we know that Indians can be Troublesome not every tribe is going to help us on the way now we run into the RICO tribes a lot of times they’re just sewn in with the Hiatus and the mandans and they shared entertainment with them they danced around the campfire they got out their fiddles and York got out he was dancing they couldn’t believe how well this black man could dance of course they were kind of curious too about his skin cover but they handed out some peace medals and some us flags at that particular point and here they still had some trade goods to trade off so that they could proceed and then they reached the Knife River and that’s where they found the Mand mandans and Hadas and this is the greatest acquisition of the whole trip a 16-year-old woman called Chicago and people ask me constantly how do you say that if you’re a Tri City you say sa Jia with a J some of L sh say there are no J’s in the language of the shis and it’s spelled with a G so for me to tell you uh how old she is where she’s buried there’s a lot of things that go on with that but this time she’s only 16 years old and she was married to a man called T shano anyway they had a new baby and it was just born just prior to the uh Expedition coming in there they decided anyway she’d been captured actually by the Hadas about 5 years before and had lived with them and so she could be very valuable in translating uh for different tribes and also giving directions and some people say she’s not as famous as everybody liked to put her but actually there’s so many places along the trail where she found food for them she’s able to translate for him and actually she was a greatest acquisition to the tribe and so they were hired on even with the baby and of course remember they had the dog Sean and here’s this great big party head off uh uh down down the road but anyway during that winter at Fort M course I mentioned it’s a longest they spent in any one place but the winter was cold the snow was 3 or 4 ft deep the Buffalo were scarce and they had a really a hard time making it to that winter as Roger says um if we starve you starve and if we eat you eat and actually they got along with the Indians so well they went out and helped them Hunt went on their trips with them helped them bring the animals back when they couldn’t find them and somehow or another they made it through that terrible winter they didn’t have too many good Winters I’ll tell you that now they haven’t seen any natives for a long time the grow bonds I want to call them gross Ventures but I guess they pronounce it Rob darl Mark who’s also part of this crew here one of the directors he was from Montana and of course you know the whole story about the great fall so going into that took a month and they finally got to ground that and they nearly lost the Expedition there but they weren’t seeing many Indians but then they got through that and now they are reaching the area of the headquarters of the Missouri they’re running out of water there is no passage all the way through and so Lewis went on ahead and and uh he had some of some of the core with him and of course you know the story they ran into some Indians and some women and they went back and Clark was going to come and the Indians were all afraid that they were going to kill him they thought this is the end of all of us and they knew another contention was coming of course s Jia was in the uh in that group with Clark who was coming up the river behind him so one of the things that Roger didn’t say he that I would say he told the story about the Skins being wrapped around but to make sure that this new Bunch with Clark was not going to kill them all they changed clothes they not only put the Skins around uh Lewis but also Cay wore his clothes with the idea that they wouldn’t be killed you know if they show to be friends and the story of a he a he he where they hugged each other and they hugged each other so hard he was almost tired of being hugged so that was good and then you know Chicago comes along and holy smokes this is her tribe and Kamaya away never walks as her brother and so from then on it was a matter of getting together and uh being friends again it was a wonderful homecoming and so they sat down in the wigwams they took off their moccasins and they smoked together because that was the story at the time that meant there’s a sign of s sincerity security now in order to proceed now they can’t use the canoes anymore so they’re going to have to have horses to carry their goods and this is where uh SC become very valuable because she had to work in the translation I’ll have to read this because it runs on a little bit Lewis spoke English to Lish who spoke French to shano sharo spoke TOA is Chicago Chicago spoke to kamay and Sh and that’s how they translated their bargain and they picked up some horses from them as I recall it was like 28 horses and one mule and the one mule would be more important to them than the 28 horses and then they were going north at this time in into uh Mont ten country and here they ran into the Flathead Indians and they bought 11 more horses and then they traded seven of the horses that they had for other horses and among them were some Colts and you’ll understand later how the Cults come into help him get across the bitters now they know that there’s no Northwest Passage and were steep they said steep like the like on the house and there were hardly any game living in bits you know now there are but those days they’re all down where it was Lush and easy to live now with coming as a white man they all been porched up in woods and on this they were starving and they had to uh kill a coats Colts and use them for food in order to survive and I told to people who have traveled this area by airplane Ron Lowry he’s both chasing Across America Uh Kevin cryst who works here with the tribe with the contingent and he says that is the only way that they could have crossed the bitter Roots is the rout that they took and they finally got to the wake per Prairie and in that Spirit they all offered them some food and the young triman looked at these people and said look at all these Goods say had maybe we should kill them all and take everything and we will be rich but as Roger has told you there was a woman there who had lived with the white people for a while and she had returned to Village as an elderly woman her name is what make sure when you’re reading about L and Clark journals that you get the book about what pise she said they were good men and do them no harm and that’s the phrase that you will see all over the Lewis Park Expedition and so they decided to do that and I’ve been friends with the N Pi for the last 3 or 4 years fact I’m going to speak at their signature event and they said well maybe we shouldn’t have let them go maybe we should have taken everything that they had maybe we’d still have our big Homeland now their reservations have cut into many pieces and they lost a lot of their possessions well they found a way to make canoes they showed them at Canoe Camp how to hollow out cottonwood trees not the cedar trees that we know of or but cottonwood trees you all know what cottonwoods like it’s really hard to work with they didn’t chip on it they burned out these canoes and they used fire and then chipped away after the fire and they made them so they were good enough to go down the Clearwater River and then eventually into what is now le and tri cities and all those places down the river and they just kept going in their their canoes were okay but they weren’t like an ending canoe that you hear about whe the chooks down further down the river they got to the where the Snake River comes into the columia right now I’m working with my on a project at that very point with a with a snake inter Ste Columbia and uh we all have that project done in a couple years but anyway it’s just awesome to see the change and how with the dam there ice Harbor and everything has changed the Snake River completely but they decided to go up the river and they uh met with the EAS even and the wabs and then they turned around went back down and they danced with the w the walls that’s one of the things they always talk about how had a good time dancing wait a minute there’s a human and what’s he wearing he’s wearing a red sailor jacket and they had sailor clothes on well we must be getting close and according to their Maps they should be about 200 miles from the Pacific Ocean CU here these humel Indians have been trading with the chooks at the mouth of river and they got sailor clo and by this time you know 28 ships had entered the CL River before Louis and park even got them so the Indians have been training with them for quite a while they left there they got the slil of Falls and the Indians stood back with their arms folded let’s see if they can get over these without losing all their stuff well the wos who spoke a ventian language and the wish Rams who also spoke the same language they decided they would just let them go over the falls and all the stuff that fall out and anything that’s on the shore belongs to us and that’s just what I mean I met Stephen Ambrose and I approached him with this one time and I said you discredit the CHS as being thieves and he says weren’t they and I said no I said anything’s left attended that’s yours that’s just their way of life and so tting don’t say that they’re thieves but probably were a little bit anyway they they got a couple of canoes over there old remember Slava Falls was only 40 ft wide at that time I mean between me and Roger at the back of the Tennant all further the was between the the rocks for the salmon were trying to run up over the top and Indians came from all over the West to fish at this particular site it’s very important a lot of people talk about the Salo Indians they weren’t Salo Indians they were Indians from all the different tribes there were chooks wish RS washos Bas everything everybody came there to catch fish because it was a tough place for the fish to jump over PS so we’re meeting these new kind of Indians and they got they look different The Man Dan are 6’5 Tex Hall Baker 63 65 head of all the national things American Indians and I’m telling him and know here we are we’re only 5’5 and we got flattened heads and who are these new people coming they got upside down faces and they look like Bears we’re going to be all killed no there’s a woman and a baby and when you had a situation like that with a group of men they’re not going to hurt harm us and so again Chicago wi was one of the reasons why they made it safely down the river and the Indian s said well we’ll let you pass we know you’re not an our party but there’s Indians down Gorge are going to take you out and so they had to worry about that well I got to a place going the walas of course were there and wasu police about where the town of wasu cus is now and Louis and Clark stopped there at Cottonwood Beach and they said this is probably one of the finest places to for human beings to live this side of the Rocky Mountains well of course is a good place to live 16,000 chips liveed in this area at that particular time I mean that from there to the mouth of the river 100 years 100 years before Columbus there was 6 million Indians living on the Columbia drainage and down to California and up to Canada on the coast 6 million Indians as you imagine how many of them have disappeared this time well we’re making by Portland for Vancouver now and we’re head heading on down to the mouth of the Columbia River and oh joy ocean and view what a mate that was my mother was born and raised and is buried at Pillar Rock Pillar Rock claims that’s where they saw thought they saw the ocean for the first time Roger says skak River I’ll have to talk that over with we get through anyway there’s a sign down on pill Rock now says that’s that’s where they were anyway a little story goes on they were they were a bad shape that Snooks found them and that uh Portrait by Russell had some Great Falls show Chicago way of doing sign language with my fourth gr grand grandfather Tom Conley that’s not the way it was the river was roaring the waves were hot the trees were falling and they were hungry they were starving and they weren’t protected in the Dismal Niche for a little protection the Indians bought them three fish and showed them a little place to survive and they finally made it and they ended up a Station Camp I’m going to be running out of time here so I’m going to run along I just want to tell you about how they de decided to go to Fort claton they had run out of trade gr so my grandfather found telling me he said they’re no use to us we’ve already seen 28 ships they had why don’t you guys discuss where you’re going to spend the winter so they had a vote some say it was a poll York voted first black men to vote Chicago voted Tu son sharo did not vote Shannon I say he was 19 Roger says he was 17 was the first one underage to vote so if you say there’s some things that happened there some first did happen but Steph Beckham at Louis clar college says that was not a vote that was a poll and Roger tells me he said Chief you know why they decided to come across river and to uh to the Oregon side I said well no Roger how come he said they didn’t want to pay the washon sales tax I’m going to borrow that Roger from now anyway they got for PL you know the story um Roger done that trail to the whale Thea Beach echola is the way that the chuks pronounced it and uh the class went with them of course those clat Indians they kept them through that whole win they help it’s kind of funny though every time the Indians shot an elk with a bow and arrow the arrow would still be in the elk and when D went out there and shot the El to have five or six arrows in it that was still living they they had to almost traing so that’s the way they kind of got their food but Roger and I were working on the trail I couple years ago from here across to the cola Beach and the state of Oregon wanted to call it uh the Clark Trail well I kind of resisted because the class have been using that trail for 10,000 years and park me over at once even though he took Chicago wi with him to get that BL from the wh well it molded around for about 2 years down the state and finally they invited Roger and I to come up for the big dedication and they decided to call it the classup loop trail and we’re very happy about that thank you Roger anyway uh so on the way back they made it through that terrible winter I’m going to end this said by just saying they hey finally they stole a canoe from the Indians they couldn’t bargain for one so they stole one they got up to the Cath lamet and they took the wrong Channel and it was a w from cath L who is come running after them and said hey you took the wrong channel the regular river is back here little ways so you can go back there but by way that’s my canoe that you stole oh it is well how are we going to work this out so they gave him three Oak skins and he was very happy cuz he had another canoe anyway and so they considered on and then they the scal Indians some chooks stole the dog Sean I he paid $25 for that dog back there so he done at this point go out and get that dog and return it or else and you have to take their lives well they started chasing the uh scools and they gave the dog and they brought it back and he’s very happy well they had a lot of different things but the only when I’m talking about being authentic I just want to tell you one story on their way back of course you know they made it back and that’s the reason we’re all here today and the only reason we’re here today is because as Roger says the Indians helped them both coming and going but but they ADM met uh Lewis fields and a couple others had taken a different course going back and uh they meant with some pyan black feed in as you know if you know about history of black feet to there’s still a war with the United States but anyway at that time there were some young uh black pans uh staying with them that night so they they B them and they danced together and they did the whole thing and but early in the morning these uh black pig boy I guess they’re probably teenagers or something start stealing their horses their guns and taking off with them well feels he runs after one he stabs kills remember in the books it always says there’s only one man died as a result of the expedition in Iowa of appendicitis and now we’re having this problem so there’s one white man died as a result and here’s he staus guy and L chased after the other one cuz he had his rifle or something and he shot him so now we got three men died as a result of the Expedition well I’m telling this story all over it’s not in history but it’s exactly that way so I’m sitting in my house Portland Oregon and I get a call from a black foot man who had met at monello and Omaha and St Louis and all along the way he said I meet you at the truck stop we have a cup of coffee so I told him that story about the cuz he was a black but this is waiting that Che he says that’s true the one that feel stabbed did die but the one that Lis shot survived so only two men died as a result of the some Expedition well I’ll leave you with that Kum from my heart to you how you Mery for coming today and I hope if you want if there’s any questions I’m going to be roaming around with Roger for a few minutes please come up and and we’ll discuss anything you want to discuss I Mery for me thank you so much Cliff for coming and speaking he’s also going to be speaking again this afternoon at 3:00 want to come back e e

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Jeff Painter: Clatsop Partnerships, Trade, and Resilience

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:57 +0000

good morning ladies and gentlemen welcome to the core Discovery 2 and the T many voices for those of you who have seen us before just tell you a little bit about us we are a traveling exhibit we’ve been traveling the trail since January of 2003 we started out at monell at Tom shon’s home and made our way Westward to the Pacific Ocean next year we’ll be doing the return trip back to St Louis uh in 2006 we call this the T of many voices CU we bring in people from all over the country to do programs on CL and we also bring in travel presenters to talk about their tribes that l park met today we have with us Jeff painer and he’s going to be talking about the Partnerships and resilience of the class and he is from the classic missry so please welcome Jeff p uh so good morning and uh I wish you a traditional good morning in in just a second here um explain about that song if you were here or coming in while that song was going on really different kind of beat to it real different kind of song than you’ll hear most places and uh that’s a gambling drum and uh it’s one of our gambling songs my grandma always called them lucky songs um cuz it’s supposed to make your side lucky when you’re trying to get the money off the other team playing gambling games and these games typically go on you know three or four days and nights I’d watch my Grandpa not leaving the gambling area and uh that’s a lucky song so you should all go buy a lottery ticket always says you know they make you feel good they make you feel happy and they give you luck so you go bu Lottery can see if they still work so I’m I’m going to welcome you in in Aro Jaron language and then I’ll say most of uh what I said in English so that you know what I said some of it I won’t translate but uh I might be able to explain that a little bit so uh close m so I said uh welcome to everybody here to my land and my family’s land and my people’s land U this land is still untreated unse unseated unpaid for um and we have squatters all over the place U and I’ll explain a little bit more about that but U and my my great great great great grandpa was one of those squatters uh George W cook for whom cook slow slew up in asor his name uh he was one of those original squatters but he had a good sense like most of the settlers to marry indan families that live as a native speak the native language and that kind of thing it really wasn’t until L and Clark that we had these oddballs that would come visit not tra build a house maybe not leave or maybe leave um couple of lost guys the rest of what I said was uh my family is the cook Butler Casey McMillan Family and we always say that so that if we’re dating I’m married and I’m not dating but if we’re dating that we’re not dating something we’re related to you know it’s not really good form so saying the cook Butler casing McMillan Family most everybody knows who those lines go down from all the way up to uh British Columbia and down to California our family is spread up and down the northwest coast but they all originated here at quat uh the village where Seaside sits um with a population of about 6,000 right before L Clark so real similar population level and uh our village is at necat and Ne coxet which are up off the side of highway 101 where Gateway Discovery Center is that the tribe is in and then the village in N which is up the L now called the L of Clark river um where the two lost guys built their house and and left in the spring of the next year that we’re celebrating um I said I I welcome you in the oldest way I ask for your ears to be open your hearts to be open and I have nothing but good words and no hard feelings so if you if you catch a tinge of bitterness anywhere in here it’s not really that way about you even if you li it’s about the way our people were treated and all the tribes have a very similar experience from uh L and Clark’s impact and then what happen after that so um don’t take any of that personally and at the end um I’ll sing a song or say a prayer depends on how much time I have that kind of releases all that so if you do pick up a little negativity or anything in there we we want you to let that go before you go out here so that this is a learning experience um um so before I get going see I’m already gone but I’m not among my people most of the people of the Columbia River the ni W our highest Chuck out here um before a Storyteller and I’m I’m a traditional Storyteller among our people and I also function that way among some other tribes that have adopted me so to speak as their speaker um this particular necklace is to speak for one of those people those people know what that means it means I have the right to speak on Affairs political Affairs spiritual Affairs whatever for those people um and before a Storyteller starts anywhere along this River they always start by saying what do you have for pay and there’s a reason for that we tell our stories mostly in the long house um at night time and during the winter around the open fire in the middle and still today it’s kind of held that way late at night after everybody’s eating and it’s feeling kind of sleepy then you ask for the Storyteller to tell you a story and the story might be a myth you Western people call a myth like a creation story or a kyote story it might be a story about geography a lot of our stories just simply tell us how to get from point A to point B but the geography is hidden within the story so that you remember all those places you can’t get lost cuz coyote starts at this mountain and then goes to this River and then some of them are like that some of them are stories about tell us tell us that time last year and Grandpa fell in the water catching his s so they’re contemporary things that they want to hear again and the Storyteller puts a Twist on those to make them funnier or bigger or easier um but they always start by saying what do you have for PID and since you’re not traditional people I won’t stick you to that and by the way a grandma has already bought you off which means um when I started speaking 25 years ago this one old grandma she said you know we don’t tell our stories except in the winter time and we only tell mostly inside our house to our children we don’t do them like this the way the modern world does and uh we always get paid Storyteller has to get paid and so the children would come forward with plates of food or maybe strings of dentium and hiap um or a coyote fur or a Bader or something that Storyteller would need in order to keep his job and travel from house to house and Village to Village and so she bought that off she said from now on nobody has to pay you and you can tell your stories any time of the year you want and she walked up on the stage and she swep $100 building and uh that’s a lot for an elder that might be a month’s income for an elder um but that’s the way those things are paid off she could have done that with a big string of hit this D tell she could have done it with a a horse she could have done it with a lot of things but she did it publicly in that way to say he’s not bound by that anymore and uh I know my Uncle Eddie edmo who’s going to be speaking a couple times during this event had the same thing happen his one of his aunties paid off so he can tell his jokes and his stories out of season now we happen to be in season but nobody’s painting so I’m I I’ll payt myself actually a little kid gave me this this bath hike the other day and so he’s probably paid for everybody for the next year um so you know a little bit about me so um the first question I usually get from kids by the way kids under the age of about 12 and older people over the age of about 65 or so um have no ability to edit they just say what’s on their mind They Don’t Really Care little kids don’t know any better CU they haven’t learned all our social niceties and older folks just really don’t care what you think of them cuz they’re you know they just got their opinion and so usually about this time in my talk a third or fourth grader will say how come you’re so dang white you know um where’s your horse in your T um what’s that funny thing on your head why aren’t you dressed up with a head addess and all that kind of stuff so to address kind of some of those issues I’m real real white um there’s some kind of Scandinavian desent on my mom’s side but we really don’t know what that is cuz her one of her relatives was left at the a doorstep of noran in Minnesota um we later found out there’s like an OE Olsen in her family and some things like that they give you a clue there’s some scand ofo and somewhere back there my dad’s side of the family is the clup branch of the family and they also have some French and some other stuff in there but most of our travel people will will agree whether you’re uh a native and identify yourself as a native doesn’t have anything to do with how much blood you got um you know for instance the charity nation has said as long as you have a drop right so blood Quantum is a federal concept that was used to destroy natives unfortunately a lot of tribes have bought into that and set their own government policies up to eliminate natives under a quarter or an eighth from being members um the way that native life is still practiced all throughout North America is what language do you speak how do you pray how do you live do you live with the Four Seasons do you know the plants from your area uh I can’t really be a classup and live in Oklahoma right I’d be something else I mean I could be class of by Blood but I’m no longer a classup because in order to be a native clup I have to be in my community I have roles and responsibili in my community I have to use the plants in my community and the animals in my community and the fish and and live through the Four Seasons so um I don’t know if that makes any sense to you but I’m pled because that’s the way I live and actually if you looked at the way I live tribally because my people when I was identified at the age of four for training uh my family is a family of heers going way way back and I was identified for training they couldn’t find anybody to train me now that doesn’t mean they don’t exist you got to be really careful about that it’s just my family didn’t know anybody that had the songs or the language or any of the ways of training me and so they picked the next best thing which was an elder by the name of Stony weeks that I believe is still kicking around and he’s a Warm Springs confederated tribe member so picked a close relative and uh he trained me for a little bit and then I went into drugs and alcohol and I don’t mean uh as a counselor that came later I mean as somebody that was really in bad shape and I did that for a lot of years and when I was coming out of that this Chalik Elder which is mispronounced chery in English um this chel elder who was running a gift shop and like most native people were in total camouflage she wasn’t wearing a headband in regalia and I couldn’t spot her and she took me under her wing and then I found out she’s a big time healer and head of the catua society back there and I worked with her for a lot of years and I really couldn’t pick up the choke ways that could help her but I couldn’t pick him up and I happened to be in a ceremony with her um she was healing this other medicine man that was lot and the minute he started singing his songs I knew what he was saying like I knew inside of me what the words were saying and I could sing them with him and uh I told her about that afterwards and she said okay well then I’m done with you you’re you’re his now I’m going to give you to him and the deal I made with her when she started working with me is she said your life’s no longer yours now it’s mine and I said good deal because I probably would have been dead within 3 more years if I would have kept drinking and using so you might as well have it so when she said I’m done with you I’m giving you to him that meant now your deals with him and so hulia who’s now passed over um I spent a lot of years with him and uh so my primary cultural training is actually in Lakota you know Lakota and Chalik um I currently work with a Dakota Elder and as well as a lot of other elders but um that’s my main training is Lota which is kind of odd right you got lots of guy with Lota and chal and Warm Springs train and that’s I find out now as an adult very typical of clat of people we had a lot of different cultures visiting here and playing around here and trading here and getting ship wreck here and uh discovering this place you know the number of guys that said I discovered Oregon or the Columbia River geez it’s a big long list way before Louis of Clark and then we you know now we discovered it it’s like how many times can you discover something where somebody already lives there I’m not really sure I just discovered Jim’s backyard cuz it’s the first time I’ve ever been in his backyard I think I’d like to name it you know I’ll name it Eola because it just sounds Indian uh and then I’ll start living in Jim’s backyard and never pay to live there that’s an interesting concept uh so I’m a big mix I’m a big mix of stuff typical plat up Behavior plat ups were the Walmart of the Northwest One Stop sh shoing and anybody here work for Walmart I don’t want to offend you too badly just like Walmart we employed slaves and didn’t pay nothing they had no Health Plan um the advantage of being at the mouth of the Columbia or trading with this we had a one for two sale all the time you’re probably used to two for one sales where you go and buy one gibl free if you came to purchase anything from us or sell it to us um we take two of whatever you had for whatever you wanted from us you paid twice as much so why the heck would you do that and I go into this a lot more in my talk on trading but it’s important for you to understand why would anybody pay a higher price than anywhere in the northern hemisphere for their goods well it’s CU if you came from Alaska or van Island down in the mouth of this River and you needed stuff from California or South America and didn’t want to go all the way down there and rest your life or all the way up to Salo or out to the plains to get your Buffalo you can get it all at tany point you can get it all here at quat where Seaside currently sits cuz all those people went through our doors at one time or another so we buy stuff from we’d also journey in our Oceano canoes which we just carved um the first one in about 100 years or so um but we journey down as far as anthropologists tell us down to point RIS in California up to Southeast Alaska and Vancouver Island extensively and I have a lot of relatives on Vancouver Island through near Mary and then up to Sal fall um and so most of those goods we brought down also as well as buying them and so if you don’t want to risk your life um you could just stop at Walmart here on the on the Oregon coast or at our cousin’s shop on the other side of the river the Shooks one of the shanut bands and get anything you needed not risk your life you weren’t getting a very good deal pricewise but it was a good deal in exchange for energy at time and then you could go on your way um if you read in and Clark’s journals and I don’t normally talk about this but because we’re here for LS and Clark it’s kind of interesting to know they spend a lot of time complaining about how much they’re paying for stuff you know a lot of time and anybody live like in a resort town like Seaside or Ashland or Boulder so you know what it’s like you know you don’t probably shop in town like I I lived in ashin for 15 years I never hardly ever shopped in town I’d go to for to get for half that price you know typically not half that price maybe 15% less or 10% less but if you’re in a tourist in the economy you want to leave that economy to get your everyday stuff and come back you know you certainly wouldn’t well anyway it’s an economics thing so these guys came they weren’t Traders and they didn’t understand trade there’s a lot in their Journal about chiefa Coboy and his daughter coming and trying to teach them how to trade cuz they were just failing miserable and uh they spent a couple days with them finally got them into the concept of making a deal isn’t as important as having a good time and they didn’t understand that they’d come in and they’d say I’ll give you and this is just an example this isn’t from the journal but an example is I’ll give you one alide for four be VAR ities right they just want to make the deal and check out through the clerk and go well the clots of half the fun is sitting there eating with you telling the stories gambling maybe losing some of your money or I lose some of mine eventually we’re going to trade for the be repelled and alide but first we got to get to know each other and kind of tell some stories and what have you been doing until you got here and that’s how we learned like newspaper what was going on so you come in as Lou and Clark and say here quick here’s my out give me your deer hides I need to go on late for much well the clup guy typically would go you’re making me mad you don’t want to sit down you don’t want to play you don’t want to hegle so instead of uh your alide for four Beaver hides I’ll give you two Beaver hides for that alide and you can go ahead through the check out Clerk and Le since you’re going to just be that way then you get half what you’re already going to get well then they’re mad about that no no no and on a couple occasions they would steal the goods uh they stole one of our canoes cuz they couldn’t finish the deal and couldn’t trade for it and angle for it and they just decided we’re just going to take it cuz they’re stub SO trading is a lot of fun like the gambling I mentioned go on three four nights in a row people hardly leaving except to go eat and come back and keep on gambling it’s really not about what’s being gambled it’s about hanging out with your friends uh I remember growing up and going to the RV park with my grandpa and grandma that they lived in during the summer half of what they did there was not fishing uh which they’re supposed to be doing supposedly um or anything else most of it was just bsing with people that had been in you know Arizona for most of the winter or wherever it is that they had been catching up spent all summer catching up maybe catch 20 salmon but spent all summer catching up um the excuse for being there was fishing so it’s like the excuse for being here is gambling or trading but really it’s about getting the news from you could get the news here from all the way out on the North Plaines up into Canada Alaska Island and Northern California pretty good place to go read a newspaper but you wouldn’t want to come here as Lou and Clark that not a Trader and has nothing to trade cuz you’re paying a lot to just be hanging out here and especially if you didn’t want to hang out they used to shut the doors at night at the court they didn’t really get that that everybody’s door was open and anybody could drop by and get fed as much as you wanted for as long as you wanted to stay so they’d shut their doors well they’re they’re out of the cycle right they’re missing most of the stories most of the fun and so all they see is the drudgery you know they complain a lot I got to look over here I don’t talk off of notes but I have old people that tell me things I have to make sure I say um it’s been that way since I was about 12 usually the old ladies we’re all we’re almost all tribes in North America and not generalizing but almost all are matriarchal um it may have looked like men were running stuff cuz they ran around and headdresses and stuff but the women still run everything in in a legitimate trouble culture the women are mostly sitting down and telling us young men what we better say in that men’s meaning what decision we better read because they think about things a lot deeper than we do they think about children they think about Generations they think about environment we think about things like Warfare conquering getting away from the women and children hunting you know and so they’ll tell you you better make that decision for me then the chief would walk in and get all puffed up like it was his idea and say here’s what I decided but everybody knew it was ground they came up with the idea right so I saw Grandma say you better make sure you say this um oh yeah that’s a good one so uh this one grandma said make sure that that you guys always understand there’s three tenses anytime you’re talking about Native people and especially plats up the Halen people um past present and future and I can always tell when a historian is is off base because they’ll just keep talking about what we did in the past a good example is I’ve been declared extinct about 12 times since I was old enough to read the books um I was extinct at a video plane at Fort Plaza uh uh one of our tribal members that’s a direct descendant to Chief cooy who the fork was given to when Len Clark left although I don’t know how they would have taken it with them but they left it to Chief cooy she was sitting in that presentation and that video came up and said she was extinct and you’ve never seen 11-year-old girl more livid she wrote C quite a letter and quite a paper and as a result the National Park Service has refilmed that video and um with the accurate story and that shows on somebody helped me out Tuesday I believe uh clats of winter story in the DVDs available in their gift shop exclusively and they did a really good job of telling the real story but think about it how long did that film play up there saying we were dead and what does that do to a people to keep being told you’re dead you know I’ve read it in The Oregonian I read it in the as story in the signal the last Flats of died you know 1905 Michelle for one thing she wasn’t the last Plaza she wasn’t even the last bu she was very popular she was a celebrity of sorts uh but we’re still here you know we still speak our language sing our songs take care of our burial sites and our sacred grounds at Saddle Mountain and all that U we just are real quiet about it we’re not big uh Superstars like some of myot Rons are that are in every movie smoke signals dances with whoops you know uh dances with lawren and babia is what one friend of mine calls it isn’t it great how white guys always play Indians better than Indians you know like Lawrence or Arabia right he was a better one of those desert guys than the desert guys could be is kicking but you know Dances was w a great atrocity on Native people so back to my past present and future and make sure grandma doesn’t get me um so anytime you’re talking about Native people and it says we did or in the past we we did something you’re leaving out at least two other aspects that are probably true so I’ll give you an example always want to include that past present and future so in the past the clups were fine cener basket makers and made things like these Cedar headbands and such um today the classs of nalen continue to make fine Cedar baskets and Cedar headbands like this this was only made a couple weeks ago um and into the future the class of nen people will continue to be fine basket makers and make fine Cedar baskets tendy or head M like this so that would be accurate the way I used to deal with it academically when I was writing papers is I would write um whoever you know the Lakota used to slash still and that didn’t really work it doesn’t roll off your tongue you know the Lakota used to still hunt Buffalo it just doesn’t work and so you have to kind of break it up into at least two sentences they used to do this they continue to do this and then always include the clots of the Hal will will likely continue into the future the find whatever it is to continue to do that now if you know there’s absolutely something that we don’t do anymore you’ve done all the research you can you can’t find any evidence that this exists uh among those people you still want to include this phrase that Grandma through it here so I’ll give you an example the class of mhen people used to have winter ceremonial houses with mass songs and dances and the full ceremonial cycle of winter as far as I know and that’s only as far as I know we don’t have any of that we don’t a long house anywhere in this area there are some up of Muckle shoot and scope and tala but nowhere in this area um but what you can say is they no longer have the winter ceremonial dances with the mass songs and everything that goes with that but we can expect in the near future the classs of the H will once again have a winter ceremonial Al house with their math songs dances and everything they go with that you always want to give them the benefit of the doubt and never declare anyone extinct you always want to say as far as I know you know or they choose to remain hidden at this time you know would be great there’s hardly anything that any tribe has lost that’s a bad word all by itself lost haven’t lost languages songs dances or anything else some of those have been put up on a shelf for a later time but they haven’t been lost so you got that past present future okay maybe I should break this up so I’m going to tell you a traditional story um or you want to story first or joke so you get to vote story have many hands story story okay joke uh I think the story one the story one so yeah people voting twice too you must be should up um so I’ll tell you the joke because it’s an Indian joke and I wouldn’t normally tell you this first part because you’d already know but so you can get a concept of how dry our humor can be and it’s not just our humor it’s all Indian humor so kuk people who are relatives of mine we tell a lot of jokes on people we know my uncle will often start jokes with so one time Jeff was doing this and uh I didn’t really do that but it just good to throw somebody’s name in there um so my kuk relative is full grown stand about this High really stocky broad dark skinned native looking folks most Northwest coastal looking folks look a lot like me and even in Lou and Clark’s journals they remark on the red-haired lightskinned native people U we’ve been in the inner breeding for you know at least 250 years with Chinese Russians and Spanish Traders before L Clark got here so we spoke English and we knew what they were doing before they got here and discover this but my gr Friends real short real stocky walk right into a sweat lodge door without bending over I tease them about that all the time don’t even have to bend down and get in that door just walk straight in stand and straight up so now that you know that part what’s 2 m long and this hle a ter see it’s kind of dry you don’t really laugh you kind of go and in Jack Tom my cousin the crew cousin was s the audience now he tell one about the class or about me but he doesn’t get a chance to not here so I’ll tell you a story this is audience participation now he didn’t think he’d have to work this early in the morning did he so um we traditionally had a a Talking Stick or lifting stick so this will be your Talking Stick or in this case a lifting stick so to whatever side your body want to go you’re going to kind of hold this like a paddle for now and you can do it anytime all right all right you can stop doing it for now CU I got to teach you a word first and the word is y y it’s kind of like yah if you want to pronounce it that way it’s easier in English the words yah so everybody together Y and that looks pretty bad so try it again 1 2 3 y okay so here’s the story The Creator by the way none of us have a concept of the Creator as a deity Creator is a l w Lota sacred energy moving around between you and me and nature and everything else um the creater that life force was moving across from the east coast to the West Coast dropping the Indian people and the languages into their place placing them there along with the animals and the plants and everything they depend on for survival and the creater had gotten across the plains up on the plateau area and reached the Cascade and crater looked in the bag and had a whole bunch of Indian people and a whole bunch of languages left and realized the ocean’s right here we’re running out of time running out of room to place them and so prayer just dumped that bag over and all those different people and languages landed in this one spot that goes from about south of til and up to Alaska so the DC Oregon Washington area we have hundreds of different peoples and languages uh languages as unintelligible to each other as Chinese is from English I can go 100 miles up the coast and that language is as unintelligible as Chinese from English right completely different people different way of being on the world use a lot of the same plants and animals just because of the ecology so all these different people got dropped here that really couldn’t communicate with one another outside of their own little group and the Creator had made a mistake which is very common Creator makes a lot of mistakes and then it’s up to us to kind of figure it out and work with it um like the way our weather was last week big mistake but look at it today it’s great uh crater made a mistake made the sky too low the sky was about his high at that time the stars were right there people kept bumping their head the um the animals kept jumping up into the clouds and would be in the sky and little kids night couldn’t go out because they might get trapped in the sky and then when the sun would come out they’ drop to the ground so it was a big problem the birds were only flying about this High kep running into it and so some of the head people got together and the spiritual people and said this is something we have to fix the Traders left this for us to work out on our own cuz we’ve been praying about it for years and the sky is still that high and they were trying to figure out how they were going to communicate this to one another because they don’t speak the same language they had the shin jaring and that’s uh it’s it’s not a true language it’s a jargon combined of a lot of stuff so they were able to get the word across but they realized there are hundreds of tribes that are going to have to help us lift this sky was your lifting pole still got your lifting pole okay you still got it and uh the only word we all have in common is y y every single tribe has that word in common and what it means is everybody get ready to do it and now it’s that’s all that in yah everybody get get ready work together we’re going to do it now so so word spread bring your lifting poles to your place and we’re all going to try and lift the sky on this particular day at this particular time and word would go out from a central area in the Columbia River a man was going to stand there and yell yo and then everybody would go Y and try to lift it up with their lifing po so here we go okay Li the P right and that man at the Columbia River yelled y and we all went one 2 3 go that was pretty good actually but we only budged it about like that and we were like well this is going to be a lot of work we really got to put some energy into this so not everybody dropped their lifting pole I hope a couple people left yours up cuz you got to prop it up while a couple of us get ready to take another day so a couple of you hold yours up so you can keep this Sky propped at 3 in we gained and uh then the rest of us will go down and now 1 2 3 go that time it went up about that high so a couple of you guys keep your sticks up there we need to keep it up as high as we got it and we’re going to go one last time cuz three is a real sacred number and 1 2 3 and the sky went up to where it is now today you guys were successful good job and the rest of the story is we made a mistake at the time that we did that last push like that there were three young men hunting an elk along with their dog and they happened to have wandered up into that cloud when we started lifting and when we did that last push the cloud the cloud took those three men and their dog and that elk up into the sky with them and if you want to see them they’re still up there every night you can still see those three men and their dog hunting that elk and you call it the Big Dipper that body of that elk is that big Square rectangular part and it hangs down with feet and handlers going up this way and the handle going out that way what you call the handle that first star in the handle is actually two stars and then there’s another star and then there’s that third Hunter at the end still trailing that out one of the remarkable things about that story that’s a very old story that’s told all over the Northwest is that that second star at at that very first star that second Little Star the dog is not visible with the naked eye wasn’t visible until just a little while back in in Indian time uh with Western science that they could see that star one of the first things the scientist said was how did they know that star was there there’s the dog right behind the El so um some of our stories have truth that then gets it catches up as science catches up you realize that story made sense we have stories about tsunamis that are now starting to make sense in the archaeological record and the archaeologists are having to say gosh maybe these guys weren’t just here for 13,000 Years cuz they know about two other tsunamis that go back to 100,000 years in the old tradition they talk about that wall of ice up on the Columbia River during the Ice Age that they would go visit U and all the way up into Canada and things like that so science catches up with us um eventually Partnerships um we’re people of Partnerships a lot of people have had a lot of questions about my Sho cousins on the other side of the river and how we’re related especially during the last week’s event it’s important to realize that tribe is a totally foreign concept okay I I haven’t yet met anybody who defined thems as a tribe before the federal government came in and said you need to organize in order to sell your land so call yourself a tribe right that’s based on uh Western policy of nation to Nation treaty making um we didn’t have Nations for the most part um and I always say that because there are some exceptions but for the most part we didn’t have Nations like that that had Kings and Chiefs and rulers that you could go talk to about selling land we had individual land owners and it’s still rep reflected in our place names like necat nanum neox um Nani those all start with any any in theu jargon means the place of we didn’t name rivers mountains Villages or anything else but necat would designate that place where Kat lives neotat n coxet that place where the coxet are living so the coxet might be the coxet family we don’t know but but think in terms of 30 people living together in in a couple of houses on that spot on the river they have primary fishing rights probably right there um Gathering rights right there but they don’t own that land don’t have any concept of owning that land they have a concept of managing that land they also don’t have to report to Coboy or anybody else that later call thems a chief there’s no no political structure to support that it’s just individual families on the land related by intermarriage and language use and coming together for winter ceremonials um and it’s not until later on when they said well what do you call yourselves here we didn’t call ourselves CLA either that’s a sahaptin word for us lat lat means people of the dried fish so the Salo people up there called us people that drive fish plot up there was one Village that was referred to as plot up up there by tan point and uh when they were trying to settle the treaties in 1851 and explained to us what we were trying to sign away we said well we need to get together with our relatives and figure out what we’re going to call each other because we’re related to everybody from the tip of that river past ailo South to Roseberg over to the coast and on up we’re all interrelated intermarried have a lot of the same language in common and the US was not going to treaty for that big a chunk of territory they had no concept of that nor did they trust that we could get everybody to sign away their rights for that biger piece so the CL got together with the Kil Mon and then Hal and the clai and clus and everybody else around here and basically said this is the area we normally use from mouth of the river to Lu and Clark river uh mouth of the Columbia luisen Clark river up to the top of Saddle Mountain down to the end of el Creek in uh Canon Beach area and then all the way up the close to the tip call clouds up land and then H TM said okay we’ll take that line and we’ll go from there over this way and same thing with the clad and all those other people so there are artificial definitions you know um when people complain about well you guys are organizing as a tribe now and you should be part of us well there’s no historical context for that we’re the only tribe in Oregan that wasn’t sent to a reservation um you understand what a reservation is anybody quickly what’s what’s a reservation it’s important that we get that handled too reservation is not something the government gives you real important concept a reservation is land reserved by the natives for themselves in exchange for certain things and letting you have the rest of the land and it’s misapplied a lot like they sent them to the reservation but what you got to understand is they had already reserved that land in most cases there’s a couple exceptions like Oklahoma but for the most part we said this is our best land it’s got our burial grounds in it our fishing grounds we’re reserving this for ourselves you can have this other part for an exchange now we might not stay on that reservation we might travel all over the D place but if war broke out um or we were under threat from the settlers and Pioneers which was frequently the case because there were bounties on our scals then we could go to the reservation be protected by the Indian agents um and so when they say well they sent him to the res what that means is maybe a war broke out and and we were the cause of it or whatever so they would take you back to your res for protection um or for prosecution whatever is the fact we didn’t end up with the r um and so they didn’t send us anywhere um we had the option of joining the grand Ron at their res if we wanted protection um we could join the selet at their res if we wanted protection we could join the qual which a bunch of us did um for protection but it was totally up to us most shinook and class of people though were successful businessmen and Traders and didn’t want to leave this area and didn’t need protection you know really owned businesses like my grandpa George W cook owned a piling business owned the entire west side of the city of Ator um down to the river um no big deal he bought up all the tribal land and held it in trust for tribal people um very successful guy so why would he leave to go to a res well he wouldn’t he he owned the r you know and let everybody else live on the r um that now in contemporary times has got to be a problem because um some classs went to Grand Ron and and they want to speak for all classs a lot of classs went to kol they’re not interested in speaking for all classet but they genuinely have a whatever a dog in the bite the sh tribes trying to get recognition up there again and they think we should join them and really it’s everybody’s ultimate decision um parts of my family have joined with the Chinooks in the past and the grand Ron supported the sleds but felt the need to join with or be a member of any tribe because that doesn’t make me Indian I’m Indian because the way I did speak and practice in my community that I’m in it’s not because they give me a card that says you’re now officially money you know whatever the heck it is um so people will Ally with different confederations and these are all confederated tribes remember that none of these are tribes likee tribes they’re confederations of different people coming together saying we want to s they’ll come together this is also Grandma’s word they come together based on land connection intermarriage alliances political and economic and then the advantages if there’s no advantage of aligning with you then why align with you I might as well stay in a one ass story um if you can’t do anything for me I can’t do for myself then I’ll just be me but I’m still class you know still class for the most part classs are known as the peaceful people of the Columbia River and there’s good reason for that if you’re Walmart you don’t want anybody too darn mad at you cuz then they don’t go spend money um it was also a place where waren people would frequently come together and be trading at the same place and so in uh some communities were known as mediators on up into the Olympic Peninsula and British Columbia often they would call on a classup mediator to settle disputes among Waring parties there’s a lot more Warfare from that side of the river on up than there was on this side of the river um and there’s a lot more people competing for resources that we had here too um so we’ve just kind of laid low and been happy and come trade with us and meet our Sal and have a great time and we’re still kind of that way today there’s some people that have kind of felt a cringe about us talking about the land not being treating and taking care of like we’re want it all back no want all back we’re just happy go lucky folks who look just like you and I’m not in reell yet and uh live an everyday life and hold jobs and everything else we would like to have a little piece of land somewhere to have a long house someday to be able have a sweat lodge in the ground instead of our funeral sweat grounds or what we call transient sweat lodges the hoop ones above the ground just for when we’re traveling but our lodges belong in the ground and they’re built like houses in the ground but we’re told we can’t build them like that unless we own the land and have control over it that we can take care of it so it can be somebody else’s land they letting us use or loaning to us or you know it’s got to be ours but yeah we’ like to have a little land be able to have a culture camp for kids and do stuff with kids from the school but we don’t want all this back we’re not we’re not diluted you know we don’t think we’re going to get any large portion of any of this back then make sure I got all the Grandma’s words sorry about the Beats hitting your mic there uh we got the three tenses we all lifted the sky that’s pretty good um and it’s important to recognize that just like we lifted the sky together that’s how the cloud UPS have always done everything in Partnerships cooperation with a lot of other tribes which is true for most Northwest tribes had to do a lot of cooperating and so we intermarried amongst one another so that there were alliances and uh people owed you stuff and you could count on support if you needed it and uh we all lifted the sky today not one of us could have done it and it’s going to be that that takes us into a classup future classup the future people working together we have a lot of allies in the city of Seaside the convention center and all those other agencies and that’s what it’s going to take CLS in the H don’t have enough people to do this by themselves so uh and we’re still here it’s important to recognize we’re still here there’s still a big presence go out to our Gateway Center in Leon and she’s G me the high sign for questions so um I’m not wrapped up yet but let’s open it up so that you can say what you need to say yeah me bring our microphone El oh good we got traveling mic why i h a mic now okay um I heard some lectures across the street and Washington the and I realized that no and Clark over there and they came over here for the winter right however and you told us a lot about the classics and how friendly you are how nice you are and I and I get that all the time every tried the same way every IND I talk to says the same thing anyway that’s a SM anyway uh did you help leis and Clark a lot in finding their elk food which was supposed to be here and not bigger animals and better for them to eat and it was better fishing and all that type of thing did you help them a lot when they came over here did you know they were coming over here or a little background a little bit about them um that’s actually covered a lot more in the effects of Lis and Clark at the end of the trail but let me just kind of briefly they made that boote to come over here based on the game that was more plentiful over here that they were used to eating um these are guys that nearly starved to death cuz they wouldn’t eat the salmon right nearly starved to death eating their shoe leather boiling it up cuz they wouldn’t eat salmon and they liked red meat they liked elk and they like dog more than anything they they ate a lot of dog when they were here ate almost all of our dogs they didn’t eat their dog we thought that was funny they wouldn’t eat Sammy but ate all the other dogs they could trade for um but they ate a lot of meat a lot of meat um and I’ve seen some of the statistics I don’t want to kick it out there because maybe somebody else knows more but it was a lot like hard to comprehend four ala day kind of thing eating them all the way through um and they had run into some hard times over there the weather is also worse on that side of the river much of the time and they had heard about the peaceful class of people that were used to hosting Traders um that probably wouldn’t go to war and there was still a lot of active War over in the lower sound at the time going on between tribes and other people um you know if go back and read the history there’s a lot of history of um settlers and Traders and ships getting attacked from Vancouver Island South to the mouth not so much on our side and so that that was probably a factor and the fact there were a bunch of elk and they were easy to get and so they had sent a little exploratory trip over here to tongue point and they’ seen then there’s just help coming out of our ears and the weather’s better and they’ve already offered us a place to camp and we weren negoti a hard bargain for that at all we just said you guys just need to get out of the rain so that’s how they end up here yeah one more question in the reports in the reports there was lots of talk about buying roots and they lived on Roots when they were here in gra har what roots are they talking about well wapo and C would have been the main ones but waple and canas but there there’s you know probably um historically at least 30 different roots that were part of our diet here right without having native people on the land though we there’s not an inch in North America except for the deserts um that was not cultivated and so we you know as settlers came across they thought the great wild North America untamed and nobody living here and they didn’t realize that almost every food source and every edge of the forest was being maintained or burned by native people in order to make those plants grow back so that wo is basically extinct here now that was a staple diet item you have to go up to so’s Island to start running into wapo and it’s almost inevitable because it has to be played with by native people with root sticks it’s kind of like your domestic potato if you quit playing around with that potato and let it just sit for about three generations it’ll go back to the original potato which is almost inedible just a starchy ball of fiber and that’s what our wapo and C has done where Native people don’t still play with it it’s still there as a plant doesn’t occur anywhere around here in any great numbers it’s still there but it’s not a food source but that’s what they’re talking about is gu was just harvested in heats from any swampy area but it was because it was cultivated and we still have a lot of plants here that don’t belong here that were cultivated by people medicinals um that’s it timeway I I’m sorry I have to wrap but you have uh at least three more opportunities to hear different talks might me during the next three days and I want to thank you naha my SE in our language thank you for your good ears your time your good energy and I hope you feel good about going to stick around our next program is George jard he will e e e

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Chief Cliff Snyder on Chinook and Clatsop Relations with Lewis and Clark

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:56 +0000

and join us for the very last program today I want to welcome you to the core of Discovery 2 traveling exhibit and this tent of many voices I’ll tell you a little bit about us if you’re brand new to the tent I would be surprised I see a lot of familiar faces here in the crowd and I thank you all for coming back joining us for today and joining us for the past few years that’s right we’ve been traveling for four years on the Lewis and Clark Trail starting in January of 2003 in monachello Virginia we went all the way to the Pacific coast and now we’re back to St Louis just as Louis and Clark did 200 years ago yesterday they returned to St Louis well as we’ve been traveling the trail to various towns and cities along the way this is our 95th stop bringing presenters here to the tent of many voices to share their voice with you about Lou and Clark expedition and the people and the cultures they met along the way 200 years ago Lewis and Clark stayed with the Chinook and clats up people on the coast and with us today is a very special presenter he’s the chief of the chanuk people and he was our very first presenter in the tent of many voices 3 and a half years ago in monachello Virginia his name is Cliff Snider Chief Cliff Snider or grey wolf and it would be my honor if you guys would give him the biggest Round of Applause and welcome him to the tent thank you thank you very much I’m overcome have a SE have a SE yeah yeah CL you everybody because I’m seeing so many people I’ve known over the past few years I hope you uh don’t mind if I take a minute to welcome all those guys in the canoe that came down the river yesterday Captain Clark and his whole crew what a marvelous Landing down there what a great celebration I was with you guys in St Charles last night boy did we have a good time my friends my friends from Pacific County and Washington are here I’m certainly glad they’re here we were you know that particular group were the friends of uh uh sister city with Charlottesville Virginia I had a chance to be back there with them and they’re here in the crowd today thank God you’re here I appreciate it very much and all those people with them from uh Pacific County down the coast at the end of the trail I want to make sure that I recognize that you’re here I also want to recognize my chairman is here my vice chairman is here there’s some chinuk Indians here I have some clats up Indians here they’re all back here from our particular native land and I’m so glad they made this trip out here to the Mississippi River I’ll try and get going now the speak speaker before me I have in trouble with this the speaker before me is so good that he doesn’t need a note I’ve got pages of notes because I’m about 30 years older than he is I’m 80 years old now and I have to kind of look down once in a while if you don’t mind if I get lost just wait a few minutes and I’ll catch up with you this I know I’m going to for get some people like try to catch up with Terry last night I know the people who are taking pictures and everything I if I’ve forgotten you I’m sorry I’ll meet you out back and and we’ll talk it over anyway I’m going to mention some other people in the crowd later on people that had something to do with the beginning of this Trail this is the end of the trail what a wonderful day the great spirit gave us to have this final occasion no rain we hear about rain all the time from these people who work here but today look at it sun’s out nice calm Day Lewis and Clark on their return met at the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers and they begin the final leg of their trip back they dropped off Chicago AIA sakaia chachaa whatever you want to call her depends on what tribe you’re in they left her off in the Mandan Village Knife River with sharbono and her baby pump they continued up the river and they run into a couple of French Trappers they pick them up they picked up Chief Shahi at Knife River the chief of the Mandan tribe they’re going to take him back to see President Jefferson and they were on their way and they got to rushing you all took psychology in college you know about gold gradient don’t you the oh horses when they went out on the trip the closer they got the barn the faster they went well that’s what was happening the big rush was on we got to St Charles and look out in the pasture there there’s a moo cow we know that we’re getting close now and oh the joy St Louis in sight I kind of changed that a little bit but here we are in St Louis what a beautiful place to be one of the good reasons I like being on this Trail for 78 years is because now I get to see them Missouri I get to see the Mississippi I get to see the Grand Arch and then there a wonderful place I love St Louis as onary Chief the Chinook Indian tribe there’s a difference between a chief and a chairman we have a chairman with a beautiful uh uh Indian Council I was on the Council for 25 years fighting for recognition when I retired the tribe named me honorary chief for life so if you’re working on the internet you’re trying to find our leader it’s not me I’m just an honorary person our real leader is Ray Gardner sitting in the audience today we have come full circle and it’s time for everybody to celebrate I distinctly remember when I first began I was in partnership with the United States fish and wildlife and we’re having a meeting in Leon Idaho and we just had to introduce ourselves as we went around the table there were probably 50 60 people in this big round table and they were discussing what we were going to do on the Lewis and Clark celebration which was coming up and I was just there merely as an associate when I got around to me and I introduced myself as a chinuk Indian a member of an unrecognized tribe in United States of America everybody kind of looked at me Rod ARA white was next to me ly Shon he says we are also not recognized by the United States government who makes those decisions it’s not made by Congress it’s not made by executive order of the president but somebody in the Bia and nobody will take the blame for it and that’s why we were we were there we’re just talking about other things the next day they had another meeting that meeting the same thing happened they got around to me and I said uh I can’t see that we should be calling this a celebration and the word started moving around and the Indians felt that we couldn’t celebrate the Caucasians taking land from us and it by that by vote they started to call it the Comm commemoration and that still stands to this day I was proud to be part of that the second part of it was they’re unrecognized Indian here are all these Indians sitting around they’re unrecognized what are they doing here you remember what uh people were saying you know Indians should have uh equal rights and and anything that’s happening here and so uh they decided to include all Indians on the Trail whether they’re recognized or not out of that meeting was about seven or eight years ago I can’t tell you exactly but what a wonderful feeling to see that’s still happening today and then when Gerard Baker came in and he started talking about what the Indians are going to do on the trail he says we are not going to be p uh we’re not going to be involved in this unless we have equal rights we don’t want to be looked down on as second grade citizens and Gerard Baker is still my hero today for saying that give that big guy a big hand now most of you are acquainted with the Lo and Clark Trail by the authors that we had and the history books that you read and I bet you 99% of you know know more about the generals and I do I know a little bit about what the Indians thought and sometimes my thoughts are quite different than the history books because I’ve been talking to Indian leaders for eight years they’re telling me these little legends that aren’t even written down in the beginning our third president of the United States which by the way was born in England President Jefferson made the deal of the century by purchasing all the land that was to be all the way to the Rocky Mountains doubling the size of America he paid what $15 million 18 c a square mile for all that Land wait a minute am I missing something here who’s living on that land out there are the French living out there did na Napoleon really really uh own that land now the Indians felt this way and it’s the land was not owned by anybody we belong to the land and if any of you guys out there are part Indian and have Indian Heritage you know what I’m talking about we could not buy and sell the land it was not for sale we belong to the land so I just want everybody to know where they got the land from and what they paid for it and who really lived on the land maybe I have a little favoritism there I don’t know I’m going to El light over something because we’re going to have some some ceremony here after afterwards and I don’t have Sammy Meadows from Colorado to give me this I’m just going to have to hurry through it I talked a lot like to talk today about it says on the program I’m going to talk about the chip culture we’ve always been given the privilege to change the title around a little bit what I’d like to do is tell you about the Indian tribes that they met on the way I’m going to miss some but I’m going to put some of the important items and I’m going to put in there about some things that aren’t in the history books the stories are going to be different and I got this from Roger Wile who portrays droillard on the trail these are the Lost journals of Lewis and Clark right Roger and so I’ve been using using that your phrase for a long time because I’ve been in these Indian Villages and they’re telling me these stories and later I’ll tell you how they might contradict the history books that we have well you know the rest of the story Jefferson pointed Lewis and Clark and uh he didn’t have the slightest idea of what Li was lying ahead he had never been over the mountains he had been 200 miles west of monachello he didn’t know about the rivers the mountains and all those things terrible animals and things and above all he didn’t know a thing about those wild Indians that were out there we have to be kind of careful of those guys we don’t know whether when we go through those Indians are going to kill us or whether they’re going to help us or what’s going to happen so that’s the interesting part how did the Indians help Lewis and Clark go through this whole trip and back as a unit and why weren’t they eliminated and that’s the reason we’re all here today because they did make it I’d like to talk about some of the couple of the first tribes I met you know all the things they went through about going through France and and when they could leave St Louis and all that kind of thing but there were running into Indians right away that had seen white people before when they left St Louis and some of those Indians were oage Indians had a good opportunity to talk to some of them while I’ve been here and the Shaun some of my friends dark rain Tom and her husband beautiful Chinese uh sh people and then they ran into a team called uh I’m saying team because I’m an ex- coach but I ran into a tribe called kapoo now the only time I ever knew about the kapoo was from Lil Abner when I was a kid and they remember they used to drink kikapu joy juice and that’s where I got that name from I don’t know if any of you know about kikapu enjoy Jews I like to try it sometime then they ran into the omahas and the otos and they’re back there and they met with them and had a counsil and they were telling them how good our president was and so now they’re going to be that was their new leader and you know where the name Council Buffs came from when they talked to them and now they run into the yton Sue boy they likeed them they had They carried them on Shore with big carriers straped with skins they went to the camp and they danced and they had a great time no problem there some white people had been there before so they knew about him so far so good now there’s no problems with those wild Savages but they’re running into the ton Su and black Buffalo and you all know the story they wanted more tobacco they wanted more supplies because they were going to take a toll to go up the river and we’re not going to let you go by and so Clark says no way Lewis said no way so they drew the bows and arrows well Clark took out his saber Lewis ordered the cannon on board ship to be trained on the Indians that was in that battle right there and so they finally agreed to let the women on board the kill booat and take a small trip with them and they proceeded on is the way I put it but just think what would have happened at that particular point if they had got into a scuffle and there been a lot of people killed well it didn’t happen so good for them so now we reach s raras I’m getting a little warm with this blanket so glad to have it though the riod tribe and they saw this guy that was on the stage just before me they saw York they couldn’t believe it they come up and they rubbed his skin and they couldn’t rub it off they just didn’t understand it and I must say then that some of the Legends I discovered by talking to people that there were some seual interchanges that took place between the core and the Indians but I can’t confirm that but I just wanted to tell you that was something that I read how the winter was coming the reached Knife River they reached the mandans you all know that story they nearly starved they built a fort there that was a longest stay they had on the on the whole Trail and they said to the core there’s not much food here because of buffalo have gone but if we eat you eat and if we starve you starve and so that went on they made it to the winter they had a 3-day Buffalo dance and all of a sudden the Buffalo returned and that’s how they made it to the longest winter uh longest day they had on the whole journey at this point was the most fortunate thing that ever happened to him on the trail in my belief they hired Chicago WEA shano as guides and interpreters to continue on wait a minute now there’s a baby too and you know they had a dog now they got a baby that’s going to go on this trip it’s amazing they ever let that happen but what they did is they told them all what was going to Beall him on the trail ahead about the huge Falls that were several miles up the river we’re talking about the Great Falls when they got there well that’s just going to be couple days and we’ll get around the falls and we’ll continue on you people have read all the journals s was almost a month by the time they got around where those dog gone in Indians when they needed them where are the grow buns they were up in the hills they were watching them the whole time but they were suspicious and they didn’t want to come down and get killed but anyway the crew made it on their own and passed on well now we reaching the end of the River it’s like a creek that can jump across and the next thing you know they run into the Shon ly shonis if you were here in the last session you know how they were greeted how they were welcomed in the camp this is Chicago’s tribe and she recognized a girl that was captured with her and they felt like well maybe uh that Chicago had died had would never return and then of course you about the meeting with her brother C8 and so they hugged each other well that’s a good end there’s going to be a good chance we can do some trading now that they know each other in one of the sessions they say that a brother wasn’t necessarily a brother but it was just someone like a cousin or something like that so I can’t be definite whether it was a real actual brother or not well how are they going to to trade now we got no more water that’s the end of the water passage we got to go over some mountains to get to the Pacific we need horses well you’ve got horses well how did they trade with the Shi Indians very simple Lewis talked to leish in English leish talked in French to shano shano talked in Hadas to Chicago WEA Chicago WEA then talked to Kamaya in Shoni and then in the reverse took part can you imagine that they picked up 29 horses and a mule and they had a dog well they got a guide with them they’re going to go across the bitteroot mountain sometime but they run into the Flathead Indians flaad Indians received them very warmly some of the horses were giving out so they gave them uh some price horses seven or eight of them and some were Colts then they went over the bitter Roots boy there was a place that was probably one of the worst places on the whole Trail and how they got across I don’t know they nearly starved to death they had to eat some of the Colts but they finally made it nearly starved the made the way up Prairie on the clear waterer River and they ran into the nzp Indians our friends over there I’ll tell you what a welcome site we had they had fish and enjoyed a good meal but the young guys said oh boy look at all this stuff there’s guns there’s ammunition there’s horses and there’s trading Goods let’s kind of let’s kind of take some of that stuff and just destroy all these white guys wait said this lady who had been with the white people over in the plains and as an old woman she returned to the npar her name was wat kuis and she says they are good people do them no harm there books out about that I’m so proud of what she did and so the neps decided to let them go of course they made the canoes went down the Clear Water went down the Snake River and I’m going fast now because I’m omitting a lot of things but I want to tell you they did go upstream and and they uh met the Walla wals and they met the yakas and the WAMS and they were turning the corner on the Columbia and they looked over there there’s an Indian with a sailor jacket on red and blue my goodness we must be getting closer and there were other Indians wearing sailor clothing wow we can’t be too far from the Pacific Ocean but they kept running into these funny looking Indians they’re only 5 foot five tall and they had flattened heads who are these people we know them today as chinuk Indians but we’re coming to these Falls it’s called salila Falls nowadays it’s only 48 ft wide they met the Indians there and the chuks started ringing their hands and crying we’re all going to be killed here come these bears with upside down faces my goodness what are we going to do wait the Chicago whe there’s a woman and she has a baby this can’t be an armed group we can deal with them well let’s see them go over the falls which is about 30 ft tall you know and then when the canoe tips over whatever floats over at the beach we’ll just kind of take that and Stephen Ambrose really wrote about that how the chinuk Indians were kind of Thieves you know they smell like fish and they were kind of the thieves and our feeling was you know whatever is laying loose that’s for the taking it’s not the way we look at it today but that’s the way it was then well finally they just decided they shut the canoes over the falls and and the Indians helped them Portage and everything turned out all right they said look out for those Chinooks down there you know how many Chinooks on the river at that time 16,000 chinuk Indians at the mouth of every stream on the Columbia Gorge was a chook village with the canoes up on the shore there might be 40 people it wouldn’t like sitting bowl with thousands of Indians around them 40 people 60 people 20 people you got married you went and lived with your husband and his band I hate to call them bands because United States government frowns on bands of Indians they like the word tribe period we’ve run into that problem several times times anyway just imagine this if any of you have ever been to Oregon or even if you had to Heaven there’s these huge Cliffs on each side of the Columbia Gorge you’re floating down there in your canoes at night and on the shore you see all these canoes and now you’re going with the current and you look at all these canoes and look there there’s a fire here and a fire there this 50 fires in this one Village and you’re going silently down creek what a beautiful sight that must have been and now we’re getting closer place called Portland Oregon Vancouver nowadays they stopped in all these places they got by Beacon Rock whoa there’s a tide change we can’t be too far now tide changed from the Pacific Ocean scwr upt there on down they went they finally got down there and my fourth great-grandfather I can’t Indians don’t like to use the word great that’s just my grandfather from now on my grandfather discovered Lewis and Clark as they came down the stream not the other way around we were already there we discovered him just like we discovered 28 ships had been there before him had come across the bay my group gave them some fish dismal Niche showed them a place to Camp they went over at the beach and raved their name on the stump and searched around the weather can you believe the weather was so terrible and I’ll tell you how long it was later but it was raining there MO ERS were completely worn out their clothing was terrible they hated salmon by this time they didn’t like the smell of it what are we going to do are we going to Camp here Station Camp no we’re working on that now chairman on station G but let’s have a vote Stephen Beckham and leou and clar college doesn’t like to call it a vote he just took a poll who wants to go up to Vancouver area who wants to go kamak area who wants to go uh over to the other side of the river whatever well my grandfather said well you don’t have much to trade we’ve been trading with 28 ships that already come in why don’t uh why don’t you guys go on the other side why should we go over there well there more elk over there besides that if you a ship comes in you can see it better and you’ll be out of our hair too well they went down to Pillar Rock when my mother was born and they crossed over there because the dog gone Cano you know how it was going through the locks yesterday coming down did you know that there going to be locks on that River coming down from St Charles well those canoes didn’t do very very well in the mouth of the Columbia and sometimes you were in a boat with a lot of freeboard you still wonder if you’re going to make it well they went down to where there’s some islands got around up to tongue Point cross over and they built that Fort at Fort claton my clat of brothers are back there now they know that history we all spoke the same language and so sometimes we feel that we’re just like Blood Brothers there but they went across there they set up the port and they stayed there the second longest time on the whole trip and that was good but they had elk meat and they they described it in the journal say poor elk meat p o r e because evidently it didn’t last very long in that kind of weather they saw 12 days without rain and only six did they see any sun at all you know about the salt K and the whale story and all that but they made it through and I made it through because the clat of Indians were helping them every day with food and and doing everything they could about directions and I must say something now about Dick bash his fourth or fifth great grandfather Chief cab or kol who was a classup chief at that time now he’s the director of the tent of many voices and we both served together for 25 years on the chook Indian Council my salute to Dick bash back there I love that guy on the way now I have to check my notes see where I am sometimes I get several Pages ahead of myself byway I’ll tell you by memory we just took off they uh while they were there a ship did come in Over the Bar you know there’s 10 and some ships buried out there I don’t know how they made it across in a tall ship it was called the Lydia and the Lydia came into Port was there for a while my grandfather told him oh where’s they has for Lewis and Clark oh heck they went back they’re already gone so the lyia Trad with them and then left and went around I always say they miss a good bus ride home and they had to come back by horse and B can what a shame that was but in a way there’s more stories on the way back I’m just going to tell you one or two the one or two are on the way back they tried to get a canoe from the clat spion they couldn’t do it they wanted to trade women they wanted to trade sexual favors and wanted to trade everything else and it just couldn’t happen so Lewis and Clark’s crew stole a Cano and they left and they were going up the creek and as they’re on their way up the creek they got into this Channel and they look back and here comes a clam Chinook Indian just pedling like mad to catch up with him what’s going on we stopped we talked to him this is a no in slooh here that you’re in the main river is out there you got to go back and by the way that’s my canoe that had you stole my canoe well good thing they had some extra elk skins so they traded him for those elk skins and away they went again the other one if you’re were in the crowd before Smokey was telling about only one man died on the trail and that’s a story that I learned by Legend from the blackbeat tribe the pans young I imagine young boys you know probably 15 to 23 something like that camped with ls and Clark that night and they slept with him they got medals they got the American flag but early in the morning they started to take off and they were stealing their guns and they were stealing their horses and they were taking off with them uhoh so I think it waso not Floyd but it was one of the guys and I’ll think of he’s nameing a second after I’m done but anyway he Fields Fields shot one and he got his stuff back and Lewis ran after one and he stabbed him So when you say Floyd was the only one killed on the whole Expedition it’s not two there were three people killed on the Expedition so I’m sitting in my home Portland Oregon I get a call from a man in a black foot drive he says come and through come have coffee with me and we had we’re were talking about those things he says that’s not true either I said how come he said the one that Lewis St uh shot I mean the one he shot recovered and then died so only two men died on the ls C Expedition that’s why I call them the Lost journals because they’re just a little bit different that you read about in the textbooks well I’m getting down there near the end I want to thank Diane back there for getting me here I want to talk thank everybody that’s responsible for the T of many voices dick bash and his boss and I want to leave you with one thing and I speak for the chairman of My Tribe Ray Gardner my vice chairman Sam Robinson I want to speak for them and say don’t forget the seven chinuk directions and those of you have been listening to me for the last several years know what I’m talking about seven directions are east and west north and south up and down in the directions of your heart cop from my heart Kaka so be it amen thank you I’ve got my drum here anybody wants to help me celebrate I can use the word now celebration is ready to gok if you have any questions for chief Snider you’re welcome to raise your hand I do have some colleagues out there with some microphones and um the chief Snyder can take your questions so go ahead and put your hands up if you have a question there’s a guy come on up in the back am yeah I’ll repeat it yeah I think I know where go ahead he asked if there were any sign language on the West Shore uh but but all only way we could communicate because the Chinooks had a guttural language that was even hard for anybody from one Village to another to understand I always put it in this perspective like England and there’s whales and there’s Ireland and there’s Scotland they all spoke the same language it’s difficult for everybody to understand each other any of you are watching the writer cup now you know what I’m talking about you can’t understand what those guys over there are saying but we had a lot of different dialects which started at the mouth of Columbia and went all the way to wishram and uh they had a kickish form of dialect up there the only way I can figure out that they even communicated because that language even Chicago didn’t understand the only thing that they could do is point and draw in the sand and and try and just beat it out of each other by sign language now when I’m with Roger back there and we’re talking to different schools he will do sign language with me like from my heart I’m talking to you you know things like that and that’s about the only way that we can communicate with each other from the old days and I think that’s what they had to do like this was be me I’m talking to you and which direction are we going that sort of thing that’s all I can say but we definitely they did not understand our language but on the trail there had been some white people in before that French Trappers and so forth and so they had some idea of a couple of words they might throw that in in the meantime any other questions I have a drum up here uh I’m going to set this down and when I’m when I’m talking to the kids in the school I also work for the Confluence group with my Lynn out of New York that did the Vietnam Wall so I’m talking to a lot of schools all the time grade schools high schools colleges all that and I always let the kids play the drum so I have it here and I can pass it around if you guys want to beat on a chinuk drum I’d love to have you do it this gentleman here I know would like to do it take this and and that anybody else any of my girlfriends out there I want to thank all of you for coming out I just wanted to mention I know that all of the Rangers would agree with me in saying that our family is sitting right here all of you are family to us you been traveling with us over the years you’re very close and dear to our hearts so I’m very glad to see you here for our very last presentation in the tent of many voices um before I get too far I would like you to give one big round of applause for our last presenter Chief Snider thank you stay right where you are okay at this time uh we were we’ll be preparing for our closing ceremony which is a very special time and I want to kindly ask the folks in the front five rows we’re going to um we’re going to make those reserved seatings so if you will have a seat but don’t I’m sorry don’t let anybody move yet oh excuse me we’re going to do an honor song I’m sorry it’s snooze I got just say one thing first I didn’t see them but my friends with the uh and I left that little part out in my speech about the circle of tribal advisers Bobby don’t run away I’m talking about you and Sammy these two ladies right here are just wonderful to the leaders of the circle of tribal advisers and they made it possible for all the Indians along the trail to express their views and respected their views and so that’s what happened over the last three or four years and I’m so proud of you guys I was glad to be part of your group thanks for coming and uh uh Diane Diane you can come up here too as the chair of classs close cloudia till comes con n King Chacha Jeff painter Nang I’m Jeff painer I’m one of the cultural resource Specialists of the clat up tribe and uh this is our chairman and vice chair and we just really want to honor up Grandpa Cliff here for all the work he does for our people and uh he’s a real healer and uh does a lot to make things come together between people that might be having disagreements and uh and I just had a talk with Ray and he said it be okay for us to do this so this is an honor song to honor to this man this song was composed in the 1700s when one of the epidemics came through our village at NL and the meaning of it it sounds like uh eii o vocable words but there’s a meaning with that song and it means you’re all so valuable we can’t afford to lose one of you and that is directed at that Grandpa over there but also to each and every one of you that’s witnessed this journey you know the talks today you’ll take that back to your community whatever uh culture that you’re from you’re all very important you’re all witness something here today hey he he

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Jeff Painter on Clatsop trade, culture, and Lewis & Clark

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:55 +0000

Jeff did you say check check check check check check check check good no that was a mic check so wasn’t me to check yeah okay well we’re all together now so we’re warmer now are we now that’s think warm thoughts it’s been a beautiful day and uh it’s been a great day here at the exhibit and we’ve had a lot of speakers this is the tent to many vo that you’re now sitting in for those you who have not had heard any speakers we’re the Louis and Clark core Discovery 2 exhibit we’re a traveling National mobile exhibit we started out in 2003 monell and we’ve come all the way to the ocean and we’re going to go all the way to St Louis and finish in 2006 and we have done this with the participation with many different federal agencies everywhere from natural resources conservation service all the way to EPA have made this trip possible there are many different exhibits around this area to see including a 35-minute audio tour right next door if you get a chance to see that and uh we will be open Monday and Tuesday as well here in this tent a tent to many voices this is where we have a variety of speakers everybody from um Scholars that have spent 20 years studying the journals of Lis and Clark all the way to Native poets and dancers and first first person interpreters and today we have with us a special presenter we have Jeff Petter of the class of tribe and he’s going to be speaking in the Columbia River Trade Center which is very close to here let’s give a really fine Round Round of Applause to defin so uh I’m going to start with a song and then I’ll introduce myself in our language and such we’ll see if these slides work or not I was wor on that right up until about 5 minutes before I got here so uh we’ll see we’ve had some uh technical issues so I reformatted some of my stuff if not I’m used to speaking Orly in front of my travel people and we can carry on and we’ll just have a real pretty picture back there I’m going to need to steal one of these I’m going to be working from down here I open doesn’t bug you guys but I I cannot stand up there my elders always told me don’t stand higher than the smallest person sitting in the room so you can record this it’s okay know know they uh so that’s that’s a gambling song um or what my grandma to we calls a lucky song and uh gambling’s really complicated I I hope you’ve got to talk to uh Ruby and and uh bite out here with the games and gambling looks like something’s going on but that’s not what’s going on and uh part of gambling especially the guessing games is to have medicine people and singers on your side that can make it possible to see what they’re doing over there with their Spirit eyes and they’ve got people on their side trying to do the same thing to you there’s songs like this one that make your side lucky and you’re better at guessing what’s going on there’s songs different songs that we couldn’t sing with a recording that are fogging songs that keep the other side from seeing what you’re doing and puts up a wall that their Seer can’t see through um so these lucky songs like this Grandma T we always says makes you feel good makes you feel so happy they’re very upbeat like that and uh she she always tells people go out and buy a lottery ticket now you got luck on you so soon as you leave here let’s see today’s Sunday so we’re at day late right you’ve got to buy one for Wednesdays but that’s a lucky song from uh the EUR Rock in teela people down south so in shanut Jon CL M Taco CL Tope P pelu cook Butler painter Casey MCM nak mway so most of what I said there is uh welcome you to my land um this is the land of the clouds of people that you’re sitting on uh cousin of the shanuk tribe and one of the five shinuk and speaking peoples um and we still call it our land because it’s untreated unpaid for unsettled and uh has a lot of squatters living on it now no heart fam so mostly no heart um I said that my family members are from the village of quat which is where Seaside sits now with a population of about 6,000 at the time right before loen Clark got here um The Village at necat and Ne coxet which are right next to Highway 101 where the gateway to Discovery natural Coastal Natural History Center is where we have some offices so right there were two little Villages that my family lived in and then the N which is where the two guys dressed in first got lost and built their little stick shed um right near the N Village there um those guys who were celebrating um that’s where most of my family lived and most of my family members from U my dad’s side my Dad’s here uh by the way Bill P where you go Bill most of my family uh lived in that area especially on my dad’s side the classup side of my family uh only me uh my great great great great and that’s the last time you’ll hear me number great cuz native people just a grandpa but uh my great great great great grandpa George W cook owned the entire West Side from the top of the hill there in Ator out across young Bay and Louis and Clark river um to where cook slooh is named after him um and then property up in Old KN and uh so that’s where my people are from I said I thank you for your good ears and your good hearts and I hope I don’t say anything that vent you but if I do Let It Drop off of you when you walk out of here this is supposed to be fairly light-hearted and and um and I welcomed you traditionally our people what what you would have done on the coast is you would have come by canoe and you would have been off the coast you’re not allowed to land it’s kind of like boarding a skipper ship and you know may I come aboard yes you may so your canoe would sit off there in the water and nobody touched land and you’d have to sing your song asking to be welcome and then we’d sing one of our songs and one of our songs would be uh see if I can catch it here got a couple hundred songs rattling around your head sometimes it’s hard to get that okay so we sing to you you don’t know your song so that’s all right just sit there be be mute to sign langu and we’d sing he he ho ho we sing that a bun this time and the ladies would be doing hand motions like this as we’re singing it saying come this way otherwise the guys would be making hand motions like this don’t come to or some some such thing and then you come and you’d be welcome and the first thing that the clouds of are known for they’re known as the um peaceful native people and uh they would have sat you down and asked you if you needed something to drink give you some sammon and some salow to eat and made you comfy made you a bed in one of the houses and then asked you what the heck you were doing here U the Lost guys had it all backwards they show up and said we’re here and this is what we’re going to be doing and uh we’re going to be building this thing to make sure you guys don’t come visit us and the doors close at dusk and uh we’ll open again after Dawn on and by the way we’re we’re going to be camping out here for a little while cuz we’re really hungry U we’re really really lost we’re really cold our shirts are riding off of our bodies and we need some help and that’s how they ended up over here by the way they had a boat over there to decide we want to stay on the Washington side with the Shooks over there who uh most of the tribes on the other side of the river are in constant Warfare um some say still to this day but historically in a lot of warfare no I love my sh cousins but um a lot of warfare from the Columbia river that North Side all the way up into upper BC a lot of tribes dropped there fighting over a lot of resources but very close to each other bumping elbows a lot so they went to war with each other a lot and U Luc and Clark kind of keyed in on that and also found out there’s a lot more elk over here they sent a little trip over and gosh there was food that they just couldn’t get over how much food there was a lot more Shelter From the weather they ended up up in a toll where Chief cooy said this is the all right place for you to squat just make sure you’re leave next year when you’re not um so that’s that’s a brief history um I’ve got some cute little pictures here if they work so let’s see all right come on um this is a shot of our new canoe uh we have a 32t ocean going canoe that we just had a for and it’s uh the first clot of oan going canoe that we’ve had carved in somebody think maybe 150 years probably closer to 200 years and this is a still from the uh movie that was made for the National Park Service um that’ll be playing Tuesday but it it’s playing up there now in the fort and I might get a chance to tell you a little bit about that so there’s the canoe with four folks in it it actually takes about uh 10 to 12 people to pull that canoe through the water well um but it will go all the way out hunt whales uh very sea seaworthy so that’s just kind of fun but it is part of trade rivers are are highways the ocean was our Highway around here and the clata people traded all the way up into Alaska or got goods from Alaska by trading with our our relatives up on Vancouver Island all the way down the co Coast to uh middle and Northern California All the Way East at least to Sala Falls and some people ventured all the way out into black blackbeat country uh Lakota country to trade and most of it was because of canoes so it’s important to know your geography um you you are here you’re kind of sort of let’s see if this works you’re kind of sort of here all right and uh on the other side there that’s where our sh the cousins live um our territory mostly ended at least as far as the government’s concerned um we didn’t call ourselves tribes in we didn’t call ourselves Plata by the way um platza is a name that the sahap people of the Sal Falls call this it means dry pounded dry pounded salmon really really good salmon um the so our territory at least for governmental purposes goes up the river here to Saddle Mountain down here to Cannon Beach at El Creek and then all the way up to the tip so that that’s us and then the people next to us said okay well we’ll call ourselves this and we’ll call this area our and KS said we’ll call this us but we didn’t call each other that we all shared the same language and uh little variations of it but same custom same spirituality we were intermarried up the kazoo which is really important for trade purposes too um if you want to make a really good deal with somebody marry your son or your daughter off to them and then they’ll make a deal with you CU you’re in-laws you’ll get a better price they get a better price from you they get free stuff from you when you hold a L um and so we had relatives on purpose all the way up past Vancouver Island all the way down into Northern California um all the way up river past Sala Falls and it was mostly for let make a deal so you know where you are let’s see um so this is really cool this is something I ran across I was looking for mats to make this presentation and so I Googled um NASA uh photographs of the land to see what I came up with and I’m going to step back so I can enjoy this but um Watch What Happens here so this is an undoctored page right off the web from last week so here’s where we’re at right down where that little dot is more or less and we start zooming out zooming out let’s see if you see it before I outline it for you you see that see that face that woman’s face all of our stories from British Columbia all the way down into Southern Central Oregon talk about this land being a woman that would provide for your every need um we always talk about here on the coast When the tide goes out the dinner plate set you didn’t have to work too dang hard around here to get fed um at the apologists tell us that the average Club work something like 12 hours a week to meet all of their needs shelter food and clothing now what do you do with all the rest of your time well as is true on most of most of the northwest coast into Southeast Alaska you spend most of that other time free time developing culture spirituality Traditions Customs um hanging out trading visiting relatives telling stories and making sure you have a really deep culture it’s one of the reasons why the art on the northwest coast is so intense and so developed had all kinds of the time to do it he didn’t have to be running around chasing deer like Lou and Clark or we already knew where they were and ate a bunch of other stuff those guys hated salmon they nearly starved to death cuz they wouldn’t eat salmon they wanted to eat dogs they were eating their shoe leather at one point and trying to boil their their jacket um when there were muscles and clams and seaweed all kinds of good stuff to eat they they wanted to eat dogs watch your dog there so uh I thought that was kind of interesting I ran across that totally by accident um so here we are the bigger map of uh our trade area this is for the most part our trade area it actually goes down here um past the Maya um where some of our trade goods came up from and it actually goes across the ocean to China and Russia we’ve been trading with China Russia and Spain for at least 200 years before Lis and Clark got here in say quite a few more possibly 400 years with China um but when they got here they saw Chinese trade beads Russian Goods iron tools and implements that they didn’t think they were going to see cuz they hadn’t seen him anywhere else along the trail really seeing him kind of spotty here and there they met fluent English speakers that also spoke French and Spanish aruk jaran had already Incorporated French and Spanish into it and uh so these guys were U pretty surprised they didn’t come as Traders too which is an important thing to remember they were explorers hoping to control and dominate and get settlement for the rest of the West so they were going to figure out what all the Rocks were and where all the mountains were they were going to map them and as much as possible identify the tribes and if you listen to Bob Miller last night he really broke down probably better than anybody I’ve ever heard why are you identifying all these tribes cuz they own the land so when you get back that gives you your laundry list of who you’ve got to go start meeting with if you want that land or if you want your settlers to be able to settle that land um so they weren Traders they were explorers on a military Expedition and they got to the mouth of the river uh right there at L and Clark river and they told Chief koboy we’re just going to hang out pretty much over the winter is what we’re thinking at this time um we need a little spot to build a little thing we’re going to build a house by the way first folks that we know of that ever came built a house in our land now we had a lot of people from European descent living with us at that time and leis and Clark remark in their journals there’s quite a few number of red-haired tall lanky blue-eyed Indians living here U that doesn’t explain my genetics though uh I should back up to my introduction my mom’s got some kind of scand movian thing going on but we’re not really sure cuz part of her family was left on a door doorstep an orphanage in Minnesota so we’re not real cool sure on that but we got an oie Olsen in there somewhere which is a pretty good clue um and dad’s got French and and who knows what else going on in in his his family history as well as plate um but as native people we never have to bind oursel by Blood um period we had a whole bunch of French guys that are identified as Plaza living with us that’s no Indian blood at all it’s what’s your language what’s your spirituality and how do you live and it’s still that way people will carry around certified degree of Indian blood cards and that just tells you how much Lota you might be or whatever it is you are but I know full blood lotas that could not get into most of the ceremonies I’ve been around because they don’t speak their language and they don’t practice their religion and they they just lost too much so blood doesn’t really mean a whole lot it means who do you live with how do you live your life um I have a really hard time living as a cloudon person I live in southern Oregon right now I’m surrounded by L Telma K HOA clam um so that’s how I live most of the year is I follow their seasonal cycle I speak their language I practice their culture when I’m in my backyard it’s a lot easier to practice my culture um so here we are Russians all kinds of people that we’re trading with see if this keeps working so these are the major Trade Centers at least according to Anthropologist um the big big dots are the big major ones and then the little ones are what they consider minor ones but still a whole lot of activity going on you know when Le and Clark got to Sala Falls for instance they remarked that there were at least 40 30 to 40 different tribes gathered at that place at that time doing a bunch of trading and that’s one of them big dots right there now underwater and uh I think I put a picture in that for you uh somewhere here so these are the Trade Centers and the routes connecting them at least as far as anthropology knows these are the ones that are well-worn Trails well-known stories about trade that was going on um and notice out from Florida going all the way to Cuba and uh out in South America there was a lot of traveling going on people visiting a whole lot of folks so from the northwest coast and on up into Alaska um this is what they had to offer baskets skins berries whale blubber whale oil and ulon oil salmon canoes blankets shells and uh they were bringing that to the party we had dellia from Vancouver Island all kinds of other shells and shell money Roots salmon ulon again whale oil and we had armor we had the clups made in armor and still know how to make that armor called clamens clamens were used all the way down into Mexico and all the way up into Alaska and what there is an elk hiide that’s shrunk over a fire about a dozen times so you wet it shrink it wet it shrink it wet it shrink it and you take a whole elk heite and you end up with a little bitty shrunken thing about this big but it’s about that thick and an arrow can’t penetrate it and they would rig them up like Viking it looked like Viking and medieval armor long before medieval armor they’d rig them up like this around their sides they’ have Willows around their necks and a shield that dropped down made of bar and those for the Waring tribes that was a good thing to have but they cost you a bunch a bunch of money one report is it was the equivalent of three canoes a canoe was the equivalent of a wife which is about as spendy as anything you get it was three canoes to get a clamon outfit and they still talk about that out there why don’t you guys start making your clam again um down from California and down into Mexico uh today Mexico beads bows obsidian most of the slaves came from Northern California on down in the slave trade although people became slaves just like sagaa by getting captured from other people at War and stuff like that um shells and then the basket work we all had basket work but this is really like big time they were known for it go ahead ulon ulon is a real small fish kind of like a smell and it’s so oily that once you dry a ulon you can light it and it burns like a candle and that’s what they were used for a lot as well as seasoning food ulon oil is really good you have to kind of acquire taste for it if you weren’t born you know eating it but it’s poured on everything dried salmon you pour ulon oil into it freshens it back up and you can eat it Pour it on berries it’s mixed with salow soap berries um snow Berry soup is one of the best things you’ll ever eat but it is kind of an odd taste and they make it up in DC and Alaska and they take soapberries mix it up with ulon oil and it served to you it looks like ice cream doesn’t taste thing like ice cream tastes like eating bare fat but youon oil is very good very healthy if the Luc and Clark expedition knew about the benefits of Cedar uh Pine and ulon oil they could have survived and never and none of these shippers would ever suffer from scouring you could live on it it wouldn’t taste very good e that all the time down in the southwest blankets Pottery axes and stone tools as well as uh tools up from the northern Arctic too from the plains horses Roots Buffalo hides and Flint were their main trade items uh from the Northeast shell beads in wome was their big thing uh Southeast woven clothes and cloth and then now from the Florida area area turtle eggs and bird feathers these things made their way all over the dang place and uh I’m I’m kind of wearing let me make sure that’s my last one yeah so I’m kind of wearing a blend of some of this um these cowy shells don’t belong here these are from uh further down into Baja and and uh the coast down in there but they do belong here because we always traded for them these hiqua the big dentalium shelves these come from the west coast of Vancouver Island and so do the little dentium um but we always had them here cuz they were money money um these big ones are worth more CU it takes fewer of them to make a string these little ones aren’t worth as much cuz it takes a whole bunch of them to make a string um these other shells I’m trying to do this without bumping you on my mic these are all laella shells these are from California dowy New Mexico and Baja um this vest can you tell what this this guy’s doing here that kind of looks like the Raven’s puking right um this this is a design you can’t just make a a design people own these designs just like people own these songs right so I can’t just make this design for one thing we didn’t have Raven Clan Eagle Clan and all that kind of stuff here that’s more an Alaskan and British Columbia kind of thing that dies out once you get Washington um but this vest design Was Made For Me by heida clink lady who is from The Raven Clan and I was teaching some of her kids and speaking like I do and uh she’s just crying at the end of it and she says I have to make you something I have this design I saw in my head so she made this design for the best and I asked her what it meant and she said well we have a origin story where Raven skco brought the first salmon eggs and sketo was flying over the rivers and streams and dropped those salmon eggs to make the first salmon people which came before us and uh so this is Raven dropping the first salmon eggs out of his mouth and she I said well how did that come you and she said because um you feed our children just the same way that the Raven fed us but by dropping those eggs you drop ideas that makes them feel good about being native people and proud and they want to learn more and and so I wear this um in honor of those people up there but this kind of design would be common down here as well as chat blankets and other things from there um let’s see this hide is from here so is this one so is this one this stellia like I already said is not from here this Cattail headband is from here as well as this Cedar headband this is a common person’s headband so it’s that Cattail one um don’t have to be achieved to have one just any any old buddy um these shells uh these are from here but these are not and this is uh clamshell beads and you got to imagine the kind of work that goes into this so somebody takes clamshells like this squares them off Cuts them off squares them off strings puts a hole through them and then strings all these square and they’re about that square pieces together and then starts working on them on a piece of sandstone like this until they get round and they make them in a uniform thickness like that for the most part so these are actually from California um these beads which we’re known for the cobalt blue beads actually come from Russia for the most part um and got here from there what else on my belt these trade beads these blue trade beads these are the ones we kept asking Louis and Clark for that they said had to send back home for more this these were our favorites um these are from China for the most part these antler tips are from Southern Oregon this is from Florida these these uh abalon are from Southern California so we’re a whole blend of all kind of stuff up here but it’s because of where we are at the mouth of the Columbia River there we had um what’s called a one for two sale so you guys are used to two for one sales right buy one get one free we had a one for two sale which meant um you want one of this you got to give us twice as much so why would you do that well if you were coming down from Alaska and you needed something from all the way out in the plains I could save your life possibly by selling you that item here you wouldn’t have to make the rest of that journey and now Vice Versa if somebody out the plains needed something from Alaska or from the coast they could come down to salila Falls and pick it up there when we came to trade and we we didn’t just sit here and make our money we ventured out in the ocean all the way up to Vancouver Island down to Northern California and up the river at least to Salo Falls and so we were going and making deals all the time are one for two deals and so we got very very rich um L and Clark and I don’t normally mention them but because that’s what we’re here for I keep bringing them up L and Clark didn’t come as Traders remember so they didn’t bring a whole lot actually they had some stuff to trade when they started out but they had squat when they got here they’ given it all away for the most part and they didn’t understand trading they didn’t know a thing about trading and so those guys have come up and in our stories I think they’re some of this in the journals but in our stories they talk about those guys would come up and say um I have an alide and I want I want four otter for that and think that was trading now trading to us is a whole another thing it’s a social thing it’s not just an economic thing it happens normally around a house inside a house around a fire we sit and chat for a while I get to know you you get to know me you might bring up what it is that you’re here for and I tell you to shut up we’re busy visiting still and eating and we drag this out for hours with gambling those gambling songs and trading songs we drag it out get to know why are we doing all that well you’re our newspaper there is no newspaper so if you come trading from the East Coast I want you to hang out tell me everything you saw on the way out who’ you run into maybe I know them how’s the fishing up in salad are they coming in yet should I start going up there do they have the C Roots should we take a a bushel up and sell them cuz they’re dry and uh the whole point of it is the visiting these guys didn’t want to visit and they didn’t want to hang out so they’d show up and say here’s what I want here’s what I’ll give you and then of course the classup guys would say all right um I want twice as much as I usually want then if you’re not going to do the chatting part and the visiting part and you’re not going to hang then you know it’ll cost you twice as much and they said well what kind of deal is that it’s like well you could hang out if you want and I it’ll probably come down later on tonight when we’re tired you know you could wear me down but if you just want to make a deal and go back to the Fort it’s going to cost you twice as much and they complain to no end in their journals about the catsup and their Wy Traders you know speak the English and know what we want to do before we tell them we want to do it and um they just didn’t understand trading trading is a social activity it’s building bonds you know if they were really smart with they would have done was build some really strong bonds and said you know there’s going to be some people coming behind us in a few years that want your land and it would beo you to have really close relationships with us and for us to have really close relationships with you we could help each other out they weren’t really thinking that way they were tired they were worn out you know they finally saw the ocean they got to see the whale and they’re ready to go home you know we’re going to make some salt we’re going to repair our moccasins make some extra paars and we’re going to try to stay out of the rain as as much as we can um and this is a NOA house another typical uh kind of trading scenario cooking scenario fish drying hanging from the ceiling folks sitting around telling stories now this is uh cilo right before it went underwater and uh these two ladies are pretty pleased aren’t they they got all their dried fish in um all kinds of fish dried up their fish down here in the lower right dry and filets drying they’ pound their salmon and then they’d air dry it they didn’t smoke it um and they got a good haul um anthropologists tell us that Salo typically moved about a million pounds of salmon every year just for trade that’s not what they kept for themselves Sal still is a functioning Community they just don’t have the falls and they don’t have the ability to get salmon like that anymore and like mention it’s a social activity this is the last dance held at the Salo trading house before the Falls went underwater and notice these guys got some funny regalia for Coastal people they got PLS regalia for the most part and that’s really typical of our people to use other people’s ideas for clothing for Customs we would share songs with one another so while we’re sitting there haggling and trading you might try to humiliate me by saying um you try to outdo the other one by bettering them like our Potlatch is I can give you more than you can give me you know I can give you more Salon than you can give me back I can give you more blankets I can give you better songs I can give you better dances and so what would happen here is and also at our our side on the mouth of the river here folks would come together and a guy would say I got a song for healing a really bad big toe that I’m going to give you guys and he’d sing that song and gift it to him now that would look like he’s giv them something but really what he’s doing is saying he don’t have the song for theing the big toe so I’m going to have to give that to you now he’s going to be known forever as the guy that gave you the big to heing song so that increases his honor now you’re walking around with this big tow Healing Song and so every time you sing it you would say this is the big toing song that I got from Big Charlie from you know sahap people so you know now you got this obvious link going on between the two families and it’s a big social activity this dance went on until the we hours of the morning cuz the adults didn’t get to dance together until after midnight so you got the boys dance then you got the Warriors dance then you got the women’s dance then everybody eats all this food that’s laid out and then around midnight the teenagers and people that aren’t hooked up get to do their ow dance and it’s only time men and women dance together and this is just go on forever this is a contemporary celebration similar to the one at Salo this is last year I believe the Nill people up in the sound um or British Columbia singing a welcoming song to start their pot their kids are learning here’s the Lal Falls in full force right before it went underwater um and that fed a lot of our trade by the way at least from Inland a lot of fall and notice in the back right hand corner that big structure that’s a fish wheel an Indian invention um we had the wheel long time and what a fish wheel does is it’s a big you seen the paddle Wheels on the side of the ship it’s big one one of those but it’s got catch cans that are made out of wheels and later on um reinforced with wire that are open baskets and as that big wheel moves through the water it Scoops up salmon and drops them in a catch Basin on the other side A lot of times it was holding Pence down in the water but sometimes it would just be a big box so you go and leave your wheel all day long sitting in one spot come back the next morning and have 60 salmon laying there in your box or in your holding pent and dipping them out um fish Wheels operated in the Columbia right up until the late 50s and these guys are dip netting off these platforms very dangerous way to fish these guys are on the bank oh and you saw a fish wheel behind them too let’s see if I can go back a couple big ones back there um this is full-blown and this would be about 1937 fish are in guys are all down on the Rocks there were several different levels of waterfalls that’s theal uh this is around the same time there you go there’s a busy spot we got a couple dip Nets just laying down in the water waiting for a salmon to swim into them and then they pull them up real fast and they have a cinch rope that locks them in there so they can work up and imagine trying to yank a 60 70 lb Sal the side of a cliff and you notice this guy’s roped in but they’re all roped in cuz you can get pulled off and die and so they ROP them themselves in it was still a very dangerous thing to do none of these guys are roped in they at the bank there’s the village in the background Sal Wan Village um what’s left of that Village is on the other side of the railroad tracks and be the uh I got to think of my directions now south of the railroad tracks in Columbia River Highway there’s still a long house there they still have a first Sal ceremony there and other ceremonies there this is Chief Tommy Cooney Thompson he was the last Chief um alive when the D when before the dam filled up um his people agreed to sell the Falls but didn’t know what they were selling really they thought they were selling uh the right to visit it it wasn’t very clear that they knew in 1960 U what they were actually selling and he died of heartbreak soon after um The Falls before and after um this is shot from the exact same spot the photo on the left now let me see if I get this right yeah the photo on the left was taken in 53 photo on the right was taken in 74 and you can see see how it’s changed the water level and the landscape and it’s actually filled in quite a bit more this Falls is really not there like that anymore on the right hand side at all uh the water levels come up and buried the entire complex including burial islands building sites there’s Tommy wearing his Plains regelia my friend Brent Flo’s mom beat at all this regali for him when she was a little girl she used Warm Springs there’s those trade beeds that we love I just got a few slides here uh arrowheads which we’re known for all over the world the best arrowheads came from the clouds of people and the people of Oregon uh Beaver which the Trappers love dear hell oh Nature Bears this is a cedar we did everything with cedar we made our clothes out of cedar boxes cooking implements um our houses some of the berri from here and look at that that’s a rich woman she’s got coppers on her arm coppers hanging from her ear elaborate in her nose copper on her hat Big Cedar cap and a cedar hat those are all trade goods too okay come on the big canoes these are Edward edwardes Curtis photos uh taken from here Cattail mats which were used to cover houses as well as for eating on and sleeping on and uh we’ll put that as the end one um SO trading is basically why we’re here we’re one of the few tribes in the area that don’t have a story about us coming from someplace else we were created here at Saddle Mountain that’s our origin story um the shinook share the same story that we do some of the neighboring tribes have stories about coming from Inland and moving down toward the coast and getting stopped by the clups and the shnooks on the other side they were too strong to conquer but they kind of conquered their way down and and uh from the Inland to the coast trying to get to the goods here cu the economy was here all the food was here and it’s harder living except for maybe in the W valy but you go out toward the Great Basin and out in the plateau um it’s a lot harder living than it is living here on the coast and so people would try to move into the area another good reason have alliances is somebody was trying to move into your area and you could call up to the sahap people and say by the way stop these guys or come back down here and reinforce us or down to the Teel or to tun come on up and give us some help kick these guys back out it was really easy to maintain in our territory and then you’d get a better trade next time you know that that would be our debt to you for helping us out is maybe we potat you and give you a whole bunch of stuff and then from then on your trade would be at a discount you know you get a red tag every time you come uh and that’s just one of the Trade Centers for your your research purposes it’s really interesting to read about itoda choco Canyon um kado all the different Trade Centers Great Slave Lake is an amazing trade Trade Center up there they still have a huge Trade Center up in Noka and Colona um Port Al Bernie a house at husatv Lively trade as we do uh still here um and we’re still we’re trying to Revive Our traditional Trade Practices which means hang out talk a lot chat eat some food and uh do some gambling with us uh people are just scared to gamble with us so we got to teach them that it’s okay to hang out um we were the Walmart of the Northwest anybody work for Walmart here I don’t want to offend anybody Walmart of the Northwest you might have already heard me say this in another presentation but we and uh they have no heal plan but it was One-Stop shopping and you were willing to pay twice as much in order to to make that One-Stop shopping the peaceful classs of people are are still here you know still an active presence although we lay pretty low most of the time Louis and Clark’s been a reason to be more visible um but we’re still here we’re still active come up to the coastal Natural History Center hang out talk a bit um talk to the volunteers when you see there’s an activity going on uh come down and participate you know there’s a lot happening and I just want to open it up for a few questions before wrapping it up for a close ladies and gentlemen if you have a question you raise your hand I’ll come to you and then yeah go ahead everyone can hear it you said earlier that your grandfather owned a large piece of land in aoria the traditional lore that I’ve always heard is basically the Indians did not have have a concept of so my my grandpa wasn’t Indian George W cook married Mary cook who is a full blood classet um in 1838 and he acquired maybe I shouldn’t make this so public but he actually ended up with two homesteads and an Oregon donation land claim and uh so he kind of a Wy guy he was a friend of the local judge and magistrate and on top of that he was a very wealthy guy he owned a log piling business was responsible for building most of the canies most of the docks and providing wood for that so he had a bunch of money and what he decided to do when they opened up the territory for settlement he saw that the Indian people were getting um I don’t know how to say this nicely taken and uh that they couldn’t purchase the land because anybody that wasn’t half blood or less was con considered too Savage to land title and so what he did was he bought up as much of the land as they as he could with his own money and let the people continue living on there and he held it in trust as soon as they had halfblood children that could hold Land Title and uh there’s records of him and his daughter signing off these titles to them giving them their land um in most cases free of charge but it included some of the burial grounds many of the Sacred sites although we lost a lot of them up at Fort Stevens and in that area but he bought up as much as he could as did other um allies so people for the most part up until Lou and Clark people married into these families and became clata you know that was the deal is you can marry my daughter but you got to learn our language live with the Four Seasons or you better have a really good job that’s bringing in income um but you got to live with us you can’t just be a squatter or resident or Foreigner you need to become us because it’s us we’re here and then once sellers start coming in then you got this odd thing where people buy land and like today people are transiting you know you grow up in a family in one area and then you just pick up because you got a job well native people didn’t just pick up cuzz they’re connected to the land and needed to work with those plants and animals and roots and and could be transient like that you know time for a very very short question has to be a short question who has a short question my buddy right here right here yeah actually I lived in a TV but we didn’t live in TVs here yeah yeah ladies and gentlemen we’re out of time right now if you have more questions you can ask them right after oh hang on out there n w m in our language thank you for your good ears thank you for your good Hearts if I heard any feelings drop it as you go coming up next we’re going to have uh Bud Clark e e for

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Lewis: May 28, 1806

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:26 +0000

Wednesday May 28th 1806. We sent Goodrich to the village of the broken arm
this morning he returned in the evening with some roots bread and a parsel
of goats-hair for making our saddle pads. Reubin and Joseph Feilds set out
this morning to hunt high up on a creek which discharges itself into this
river about 8 miles above us. at Noon Charbono, York and Lapage returned;
they had obtained four bags of the dryed roots of Cows and some bread. in
the evening Collins Shannon and Colter returned with eight deer. they had
fortunately discovered a ford on Collins’s Creek where they were enabled
to pass it with their horses and had hunted at the quawmash ground where
we first met with the Chopunnish last fall. deer were very abundant they
informed us, but there were not many bear. The sick Cheif was much better
this morning he can use his hands and arms and seems much pleased with the
prospect of recovering, he says he feels much better than he has for a
great number of months. I sincerely wish these sweats may restore him; we
have consented that he should still remain with us and repeat these
sweats. he set up a great proportion of the day.The Child is also
better, he is free of fever, the imposthume is not so large but seems to
be advancing to maturity.- since my arrival here I have killed several
birds of the corvus genus of a kind found only in the rocky mountains and
their neighbourhood. I first met with this bird above the three forks of
the Missouri and saw them on the hights of the rocky Mountains but never
before had an opportunity of examining them closely. the small corvus
discribed at Fort Clatsop is a different speceis, tho untill now I had
taken it to be the same, this is much larger and has a loud squawling note
something like the mewing of a cat. the beak of this bird is 11/2 inches
long, is proportionably large, black and of the form which characterizes
this genus. the upper exceeds the under chap a little. the head and neck
are also proportionably large. the eye full and reather prominent, the
iris dark brown and puple black. it is about the size and somewhat the
form of the Jaybird tho reather rounder or more full in the body. the tail
is four and a half inches in length, composed of 12 feathers nearly of the
same length. the head neck and body of this bird are of a dove colour. the
wings are black except the extremities of six large fathers ocupying the
middle joint of the wing which are white. the under disk of the wing is
not of the shining or grossy black which marks it’s upper surface. the two
feathers in the center of the tail are black as are the two adjacent
feathers for half their width the ballance are of a pure white. the feet
and legs are black and imbricated with wide scales. the nails are black
and remarkably long and sharp, also much curved. it has four toes on each
foot of which one is in the rear and three in front. the toes are long
particularly that in the rear. this bird feeds on the seed of the pine and
also on insects. it resides in the rocky mountains at all seasons of the
year, and in many parts is the only bird to be found.our hunters
brought us a large hooting Owl which differs considerably from those of
the Atlantic States which are also common here. the plumage of this owl is
an uniform mixture of dark yellowish brown and white, in which the dark
brown predominates. it’s colour may be properly termed a dark iron grey.
the plumage is very long and remarkably silky and soft. these have not the
long feathers on the head which give it the appearance of ears or horns.
the leathers of the head are long narrow and closely set, they rise
upwright nearly to the extremity and then are bent back sudonly as iff
curled. a kind of ruff of these feathers incircle the thoat. the head has
a flat appearance being broadest before and behind and is 1 foot 10 Is. in
circumference. incircling the eyes and extending from them like rays from
the center a tissue of open hairy long feathers are placed of a light grey
colour, these conceal the ears which are very large and are placed close
to the eyes behind and extending below them. these feathers meet over the
beak which they nearly conceal and form the face of the owl. they eyes are
remarkably large and prominant, the iris of a pale goald colour and iris
circular and of a deep sea green. the beak is short and wide at it’s base.
the upper chap is much curved at the extremity and comes down over and in
front of the under chap. this bird is about the size of the largest
hooting Owl. the tail is composed of eleven feathers, of which those in
the center are reather the longest. it is booted to the extremity of the
toes, of which it has four on each foot, one in the rear one on the outer
side and two in front. the toes are short particularly that in rear, but
are all armed with long keen curved nails of a dark brown colour. the beak
is white and nostrils circular large and unconnected. the habits and the
note of this owl is much that of the common large hooting owl.

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Clark: May 29, 1806

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:26 +0000

Thursday 29th of May 1806 No movement of the party to day worthy of
notice. we have once more a good Stock of Meat and roots. Bratten is
recovering his Strength very fast. the Child, and the Indian Cheaf are
also on the recovery. the Chief has much more use of his hands and arms.
he washed his face himself today. Which he has not been able to do
previously for more than twelve months past. I would have repeeted the
Sweat to day had it not been Cloudy and frequently raining.-. Sence my
arrival here I have killed Several birds of the Corvus genus of a kind
found only in the rocky mountains and their neighbourhood. I first met
with bird on Jeffersons River. and Saw them on the hights of the rocky
mountains. but never before had an oppertunity of examineing them Closely.
the Small Corvus discribed at Fort Clatsop is a different Species, tho
untill now I had taken it to be the Same, this is much larger and has a
loud squaling note something like the newing of a Cat. the beak of this
bird is 11/2 inches long, is proportionably large, black and of the form
which characterize this genus. the upper exeeds the under Chap a little.
the head and neck are also propotionably large, the eyes full and reather
prominant, the iris dark brown and purple black. it is about the Size and
Some what the form of the jay bird, tho reather rounder and more full in
the body. the tail is four and a half inches in length, composed of 12
feathers nearly of the Same length. the head, neck and body of this bird
is of a dove Colour. the wings are black except the extremities of Six
large feathers occupying the middle joint of the wings which are White.
the under disk of the wings are not of the shineing or glossy black which
mark it’s upper Surface. the two feathers in the Center of the tail are
black as are the two adjacent feathers for half their wedth, the ballance
are of a pure White. the feet and legs are black, and imbricated with wide
Scales, the nails are black and remarkably long and Sharp, also much
Curved, it has four toes on each foot of which one is in the rear and 3 in
front. the toes are long particular that in the rear. this bird feeds on
the Seeds of the pine and also on insects. it resides in the rocky
Mountains at all Seasons of the year, and in many parts is the only bird
to be found. a Species of Lizzard Called by the French engages, Prarie
buffaloe are nativs of these plains as well as those of the Missouri. I
have Called them the horned Lizzard. they are about the Size and a good
deel the figure of the Common black lizzard. but their bellies are
broader, the tail Shorter and their action much Slower; they Crawl much
like the toad. they are of a brown Colour with yellowish and yellowish
brown Spots. it is covered with minute scales intermixed with little
horney like blunt prickkles on the upper Surface of the body. the belly
and throat is more like the frog and are of a light yellowish brown
Colour. around the edge of the belly is regularly Set with little horney
prejections which give to those edges a Serrate figure, the eye is Small
and of a dark colour. above and behind the eyes there are Several
Projections of the bone which being armed at their extremities with a firm
black Substance has the appearance of horns Sprouting out from the head.
this part has induced me to distinguish it by the appellation of the
Horned Lizard. I cannot conceive how the engagees ever assimilated this
animal withe Buffalow for there is not grater anology than between the
Horse and the frog. this Animal is found in greatest numbers in the Sandy
open parts of the Plains, and appear in great abundance after a rain; they
are Sometimes found basking in the Sunshine but conceal themselves in
little holes under the tufts of grass or herbs much the greater proportion
of their time. they are noumerous about the Falls of Missouri, and in the
plains through which we passed lately above the Falls of Columbia

The Choke Cherry has been in blume Since the 20th inst. it is a Simple
branching ascending Stem. the Cortex Smooth and of a dark brown with a
redish Cast. the leaf is scattered petiolate oval accute at it’s apex
finely Serated Smooth and of an ordinary green, from 21/2 to 3 inches in
length and from 11/4 to 2 in width. the Peduncles cilindric and Common
from 4 to 5 inches in length and are inserted promiscuisly on the twigs of
the proceeding years growth. on the lower portion of the Common peduncle
are frequently from 3 to 4 Small leaves, being the same in form as those
last discribed. other peduncles 1/4 of an inch in length are Scattered and
thickly inserted on all sides of the Common peduncle at right-angles with
it, each elivateing a Single flower, which has five obtuse Short patent
white petals with Short claws incerted on the upper edge of the calyx. the
Calyx is a perianth including both Stemes & germ, one leafed five
cleft entire, Semi globular. the Stamons are upwards of twenty and are
Seated on the Margin of the flower Cup or what I have Called the perianth.
the filaments are unequal in length Subulate inflected and Superior
membranous. the anthers are equal in number with the filaments, they are
very Short oblong and flat, naked and Situated at the extremity of the
filaments. is of a yellowish colour asis also the pollen. one pistillum.
the germin is ovate, Smooth, Superior, sessile, very Small; the Style is
very Short, Simple, erect, on the top of the germen deciduous. the Stigma
is Simple, flat very Short. This Shrub rises to the hight of from 6 to 8
feet generally but Sometimes rich Situations much higher. it is not
confined to any particular Situation Capt. L-s met with a singular plant
in blume of which we preserved a Specimene. it grows on the Steep fertile
hill Sides near this place the radix is fibrous, not much branched,
annual, woody, white and nearly Smooth. the Stem is Simple branching
ascending 21/2 feet high. Celindric, villose and of a pale red Colour. the
branches are but fiew and those near it’s upper extremity. the extremities
of the branches are flexable and are bent down near their extremities with
the weight of the flowers. the leaf is sessile, scattered thinly, nearly
lineor tho Somewhat widest in the middle, two inches in length, absolutely
entire, villose, obtusely pointed and of an Ordinary green. above each
leaf a Small Short branch protrudes, Supporting a tissue of four or five
Small leaves of the Same appearance of those discribed. a leaf is placed
under neath each branch and each flower. the Calyx is one flowered Spatha.
the corolla Superior, consists of four pale perple petals which are
tripartite, the Centeral lobe largest and all terminate obtusely; they are
inserted with a long and narrow claw on the top of the germ, are long,
Smooth and deciduous. there are two distinct Sets of Stamens the first or
principal Consists of four, the filaments which are capillary, erect,
inserted on the top of the germ alternately with the petals, equal short,
membranus; the anthers are also four each being elivated with it’s
fillaments; they are reather flat, erect sessile, cohering to the base,
membranous, longitudinally furrowed, twise as long as the fillament naked,
and of a pale purple colour, the Second Set of Stamens are very minute,
are also four and placed within and opposit to the petals, those are
Scercely precptable while the first are large & Conspicious, the
fillaments are capillary equal, very Short white and Smooth. the anthers
are four, oblong, beaked, erect Cohering at the base, membanous, Shorter
than the fillaments, White naked and appear not to form pollen, there is
one pistillum; the germ of which is also one, celindric, villous,
inferior, Sessile, as long as the first Stamuns, and grooved. the Single
Style and Stigma form a perfect mono petallous corolla only with this
difference that the Style which elivates the Stigma or limb is not a tube
but solid tho it’s outer appearance is that of a tube of a Monopetallous
corolla swelling as it ascends and gliding in such manner into the limb
that it Cannot be Said where the Style ends or the Stigma begins, jointly
they are as long as the Gorilla, while the limb is four cleft, Sauser
Shaped, and the margin of the lobes entire and rounded. this has the
appearance of a monopetallous flower growing from the Center of the four
petalled corollar which is rendered more conspicuous in consequence of the
first being white and the latter of a pale purple. I regret very much that
the Seed of this plant are not ripe as yet and it is probable will not be
so dureing our residence in this neighbourhood-. our Horses maney of them
have become So wild that we Cannot take them without the assistance of the
indians who are extreemly dextrous in throwing a Rope and takeing them
with a noose about the neck; as we frequently want the use of our horses
when we cannot get the use of the indians to take them, we had a Strong
pound formed to day in order to take them at pleasure-

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Lewis: May 21, 1806

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:22 +0000

Wednesday May 21st 1806. It rained a few hours this morning. Sheilds and
Gibson set out to hunt towards the mountains. Collins came to camp at noon
and remained about 2 hours; he has killed nothing since he left us last.
we set five men at work to make a canoe for the purpose of fishing and
passing the river. the Indians have already promised us a horse for this
canoe when we have no longer any uce for her. as our tent was not
sufficient to shelter us from the rain we had a lodge constructed of
willow poles and grass in the form of the orning of a waggon closed at one
end. this we had made sufficiently large to sleep in and to shelter the
most important part of our baggage. it is perfectly secure against the
rain sun and wind and affords us much the most comfortable shelter we have
had since we left Fort Clatsop. today we divided the remnant of our store
of merchandize among our party with a view that each should purchase
therewith a parsel of roots and bread from the natives as his stores for
the rocky mountains for there seems but little probability that we shall
be enabled to make any dryed meat for that purpose and we cannot as yet
form any just idea what resource the fish will furnish us. each man’s
stock in trade amounts to no more than one awl, one Kniting pin, a half an
ounce of vermillion, two nedles, a few scanes of thead and about a yard of
ribbon; a slender stock indeed with which to lay in a store of provision
for that dreary wilderness. we would make the men collect these roots
themselves but there are several speceis of hemlock which are so much like
the cows that it is difficult to discriminate them from the cows and we
are affraid that they might poison themselves. the indians have given us
another horse to kill for provision which we keep as a reserved store. our
dependence for subsistence is on our guns, the fish we may perhaps take,
the roots we can purchase from the natives and as the last alternative our
horses. we eat the last morsel of meat which we had for dinner this
evening, yet nobody seems much conserned about the state of provision.
Willard, Sergt. Ordway and Goodrich were permitted to visit the village
today; the former returned in the evening with some roots and bread, the
two last remaining all night. one of our party brought in a young sandhill
crain it was about the size of a pateridge and of a redish brown colour,
it appeared to be about 5 or six days old; these crains are abundant in
this neighbourhood.

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Lewis: April 8, 1806

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:06 +0000

Tuesday April 8th 1806. The wind blew so violently this morning that we
were obliged to unlode our perogues and canoes, soon after which they
filled with water. being compelled to remain during the day at our present
station we sent out some hunters in order to add something to our stock of
provision; and exposed our dryed meat to the sun and the smoke of small
fires. in the evening the hunters returned having killed a duck only; they
saw two bear and some of the blacktailed jumping or fallow deer, such as
are found about Fort Clatsop; this kind of deer are scarce in this
neighbourhood, the common longtailed fallow deer being most abundant. we
have seen the black bear only in this quarter. the wind continued without
intermission to blow violently all day. I took a walk today of three miles
down the river; in the course of which I had an opportunity to correct an
errow which I have heretofore made with rispect to the shrub I have
hithertoo called the large leafed thorn. the leaf of this thorn is small
being only abut 21/2 inches long, is petiolate, conjugate; the leafets are
petiolate accutely pointed, having their margins cut with unequal angular
insissures. the shrub which I have heretofore confounded with this grows
in similar situations, has a stem precisely like it except the thorn and
bears a large three loabed leaf. this bryer is of the class Polyandria and
order Polygynia. the flowers are single, the peduncle long and celindric.
the calix is a perianth, of one leaf, five cleft, & accutely pointed.
the perianth is proper, erect, inferior with rispect to both petals and
germen, and equal. the corolla consists of five accute pale scarlet
petals, insirted in the recepticle with a short and narrow claw. the
Corolla is smooth, moderately long, situated at the base of the germen,
permanent, and cup shaped. of the stamens the filaments are subulate,
inserted into the recepticle, unequal and bent inwards concealing the
pistillum; anther two loabed and inflected situated on the top of the
fillaments of the pistillum the germ is conical, imbricated, superior,
sessile and short. the styles are short with rispect to the stamen,
capillary smooth, obtuse, distributed over the serface of the germ and
decid-uous. no perseptable stigma.late at night the centinel
detected an old indian man in attempting to creep into camp in order to
pilfer; he allarmed the indian very much by presenting his gun at him; he
gave the fellow a few stripes with a switch and sent him off. this fellow
is one of a party of six who layed incamped a few hundred yards below us,
they departed soon after this occurrence.

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Lewis: April 6, 1806

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:05 +0000

Sunday April 6th 1806. This morning we had the dryed meat secured in skins
and the canoes loaded; we took breakfast and departed at 9 A.M. we
continued up the N. side of the river nearly to the place at which we had
encamped on the 3rd of Nov. when we passed the river to the south side in
quest of the hunters we had sent up yesterday and the day before. from the
appearance of a rock near which we had encamped on the 3rd of November
last I could judge better of the rise of the water than I could at any
point below. I think the flood of this spring has been about 12 feet
higher than it was at that time; the river is here about 11/2 miles wide;
it’s general width from the beacon rock which may be esteemed the head of
tide water, to the marshey islands is from one to 2 miles tho in many
places it is still wider. it is only in the fall of the year when the
river is low that the tides are persceptable as high as the beacon rock.
this remarkable rock which stands on the North shore of the river is
unconnected with the hills and rises to the hight of seven hundred feet;
it has some pine or reather fir timber on it’s nothern side, the southern
is a precipice of it’s whole hight. it rises to a very sharp point and is
visible for 20 miles below on the river. at the distance of ten miles from
our encampment we met with our hunters in the upper end of the bottom to
which we had directed them on the South side of the river. they had killed
three Elk this morning and wounded two others so badly that they expected
to get them. we therefore determined to encamp for the evening at this
place in order to dry the meat, in surch of which we sent a party
immediately and employed others in preparing scaffoalds and collecting
firewood &c against their return. we found some indians with our
hunters when we arrived; these people are constantly hanging about us.As
has been before mentioned Capt C set out with a party of seven men on 2ed
inst. in surch of the entrance of the Multnomah river. he departed at 1/2
after 11 A. M and directed his course along the Southern side of the
river. at the distance of 8 miles he passed the village of the
Na-cha-co-lee tribe of the E-lute Nation; this village is not large and
being situated on the main shore opposite to and S. of the Diamond Island
it was concealed by that island from our view both ascending and decending
the Columbia as we passed near the Northern shore. Capt C. passed this
village without halting and continued his rout untill 3 P.M. when he
arrived at a large double house of the Ne-er-cho-ki-oo tribe of the
Shah’ha-la nation; at this place we had seen 24 additional straw and bark
huts as we passed down last fall, the inhabitants of which as I have
before mentioned reside at the great rapids of the Columbia river. about
this place in different directions Capt C. saw a great number of small
canoes lying scattered on the bank. these small canoes are employed by the
women in collecting wappetoe; with one of these a woman enters a pond
where the Sagitaria Sagittifolia grows frequently to her breast in water
and by means of her toes and feet breakes the bulb of this plant loos from
the parent radicle and disincumbering it from the mud it immediately rises
to the surface of the water when she seizes it and throws it into her
canoe which she always keeps convenient to her. they will remain in the
water for hours together in surch of this bulb in middle of winter. those
canoes are from 10 to 14 feet in length, from 18 to 23 inches in width
near the middle tapering or becoming narrower towards either extremity and
9 inches deep their form is thus. they are so light that a woman can draw
them over land or take them with ease through the swamps in any direction,
and are sufficient to carry a single person and several bushells of roots.
Capt. Clarks pilot informed him that the small canoes which he saw in the
vicinity of this lodge were the property of the Shah-ha-las who used them
occasionally when they visit this neighbourhood for the purpose of
collecting roots. while at this place Capt C. entered one of the
appartments of the house and offered several articles to the natives in
exchange for wappetoe, they appeared to be in an ill humour and positively
refused to let him have any. Capt. C. sat himself down near the fire and
having a part of a portfire match in his pocket cut of a small peice of it
and threw it in the fire; at the same time he took out his pocket compass
and by means of a magnet which he had in the top of his inkstand he turned
the nedle of the compass about very briskly; the match took fire and
birned vehemently; the indians astonished and allarmed at these
exhibitions, ran and brought several parcels of wappetoe and laid at his
feet and begged that he would put out the bad fire; to this he consented;
at this moment the match being exhausted was of course extenguished and he
put up his compass & magnet. they were now much more complisant, tho
the women and children were yet so much allarmed that they took refuge in
their beads and behing the men who were seting opposite to Capt. C. during
the whole of this farcical seen an old man who was seting by continued to
speak with great vehemence apparently imploring his god for protection.
Capt. C. gave them an adiquate compensation for their roots and having
lighted his pipe smoaked with the men. they appeared in a great measure to
get the better of their allarm and he left them and continued his rout
along the south side of Image canoe Island which he found to be three
islands, the one in the center concealing the apperture between the two
others in such manner that from the north side of the river where we have
previously passed they all appeared to form one island only. at the
distance of 13 miles below the village just mentioned, and at the lower
point of what we have heretofore deemed the image canoe Island, Capt C.
entered the Multnomah river so called by the natives from a nation of that
name who reside on wappetoe island a little below the entrance of this
river? Multnomah river discharges itself on the S. side of the Columbia
140 miles above the entrance of the latter into the Pacific Ocean, and may
be justly esteemed one fourth of that noble river. Capt. C. found that
this river had attained it’s greatest annual hight and had now fallen
about 18 inches. it has three small islands in it’s mouth which conceal
the river from the view of those who pass with the stream of the Columbia.
from the Columbia at the entrance of the Multonomah river Mount Jefferson
bears S. E. this is a noble mountain. I think equally as high as Mount St.
Helines but it’s distance being much greater than that of the latter, so
great a portion of it dose not appear above the range of mountains which
lie betwen boath those stupendious mountains and this point of view. like
mount St. Heleans it’s figure is a regular cone and is covered with
eternal snow. M. St. Heleans from the same point boar N ____, Mount Hood
due East, and Mount Raniei nearly North. there is also a very high humped
mountain a little to the East of Mount St. Heleans which appears to lie in
the same chain with those conic pointed mountains before mentioned. soon
after Capt Clark entered the Multnomah river he was met by an old Indian
man alone in a canoe decending the river, the pilot had some conversation
with him and informed Capt. C. that this was a man of the Clark-a’-mas
nation who are numerous and inhabit eleven vilages on either side of a
river of the same name which has it’s source in Mount Jefferson and after
tranversing a woody and fertile country discharges itself into the
Multnomah river on it’s E. side at the distance of about 40 miles from
it’s junction with the Columbia. the Clarkamas river is navigable for
canoes a great distance, from the Indian account almost to the foot of
mount, Jefferson. the nation who inhabit it’s borders live principally on
fish with which this stream abounds and also on roots which they procure
on it’s borders. they sometimes also come down to the Multnomah and
Columbia in surch of Wappatoe. they do not differ essentially in their
language dress &c from the Quathlahpohtles and others in the vicinity
of wappetoe island. The current of the Multnomah river is as gentle as
that of the Columbia, glides smoothly with an even surface, and appears to
possess sufficient debth for the largest ship. Capt. C. attempted to sound
it with a cord of 5 fathoms which was the longest in his possession but
could not find bottom at this debth for at least one third of the width of
the river. Capt. C. ascended this river ten miles to a large wood house on
the East side of the river, near which he encamped for the evening; the
house being infested with such swarms of flees that they could not remain
in it. this his guide informed him was the house of the Cush-hooks nation
who reside just below the falls of the Multnomah river and who
occasionally reside at this place for the purpose of collecting wappetoe.
at present this house appeared to have been lately abandoned by the
natives who had left therein exposed to every visiter various articles
such as small canoes, mats, bladders of train oil, baskets, bowls and
trenchers. this is a strong evidence of the honesty of the natives with
rispect to the property of each other, but they have given us several
evidences that they do not pay the same rispect to the property of white
men. his guide further informed him that there were a number of small
houses belonging to the last mentioned nation situated on two bayous which
make out of the river a little above this large hose on the East side;
that the inhabitants of these as well as those of the large house had gone
up to the falls of the Multnomah river for the purpose of taking fish.
these falls are situated at the distance of 2 days travel from the
junction of the Multnomah and Columbia rivers agreeably to the Indian
account which we have estimated at 60 miles or 20 m. above the entrance of
Clarkamus river. Capt C. took the dementions of the hose of the
Ne-mal-quin-ner tribe of the Cushhooks nation near which he encamped on
the 2ed inst. and found it presisely thirty feet by 40 squar constructed
with broad boards and covered with the bark of the white cedar or
arborvita; the floor is on a level with the surface of the earth and the
internal arrangement is similar to those of the natives of the Sea coast.these
people carry on a trafic with the Killamucks of the coast across the
mountains and by way of the Killamucks river from the Killamucks they
obtain their train oil. The courses and distances taken by Capt. Clark in
ascending the Multnomah river from it’s junction with the Columbia river,
commencing at the lower extremity of the Image canoe Islands are as
follows. (viz) S. 30° W. 4 m. to the upper point of a small island in the
center of Multnomah river. thence S 10° W. 3 m. to a sluce 80 yds. wide on
Stard. which dividing wappetoe Island from the main land discharges itself
into wappetoe inlet passed a willow point on Lard. S. 60° W. 3 ms. to a
large indian house on the Lard. side, just below some high fir land the
shore is bold and high on Stard. side. S 30° E. 2 ms. to the center of a
bend under The highlands on Stard. side, passing a Lard. point; from hence
the river directed it’s course to the E. of S. E. as far as Capt. C. could
perceive it.at this place the Multnomah river is 500 yds. wide and
sufficiently deep to admit the largest ship. the river appears to be
washing away it’s banks in some places, and has more sandbars and willow
points than the Columbia.On the morning of the 3rd inst. Capt. Clark
observed that the water had fallen in the course of the night about 5
inches. he set out early and proceeded up the river a short distance few
miles and attempted a second time to fathom it but with the same success
as before he could nt find bottom with his cord of 5 fathoms for the
distance of half the width of the stream. Capt C. having fully satisfyed
himself of the magnitude of this great river he set out on his return at 7
A.M. I have but little doubt but that this river waters a vast tract of
country lying between the Western mountains and the mountainous country of
the sea coast extending as far south as the waters of the gulph of
Callifornia or about Latitude 37° North. at 11 A.M. Capt. C. arrived at
the Ne-er-cho-ki-oo house where he had allarmed the inhabtants yesterday.
he halted here a few minutes to smoke with these people who consisted of
eight families. he found that his presents excited fresh allarm
particularly among the women and children who hid themselves and took
refuge behind the men as yesterday; the men held down their heads and
seemed much conserned; he therefore remained in the house but a few
minutes, returned to his canoe and pursued his rout. his pilot now
informed him that these people as well as their relations at the falls of
the Columbia were illy disposed bad men. soon after he set out he met five
canoes on board of which there were as many families of the Shah-ha-la
nation decending the river in surch of subsistence. they were extreemly
anxious to come along side, but he forbid their doing so as their number
was too considerable there being 21 men on board these canoes. his pilot
told him that they were mischevous bad men. at 3 P.M. he arrived at the
present residence of his pilot on the South side of the river opposite the
Diamond Island. here he halted about an hour he found this house very
large; it consisted of seven appartments in one range above ground each
about 30 feet square. the entrances to these appartments were from
passages which extended quite across the house, about 4 feet wide and
formed like the walls of the hose of broad boards set on end extending
from beneath the floor to the roof of the house. the apperture or hole
through which they enter all those wooden houses are remarkably small not
generally more than 3 feet high and about 22 inches wide. the ground plot
of the Nechecolee house is thus 1 1 1 1 the passages of 4 feet and 2 2
&c. the appartments of 30 feet square. this house is covered with the
bark of the white cedar, laid on in a double course, supported by rafters
and longitudinal round poles attatched to the rafters with cores of this
bark. the peices of the cedar bark extend the whole length of the side of
the roof and jut over at the eve about 18 inches. at the distance of 18
inches transverse splinters of dry fir is inserted through the cedar bark
in order to keep it smooth and prevent it’s edges from colapsing by the
heat of the sun; in this manner the natives make a very secure light and
lasting roof of this bark. in the vicinity of this house Capt. Clark
observed the remains of five other large houses which appeared to have
been sunk in the ground several feet and built after the method of those
of the Elutes nation at the great narrows of the columbia with whom these
people claim affinity. their language is the same with the Elutes, tho in
their habits, dress manners &c they differ but little from the
Quathlahpohtles and others in this neighborhood. they make use of some
words common to their neighbours but the air of their language is entirely
different. they are much better formed and their men larger than the
nations below. their women wear larger and longer robes which are made
principally of deerskins dressed in the hair. they pay great rispect to
their aged persons. Capt. C. observed several persons of both sexes who
appeared to have arrived to great age yet they appeared perfectly healthy
tho most of them perfectly blind. the loss of sight I have observed to be
more common among all the nations inhabiting this river than among any
people I ever observed. they have almost invariably soar eyes at all
stages of life. the loss of an eye is very common among them; blindness in
perdsons of middle age is by no means uncommon, and it is almost
invariably a concommitant of old age. I know not to what cause to
attribute this prevalent deficientcy of the eyes except it be their
exposure to the reflection of the sun on the water to which they are
constantly exposed in the occupation of fishing. Capt. C. enquired of the
Nechecole the cause of the decline of their village. an old man who
appeared to be of some note among them and the father of his guide brought
forward a woman who was much marked with the small pox, and made signs
that the inhabitants of those houses which he saw in ruins had all died
with the disorder which marked the face of the woman and with which this
woman was very near dying when a girl. from the apparent age of the woman
Capt. C. supposed that it was about 28 or 30 years since this disorder had
prevailed among these people. this is about the time which we have
supposed that it prevailed among the Clatsops and others of the coast.
Capt C. now prevailed on this old man to give him a sketch of the
Multnomah river it’s branches and the position and names of the Indian
nations residing thereon this the old man son executed with his finger in
the dust. (see scetch inserted on the 3rd inst.). he informed that the
Cush-hooks and Char-cow-ah nations who reside at the falls of that river
were not numerous; but that the Cal-lah-po-e-wah nation who inhabited both
sides of this river above the falls as far as it was known to himself or
his nation were very numerous. that the country they inhabited was level
and wholy destitute of timber. that a high range of mountains passed the
Multnomah river at the falls, on the upperside of which the country was
one vast plain. the nations who inhabit this country reside on the rivers
and subsist like those of the Columbia on fish and roots principally. Capt
C. bought five dogs of these people and set out for my camp at 5 P.M.
where he arrived a little before dark, on the evening of the third.the
party whom we sent for the flesh of the Elk which Shannon had killed
returned in the evening with that of four, one had by some mistake been
omitted. Drewyer and shannon found the two wounded Elk and had killed
them. we set all hands at work to prepare the meat for the saffoald they
continued their operations untill late at night. we directed Shannon to go
out early in the morning with a party to bring in the Elk which had been
left last evening in mistake. we also directed Drewyer and the two
Feildses to ascend the river early in the morning to a small bottom a few
miles above and hunt untill our arrival.-

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