Humans have inhabited the Columbia's watershed for more than 15,000 years, with a transition to a sedentary lifestyle based mainly on salmon starting about 3,500 years ago. In 1962, archaeologists found evidence of human activity dating back 11,230 years at the Marmes Rockshelter, near the confluence of the Palouse and Snake rivers in eastern Washington. In 1996 the skeletal remains of a 9,000-year-old prehistoric man (dubbed Kennewick Man) were found near Kennewick, Washington. The discovery rekindled debate in the scientific community over the origins of human habitation in North America and sparked a protracted controversy over whether the scientific or Native American community was entitled to possess and/or study the remains.
Indigenous peoples
Columbia River
Columbia River | Indigenous peoples
Native American community Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. In 1996 the skeletal remains of a 9,000-year-old prehistoric man (dubbed Kennewick Man) were found near Kennewick, Washington. The Kalapuya, the Chinook, and the Clackamas.
where is the headwaters of the willamette river
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Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest region of North America
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who were the first people to inhabit the area along the above-mentioned river?
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The Chinook territory encompassed the lower Columbia River valley and significant stretches of the Pacific coast on both the north and the south side of the Columbia's mouth. At times, however, the Chinook territory extended even farther south in the Willamette Valley. The total native population was estimated at about 15,000. The indigenous peoples of the Willamette River practiced a variety of life ways. Those on the lower river, slightly closer to the coast, often relied on fishing as their primary economic mainstay. Salmon was the most important fish to Willamette River tribes as well as to the Native Americans of the Columbia River, where white traders traded fish with the Native Americans.
Willamette River | First inhabitants
For at least 10,000 years, a variety of indigenous peoples populated the Willamette Valley. These included the Kalapuya, the Chinook, and the Clackamas. The territory of the Clackamas encompassed the northeastern portion of the basin, including the Clackamas River (with which their name is shared). Although it is unclear exactly when, the territory of the Chinook once extended across the northern part of the watershed, through the Columbia River valley. Indigenous peoples of the Willamette Valley were further divided into groups including the Kalapuyan-speaking Yamhill and Atfalati (Tualatin) (both Northern Kalapuya), Central Kalapuya like the Santiam, Muddy Creek (Chemapho), Long Tom (Chelamela), Calapooia (Tsankupi), Marys River (Chepenafa) and Luckiamute, and the Yoncalla or Southern Kalapuya, as well other tribes such as the Chuchsney-Tufti, Siuslaw and Molala.
Willamette River | First inhabitants
Archeological evidence suggests that Native Americans lived along the lower Columbia River as early as 10,000 years ago. The area near what later became The Dalles, on the Columbia east of the mouth of the Sandy River, eventually became an important trading center. The Indians established villages on floodplains and traveled seasonally to gather huckleberries and other food on upland meadows, to fish for salmon, and to hunt elk and deer. Although no direct evidence exists that these lower-Columbia Indians traveled up the Sandy, it is likely that they did. Traces of these people include petroglyphs carved into the rocks of the Columbia River Gorge.
Bull Run River (Oregon) | First peoples
Humans began living in the watershed over 10,000 years ago. There were once many tribal villages along the lower river and in the area around its mouth on the Columbia. Indigenous peoples lived throughout the upper reaches of the basin as well. Rich with sediments deposited by flooding and fed by prolific rainfall on the western side of the Cascades, the Willamette Valley is one of the most fertile agricultural regions in North America, and was thus the destination of many 19th-century pioneers traveling west along the Oregon Trail. The river was an important transportation route in the 19th century, although Willamette Falls, just upstream from Portland, was a major barrier to boat traffic.
Willamette River | Introduction
Upper-river tribes caught steelhead and salmon, often by building weirs across tributary streams. Tribes of the northern Willamette Valley practiced a generally settled lifestyle. The Chinooks lived in great wooden lodges, practiced slavery, and had a well-defined caste system. People of the south were more nomadic, traveling from place to place with the seasons. They were known for the controlled burning of woodlands to create meadows for hunting and plant gathering (especially camas).
Willamette River | First inhabitants
Archeological evidence suggests that Native Americans lived along the lower Columbia River as early as 10,000 years ago, including near what later became The Dalles, on the Columbia River about east of the Columbia Slough. By 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, the Clackamas Indians had settled along the Clackamas River, which empties into the Willamette River about south of the slough. The Clackamas tribe was a subgroup of the Chinookan speakers who lived in the Columbia River Valley from Celilo Falls to the Pacific Ocean. Clackamas lands included the lower Willamette River from Willamette Falls, at what later became Oregon City, to the Willamette's confluence with the Columbia River.
Columbia Slough | Early inhabitants
The Columbia River floodplain near the mouth of the Willamette contained many stream channels, lakes, and wetlands that flooded annually. Chinookan tribes hunted and fished there and traveled between the two big rivers via the protected waters of the slough. Their main food sources were salmon, sturgeon, and camas. In 1792, Lieutenant William Broughton, a British explorer, led the first trip by non-natives as far up the Columbia River as the mouth of the Sandy River. He and his men camped on Sauvie Island, which lies between the Willamette and Columbia rivers directly opposite the mouth of the slough. Broughton encountered many Chinookans while exploring and mapping geographic features including Hayden Island and other islands in the Columbia just north of the slough.
Columbia Slough | Early inhabitants
The name "Willamette" is of indigenous origin, deriving from the French pronunciation of the name of a Clackamas Native American village. However, Native American languages in Oregon were very similar, so the name may also be derived from Kalapuya dialects. Around the year 1850, the Kalapuya numbered between 2,000 and 3,000 and were distributed among several groups. These figures are only speculative; there may have been as few as eight subgroups or as many as 16. In that time period, the Clackamas' tribal population was roughly 1,800. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the Chinook population was nearly 5,000, though not all of the Chinook lived on the Willamette.
Willamette River | First inhabitants
Before 1800, coniferous forests covered most of the watershed, and its streams supported big populations of salmon, steelhead, and other fish. Native Americans hunted, fished and gathered food and materials in the Clackamas River drainage as early as 10,000 years ago. By 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, they had established permanent settlements along the river's lower floodplain. This was home to the Clackamas tribe, a subgroup of the Chinookan speakers who lived in the Columbia River valley from Celilo Falls to the Pacific Ocean. The Clackamas lands, reaching into the Cascade Range foothills, included the lower Willamette River from Willamette Falls at what became Oregon City to the confluence with the Columbia.
Clackamas River | Early inhabitants
In the late 18th century, a private American ship became the first non-indigenous vessel to enter the river; it was followed by a British explorer, who navigated past the Oregon Coast Range into the Willamette Valley. In the following decades, fur trading companies used the Columbia as a key transportation route. Overland explorers entered the Willamette Valley through the scenic but treacherous Columbia River Gorge, and pioneers began to settle the valley in increasing numbers. Steamships along the river linked communities and facilitated trade; the arrival of railroads in the late 19th century, many running along the river, supplemented these links.
Columbia River | Introduction
Before settlers moved into the basin, it consisted mainly of upland and wetland forests in which Native Americans fished, hunted, and foraged. Evidence suggests that people lived in the northern Oregon Cascade Range as early as 10,000 years ago. By 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, settlements in the Clackamas River basin, adjacent to the Johnson Creek watershed, had moved to the river's lower floodplain. The area was the home of the Clackamas Indians, a subgroup of the Chinookan speakers who lived in the Columbia River Valley from Celilo Falls to the Pacific Ocean. The Clackamas lands included the lower Willamette River from Willamette Falls at what became Oregon City to its confluence with the Columbia River and reached into the foothills of the Cascades.
Johnson Creek (Willamette River tributary) | History
The region was inhabited for thousands of years by the Chinook and Salish peoples. In May 1792, American explorer Robert Gray became the first European American to navigate the Columbia River, trading with the native tribes and exploring up to 15 miles upriver. Gray created a chart of the lower river, a copy of which was acquired by British explorer George Vancouver. Vancouver conducted a more thorough expedition of the river, traveling as far up as Mount Hood. The Lewis and Clark Expedition, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, sighted the Pacific Ocean for the first time on November 7, 1805, arriving two weeks later.
Northwest Oregon | History
Humans have inhabited the Columbia's watershed for more than 15,000 years, with a transition to a sedentary lifestyle based mainly on salmon starting about 3,500 years ago. In 1962, archaeologists found evidence of human activity dating back 11,230 years at the Marmes Rockshelter, near the confluence of the Palouse and Snake rivers in eastern Washington. In 1996 the skeletal remains of a 9,000-year-old prehistoric man (dubbed Kennewick Man) were found near Kennewick, Washington. The discovery rekindled debate in the scientific community over the origins of human habitation in North America and sparked a protracted controversy over whether the scientific or Native American community was entitled to possess and/or study the remains.
Columbia River | Indigenous peoples
The United States Exploring Expedition passed through the Willamette Valley in 1841 while traveling along the Siskiyou Trail. The expedition members noted extensive salmon fishing by natives at Willamette Falls, much like that at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River. In the middle part of the 19th century, the Willamette Valley's fertile soils, pleasant climate, and abundant water attracted thousands of settlers from the eastern United States, mainly the Upland South borderlands of Missouri, Iowa, and the Ohio Valley. Many of these emigrants followed the Oregon Trail, a trail across western North America that began at Independence, Missouri, and ended at various locations near the mouth of the Willamette River.
Willamette River | 19th-century development
The indigenous Che-ahm-ill people of the "Yam Hills" area were a sub-group of the Kalapuyan culture. They occupied the valley at the time of Euro-American contact and for several decades afterward until their numbers dwindled and the few survivors were removed with other tribes to reservations, primarily the Grand Ronde Reservation in the Oregon Coast Range. By 1812 Pacific Fur Company traders entered the Willamette Valley under the leadership of Donald Mackenzie—this was the first documented contact between Kalapuyan and European people. Ewing Young, after leading pioneering fur brigades in California, came to Portland in 1834 and settled on the west bank of the Willamette River near the mouth of Chehalem Creek, opposite of Champoeg.
Chehalem Creek | History
The Willapa people are a traditionally Athabaskan-speaking people of southwestern Washington. Their territory was between Willapa Bay (named after them) and the prairie lands around the head of the Chehalis and Cowlitz Rivers. A related people, known as the Clatskanie () or Tlatskani, lived on the south side of the Columbia River in northwestern Oregon.
Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast | Willapa
Athapaskan-speaking people, the Chilcotin and Carrier, occupy the northernmost part of the Plateau region. The First Nations of the Plateau were influenced by the First Nations of the Pacific Coast. The Plateau First Nations traded many goods with the Pacific Coast First Nations. The Pacific tribes believed in clan ancestors which were adopted by the Interior Salish groups, but they did not adopt the social system. In the United States, Interior Salish people inhabited the Columbia River and its tributaries above Priest Rapids, near present-day Mattawa. Sahaptin people inhabited the Columbia River and its tributaries between Priest Rapids and Celilo Falls near the Dalles, Oregon and up the Snake River to near the Washington - Idaho border.
Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau | Range
Many different Native Americans and First Nations peoples have a historical and continuing presence on the Columbia. South of the Canada–US border, the Colville, Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, Yakama, Nez Perce, Cayuse, Palus, Umatilla, Cowlitz, and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs live along the US stretch. Along the upper Snake River and Salmon River, the Shoshone Bannock tribes are present. The Sinixt or Lakes people lived on the lower stretch of the Canadian portion, while above that the Shuswap people (Secwepemc in their own language) reckon the whole of the upper Columbia east to the Rockies as part of their territory.
Columbia River | Indigenous peoples
While there is considerable evidence that Paleo-Indians inhabited the region, the oldest evidence of habitation in Oregon was found at Fort Rock Cave and the Paisley Caves in Lake County. Archaeologist Luther Cressman dated material from Fort Rock to 13,200 years ago, and there is evidence supporting inhabitants in the region at least 15,000 years ago. By 8000 BC there were settlements throughout the state, with populations concentrated along the lower Columbia River, in the western valleys, and around coastal estuaries. During the prehistoric period, the Willamette Valley region was flooded after the collapse of glacial dams from then Lake Missoula, located in what would later become Montana.
Oregon | Earliest inhabitants
When Lewis and Clark visited the area in 1806, the Clackamas tribe consisted of about 1,800 people living in 11 villages. The explorers estimated that 800 people of the Multnomah tribe of Chinookans lived in five villages on Sauvie Island. In 1825, the Hudson's Bay Company established its western administrative headquarters at Fort Vancouver, across the Columbia River from the slough. The British fort became the center for fur trading and other commerce throughout the Pacific Northwest, including what would later become the state of Oregon. By the 1830s, smallpox, malaria, measles and other diseases carried by non-indigenous explorers and traders had reduced the native population by up to 90 percent throughout the lower Columbia basin.
Columbia Slough | Early inhabitants
Within the past few thousand years, Indians created trails across the Cascade Range around Mount Hood. In the 19th century, this trail network linked the Wascopam Mission near The Dalles to settlements in the Willamette Valley. One popular trail crossed over Lolo Pass, near the headwaters of the Bull Run River, and another, which later became the Barlow Road, met the Lolo Pass trail roughly where the Zigzag and Salmon rivers enter the Sandy. Indians from villages along the Columbia, Clackamas, and other rivers also traveled by water to the lower Sandy River area to fish for salmon and to gather berries, nuts and roots.
Bull Run River (Oregon) | First peoples
Between 1820 and 1830, an epidemic of fever struck the tribes of the Willamette Valley. The Klickitat took advantage of the drop in population in this region and crossed the Columbia River and occupied territory occupied by the Umpqua. This was not permanent, however, as they were pushed back to their original homeland.
Klickitat people | History
Archeological evidence suggests that Native Americans lived along the lower Columbia River as early as 10,000 years ago. The area near what later became The Dalles, on the Columbia east of the mouth of the Sandy River, eventually became an important trading center. The Indians established villages on floodplains and traveled seasonally to gather huckleberries and other food on upland meadows, to fish for salmon, and to hunt elk and deer. Although no direct evidence exists that these lower-Columbia Indians traveled up the Sandy, it is likely that they did. Traces of these people include petroglyphs carved into the rocks of the Columbia River Gorge.
Sandy River (Oregon) | History
Multnomah and Clackamas counties were named after groups of Native Americans who lived in the area before settlement by European Americans in the 19th century. Evidence suggests that people lived in the northern Oregon Cascades as early as 10,000 years ago. By 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, the Clackamas River basin, about upriver from the mouth of Tryon Creek and on the east side of the Willamette, was home to the Clackamas tribe. They were a subgroup of the Chinookan speakers who lived near the Columbia River from Celilo Falls to the Pacific Ocean. The Clackamas lands included the lower Willamette River from Willamette Falls at what became Oregon City to its confluence with the Columbia River.
Tryon Creek | History
The Willamette River flows northwards down the Willamette Valley until it meets the Columbia River at a point from the mouth of the Columbia. In the natural condition of the river, Portland was the farthest point on the river where the water was deep enough to allow ocean-going ships. Rapids further upstream at Clackamas were a hazard to navigation, and all river traffic had to portage around Willamette Falls, where Oregon City had been established as the first major town inland from Astoria.
Steamboats of the Columbia River | Willamette River
Many of these early settlers moved to the Willamette Valley, a fertile region drained by the Willamette River. They were not the first white settlers there; a group of French Canadians, former employees of the Hudson's Bay Company, had made their homes in the French Prairie area of the valley. The Americans who arrived almost immediately began sending petitions and letters back east requesting the United States government to formally claim the area and protect them from real or perceived threats, both from Native Americans and the British. These settlers were part of a geopolitical rivalry between the United States and Great Britain over who would control the Oregon Territory, which comprised the modern states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, a portion of Montana, and the province of British Columbia.
Treaty with the Kalapuya, etc. | Background
The Willamette River first appears in the records of outsiders in 1792, when it was seen by British Lieutenant William Robert Broughton of the Vancouver Expedition, led by George Vancouver. From the 18th to the mid-19th century, much of the Pacific Northwest and most of its rivers were involved in the fur trade, in which fur trappers (mostly French-Canadians working for the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company, which later merged) hunted for beaver and sea otter on rivers, streams, and coastlines. The pelts of these animals commanded substantial prices in either the United States, Canada or eastern Asia, because of their "thick, luxurious and water-repellent" qualities.
Willamette River | Fur trade
When Lewis and Clark visited the area in 1806, the Clackamas tribe consisted of about 1,800 people living in 11 villages. Epidemics of smallpox, malaria, and measles reduced this population to 88 by 1851, and in 1855 the tribe signed a treaty surrendering its lands, including Johnson Creek. By the middle of the 19th century, the European American newcomers had begun to remove vegetation, build sawmills, fell trees, fill wetlands, and farm in the fertile soil along Johnson Creek. The creek is named for one of these newcomers, William Johnson, who in 1846 settled in what later became the Lents neighborhood of Portland and operated a water-powered sawmill.
Johnson Creek (Willamette River tributary) | History
Human habitation in the Willamette Valley is estimated to have begun between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Until recently, the valley was largely inhabited by bands of the Kalapuya tribe of Native Americans. Molala and Chinook peoples also have inhabited portions of the Willamette Valley since time immemorial. Sixteen thousand Kalapuyans are estimated to have populated the valley as recently as the early 19th century. As many as 90% of the Kalapuya may have died as a result of an epidemic of "fever and ague" that hit the area between 1830 and 1833. Salmon, deer and camas bulbs have provided primary food sources for the valley's first residents who used fire to encourage persistence of oak savanna.
Willamette Valley | Human history
In 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition traveled thousands of miles across central North America in an attempt to map and explore the Louisiana Territory of the United States and the Oregon Country, which were then occupied mainly by Native Americans and settlers from Great Britain. As the expedition traveled down and back up the Columbia River, it missed the mouth of the Willamette, one of the Columbia's largest tributaries. It was only after receiving directions from natives along the Sandy River that the explorers learned about their oversight. William Clark returned down the Columbia and entered the Willamette River in April 1806.
Willamette River | 19th-century development
The Nez Perce inhabited the Clearwater and Salmon River basins and the Snake river through Hells Canyon. The Cayuse homeland is the Blue Mountains and the valleys of the rivers that flow from them. The Molala inhabited the eastern side of the cascade mountains in Oregon. The Klamath people inhabited the upper Klamath River basin and had close contact with people from the California cultural area, though their lifestyle and language were more characteristic of plateau culture.
Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau | Range
The Willamette River ( ) is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward between the Oregon Coast Range and the Cascade Range, the river and its tributaries form the Willamette Valley, a basin that contains two-thirds of Oregon's population, including the state capital, Salem, and the state's largest city, Portland, which surrounds the Willamette's mouth at the Columbia. Originally created by plate tectonics about 35 million years ago and subsequently altered by volcanism and erosion, the river's drainage basin was significantly modified by the Missoula Floods at the end of the most recent ice age.
Willamette River | Introduction
Chinookan peoples include several groups of indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest in the United States who speak the Chinookan languages. Chinookan-speaking peoples reside along the Lower and Middle Columbia River (Wimahl) (″Big River″) from the river's gorge (near the present town of The Dalles, Oregon) downstream (west) to the river's mouth, and along adjacent portions of the coasts, from Tillamook Head of present-day Oregon in the south, north to Willapa Bay in southwest Washington. In 1805 the Lewis and Clark Expedition encountered the Chinook Tribe on the lower Columbia. There are several theories about where the name ″Chinook″ came from.
Chinookan peoples | Introduction
They settled on the Tualatin Plains, arriving on December 25 on the plains with two head of cattle. This was the first time that a wagon completed the journey from Fort Hall to the Columbia River along the Oregon Trail. The following year, they brought the first wagon into the Willamette Valley.
Robert Newell (politician) | Early life
Oak trees have supplied another staple in the form of acorns which are leached, cooked and eaten. Kalapuya, Chinook and Molala peoples of the Willamette Valley currently are included among the confederated tribes that make up the Grand Ronde and Siletz Nations. After reports of the Lewis and Clark Expedition were published in about 1807, a small and steadily increasing stream of isolated pioneer groups began settling the valley and improving routes from the east set up by fur traders and mountain men. From the 1841 Oregon Trail opening, when the effort of many years finally widened the fur traders' mule trails into an improved rough road just capable of carrying the width of a wagon, settlers charged into the region along the new trail, creating new settlements centered about Oregon City as the early capital, even before ownership of the region was settled.
Willamette Valley | Human history
Estimates of the first human habitation along the Tuolumne River range from 3000–7000 BC. The Plains and Sierra Miwok, who were the largest regional Native American group immediately prior to European contact, first established themselves in the area around 1200 CE. The Miwok lived in the Sierra foothills and Central Valley lowlands during winter and traveled into the upper Tuolumne River in summer to hunt, as well as seek refuge from the summer heat. The Paiute, who inhabited the Great Basin on the east side of the Sierra, also ventured into the Tuolumne River basin during the summer. The Yokuts lived along the lower Tuolumne River and were not known to venture up into the Sierra during summer.
Tuolumne River | Early history
Basalts of the Columbia River Basalt Group, from eruptions in eastern Oregon, flowed across large parts of the northern half of the basin about 15 million years ago. They covered the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills), most of the Tualatin Valley, and the slopes of hills further south, with up to of lava. Later depositions covered the basalt with up to of silt in the Portland and Tualatin basins. During the Pleistocene, beginning roughly 2.5 million years ago, volcanic activity in the Cascades combined with a cool, moist climate to produce further heavy sedimentation across the basin; braided rivers created alluvial fans spreading down from the east.
Willamette River | Geology
Archaeologists believe that the first humans to inhabit the Rogue River region were nomadic hunters and gatherers. Radiocarbon dating suggests that they arrived in southwestern Oregon at least 8,500 years ago, and that at least 1,500 years before the first contact with whites, the natives established permanent villages along streams. The home villages of various groups shared many cultural elements, such as food, clothing, and shelter types. Intermarriage was common, and many people understood dialects of more than one of the three language groups spoken in the region. The Native Americans (Indians) included Tututni people near the coast and, further upstream, groups of Shasta Costa, Dakubetede, Takelma, Shasta, and Latgawa.
Rogue River (Oregon) | First peoples
The name is that of the Willapa people, an Athapaskan-speaking people, now extinct, who occupied the valley of the river and also the prairies between the headwaters of the Chehalis and Cowlitz Rivers. River has miocene fossils.
Willapa River | Name
No Native American group in the state of Oregon maintained a written language prior to the arrival of European-Americans, nor for a considerable period thereafter. It is therefore necessary to make use of visitor accounts and the records and press of frequently hostile and poorly comprehending whites to reconstruct the story of the region's Indigenous peoples. The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804 to 1806 traversed the Columbia River, which divides today's states of Oregon and Washington. Although other European and American sailors had traveled up and down the coast and made some contact with the Indigenous peoples who dwelt there, the Lewis and Clark party marked the first time that white Americans had lived among the Oregon tribes.
Native American peoples of Oregon | Explorers, fur traders, and Indigenous peoples
During the prehistoric period, the land that would become Portland was flooded after the collapse of glacial dams from Lake Missoula, in what would later become Montana. These massive floods occurred during the last ice age and filled the Willamette Valley with of water. Before American colonizers began arriving in the 1800s, the land was inhabited for many centuries by two bands of indigenous Chinook peoplethe Multnomah and the Clackamas. The Chinook people occupying the land were first documented in 1805 by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Before its European settlement, the Portland Basin of the lower Columbia River and Willamette River valleys had been one of the most densely populated regions on the Pacific Coast.
Portland, Oregon | Pre-history
These massive floods occurred during the last glacial period and filled the valley with of water. By the 16th century, Oregon was home to many Native American groups, including the Chinook, Coquille (Ko-Kwell), Bannock, Chasta, Kalapuya, Klamath, Klickitat, Molalla, Nez Perce, Takelma, Killamuk, Neah-kah-nie, Umatilla, and Umpqua.
Oregon | Earliest inhabitants
Fur traders heavily exploited the Willamette River and its tributaries. During this period, the Siskiyou Trail (or California-Oregon Trail) was created. This trading path, over long, stretched from the mouth of the Willamette River near present-day Portland south through the Willamette Valley, crossing the Cascades and the Siskiyou Mountains, and south through the Sacramento Valley to San Francisco.
Willamette River | Fur trade
It is estimated that the Willamette Valley area has been inhabited for over 10,000 years. The Kalapuya peoples would gather on the plateau east and south of the current downtown area in the winter and establish camps. They fished and harvested in the streams and fields of the area. One staple of life was the camas root, and periodically the Kalapuya would set fires that would clear and fertilize the meadows where it grew. In the early 1850s, the Kalapuya, along with the other native peoples west of the Cascade Mountains, were removed by the U.S. government through a combination of treaties and force.
Salem, Oregon | Native Americans
Between about 15,500 and 13,000 years ago, the Missoula Floods—a series of large outpourings originating at Glacial Lake Missoula in Montana—swept down the Columbia River and backfilled the Willamette watershed. Each flood produced "discharges that exceeded the annual discharge of all the present-day rivers of the world combined". Filling the Willamette basin to depths of in the Portland region, each flood created a temporary lake, Lake Allison, that stretched from Lake Oswego to near Eugene. The ancestral Tualatin Valley, part of the Willamette basin, flooded as well; water depths ranged from at Lake Oswego to as far upstream (west) as Forest Grove.
Willamette River | Geology
The confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia rivers has been a meeting place for native peoples for centuries. The archaeological record of Native American habitation of this area stretches back over ten thousand years. Tribes and nations including the Yakama, Nez Perce, and Umatilla used the area for hunting, fishing, and gathering plant foods. Hanford archaeologists have identified numerous Native American sites, including "pit house villages, open campsites, fish farming sites, hunting/kill sites, game drive complexes, quarries, and spirit quest sites", and two archaeological sites were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Native American use of the area continued into the 20th century, even as the tribes were relocated to reservations.
Hanford Site | Early history
Young and Kelley arrived at the Hudson's Bay Company post Fort Vancouver on October 17, 1834, center of the Columbia District. The HBC was the preeminent economic force in the region's fur trade. At the time the Oregon Country was jointly occupied by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the United States of America. Young decided to settle permanently on the west bank of the Willamette River, near the mouth of Chehalem Creek, opposite Champoeg. His home is believed to be the first house built by European Americans on that side of the river. Dr. John McLoughlin of the HBC tried to discourage American settlers in the region.
Ewing Young | Oregon Country
For about 8,000 years, the McKenzie River has been home to Native Americans. In more recent history, Kalapuya and Molala tribes lived nomadically in the summer and spent winters in the lower valley. This way of life continued until the mid-19th century, when many natives died of disease or were relocated to reservations. The first recorded exploration of the river occurred in the spring of 1812, when the Pacific Fur Company reached the McKenzie via the Willamette River, as part of a larger exploration led by Donald McKenzie. The company had established a post in 1811 at Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River for the Astor Expedition.
McKenzie River (Oregon) | History
Although people had been traveling to Oregon since 1836, large-scale migration did not begin until 1843, when nearly 1,000 pioneers headed westward. Over the next 25 years, some 500,000 settlers traveled the Oregon Trail, braving the rapids of the Snake and Columbia Rivers to reach the Willamette Valley. Starting in the 1820s, Oregon City developed near Willamette Falls. It was incorporated in 1844, becoming the first city west of the Rocky Mountains to have that distinction. John McLoughlin, a Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) official, was one of the major contributors to the founding of the town in 1829. McLoughlin attempted to persuade the British government (which still held sway over the area) to allow American settlers to live on the land, and provided significant help to American colonization of the area, all against the HBC's orders.
Willamette River | 19th-century development
The fur trader James Gaddy and the Hudson's Bay Company explorer David Thompson are traditionally considered to be the first people of European origin to see the Bow River. They camped along the Bow with a group of Piikani during the 1787–88 winter. Before they arrived, First Nations populations had lived in the Bow region for thousands of years. Among them were the Nakoda, Tsuu Tʼina, and the Blackfoot Confederacy, consisting of the Kainai, Piikanai, and Siksika peoples. The Kutenai had migrated westward, possibly in the early eighteenth century, but still occasionally ventured into the Bow region to hunt bison.
Bow River | First Nations
The Interior region of British Columbia was first populated after the retreat of the continental ice sheets of the last ice age. The ice moved out of the Thompson River region approximately 11,000 BCE, and migration by the ancestors of the Nlaka'pamux and Secwepemc people is thought to have occurred soon after. Some of the older archaeological sites on the lower Thompson include the Drynoch Slide site, near Spences Bridge, with artifacts dating to about 7350 BCE, and the Landels site, near Ashcroft, which dates to older than 8000 BCE. Archaeologists theorize early settlers lived in small groups, beginning with nomadic bands hunting ungulates on the plateaus around the river, who then established more permanent dwellings along the river benches as their fishing techniques developed.
Thompson River | Aboriginal peoples
The Willapa or Willoopah, also known as Kwalhioqua, were a Northern Athapaskan-speaking people in southwestern Washington, United States. Their territory was the valley of the Willapa River and the prairie between the headwaters of the Chehalis and Cowlitz Rivers. Together with the Clatskanie (Tlatskanai) in the upper Nehalem River Valley and along the headwaters of the Klaskanine and Clatskanie River in northwestern Oregon they spoke dialects of the now extinct Kwalhioqua-Clatskanie (Kwalhioqua–Tlatskanai) language, the Willapa dialect was the most divergent. The Kwalhioqua lived north of the lower Columbia River, the Clatskanie (Tlatskanai) to the south, separated by the territory of the Lower Chinook-speaking Shoalwater Bay Chinook (or Willapa Chinook) or Clatsop and the Kathlamet (Cathlamet), who spoke another Chinookan variant.
Willapa people | Introduction
The party made detailed records about those whom they encountered in their travels, thus providing the first written record of Oregon's Indigenous population. The Lewis and Clark party spent its time among various tribal groups categorized as Chinook — peoples speaking dialects of the Chinookan language, which included the Kathlamet, Wasco and Wishram, Clatsop, and Clackamas nations. At the time of their expedition, Lewis and Clark estimated a population of approximately 16,000 for the various Chinook peoples, with other tribes in the Oregon Country pushing the total Indigenous population to perhaps 50,000.
Native American peoples of Oregon | Explorers, fur traders, and Indigenous peoples
About 24 million years ago at the end of the Oligocene, Oregon had started to look how it is today and the Willamette Bay finally became the Willamette Valley by drying up and being raised above sea level, after assuming a shape much like today's Puget Sound.
Pudding River | Geology
The upper tributaries of the Willamette originate in the mountains south and southeast of Eugene, Oregon. Formed by the confluence of the Middle Fork Willamette River and the Coast Fork Willamette River near Springfield, the main stem Willamette meanders generally north for to the Columbia River. The river's two most significant course deviations occur at Newberg, where it turns sharply east, and about downstream from Newberg, where it turns north again. Near its mouth north of downtown Portland, the river splits into two channels that flow around Sauvie Island. Used for navigation purposes, these channels are managed by the U.S.
Willamette River | Course
The Clackamas Indians are a tribe of Native Americans of the U.S. state of Oregon who traditionally lived along the Clackamas River in the Willamette Valley. Lewis and Clark estimated their population at 1800 in 1806. At the time the tribe lived in 11 villages and subsisted on fish and roots. Like others of the Chinookan peoples, they practiced head flattening. From infancy the head was compressed between boards, thus sloping the forehead backward. The Willamette Meteorite is revered by the Clackamas Indians.
Clackamas people | Introduction
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Rogue River (Oregon) | First peoples
The Stevenson area has been home to Native American settlements for thousands of years. Their villages were focal points for commerce and social gatherings as they came to trade and fish along the riverbanks. Some of the first explorers and missionaries in the area included Lewis & Clark, David Thompson and Dr. Spaulding. They used the Columbia River to get through the Cascade Mountains on their way to the Pacific Ocean. In 1843, the Oregon Trail brought the first settlers there. Pioneers portaged around the Cascade Rapids on their way to the Willamette Valley. Some of these pioneering families chose to stay there.
Skamania, Washington | History
This environment also allowed Native Americans to settle in the river's basin as early as 10,000 years ago. Regulation of the river began in 1905 with the Cazadero Dam. In 1912, the River Mill Dam intercepted wood and coarse sediment. Later dams at North Fork, Oak Grove, Stone Creek, and Timothy Lake also intercepted wood sediment on the lower river.
Clackamas River | Introduction
Linguists and oral traditions point to several comparatively recent movements of people. According to language comparisons, the interior Salish peoples expanded onto the plateau from the vicinity of the lower Fraser River. This expansion reached as far as Montana, was complete around 1,500 years ago. Likewise, Athabaskans on the plateau are part of a relatively recent expansion from northern Canada and Alaska, as recently as 1,000 years ago. The Kalapuya people spread into the Willamette Valley, likely from the south, in the last 1,000 years. The recent expansion of Numic people across the Great Basin displaced several groups on the southern edge of the plateau.
Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau | History
Human habitation on the Santa Ana River dates back 9,000 to 12,000 years ago, close to the early stages of the Holocene period. The first Native Americans to live in the area were nomadic tribes that traveled from place to place, grazing animals on fertile grasslands and gathering fruits and seeds for food. The ancestors of these early people originated from the Shoshone and Uto-Aztecan people of the northwestern United States. Eventually, the human population of the watershed reached a peak of about 15,000. About 8,000 years ago, the climate experienced a change becoming more arid and the originally nomadic tribes began to stay in individual places longer, becoming semi-nomadic.
Santa Ana River | First peoples
The previous people of the Fanno Creek watershed were the Atfalati or Tualaty tribe of the Kalapuya, said to have displaced even earlier inhabitants, the Multnomahs, prior to European contact. The valleys of the Willamette River and its major tributaries such as the Tualatin River consisted of open grassland maintained by annual burning, with scattered groves of trees along the rivers and creeks. The Kalapuya moved from place to place in good weather to fish, to hunt small animals, birds, waterfowl, deer, and elk, and to gather nuts, seeds, roots, and berries. Important foods included camas and wapato. In addition to fishing for eels, suckers, and trout, the Atfalati traded for salmon from Chinookan tribes near Willamette Falls.
Fanno Creek | History
Furthermore, many of the early pioneers first came out West with the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company before heading South of the Columbia for better farmland as the fur trade declined. French Prairie by the Willamette River and French Settlement by the Umpqua River are known as early mixed ancestry settlements. The Lewis and Clark Expedition travelled through northern Oregon also in search of the Northwest Passage. They built their winter fort in 1805–06 at Fort Clatsop, near the mouth of the Columbia River, staying at the encampment from December until March.
Oregon | European and pioneer settlement
More recently, within the past few thousand years, Indians created trails across the Cascade Range around Mount Hood. The trail network linked the trading center at Wascopam, near The Dalles, to settlements in the Willamette Valley. One popular trail crossed over Lolo Pass and another, which later became the Barlow Road, met the Lolo Pass trail roughly where the Zigzag and Salmon rivers enter the Sandy. Indians from villages along the Columbia, Clackamas, and other rivers also traveled by water to the lower Sandy River area to fish for salmon and to gather berries, nuts and roots. In 1792 William Robert Broughton of the Vancouver Expedition explored the lower Columbia River.
Sandy River (Oregon) | History
One of the first recorded sightings of the Lewis by a non Indigenous person was in 1792, when William Robert Broughton passed the mouth of the Lewis while exploring the Columbia River during the Vancouver Expedition. He named it Rushleigh's River at that time. At the time Lewis and Clark crossed the river, they had already named the Snake River the Lewis, and referred to the present-day Lewis as the Cathlapoote. Other historically recorded names include the Kattlepoutal and Washington River. The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 brought an influx of colonizers to the region, but just prior to that in 1845, Adolphus Lee Lewis retired from the Hudson's Bay Company and established a land claim near present day Woodland.
Lewis River (Washington) | History
The first people of the Tualatin Valley were the Atfalati or Tualaty tribe of the Kalapuya, who inhabited the region for up to 10,000 years before white settlers arrived. The valley consisted of open grassland maintained through annual burning by the Atfalati, with scattered groves of trees along the streams. The Kalapuya moved from place to place in good weather to fish and hunt and to gather nuts, seeds, roots, and berries. Important foods included camas and wapato, and the Atfalati traded for salmon from Chinookan tribes near Willamette Falls on the Willamette River. During the winter, they lived in longhouses in settled villages, some near what became Hillsboro and Beaverton.
Hillsboro, Oregon | History
Northern Paiute people were the first in the area, frequenting nearby mountains and streambeds to find or follow food sources. When early settlers arrived, conflict developed over local resources, eventually escalating to the Snake War. The conflict lasted from 1864 to 1868 and left two thirds of the Paiutes dead, with those that remained sent to a reservation.
Jordan Valley, Oregon | Indigenous peoples
The elevation at the mouth is about above sea level. The reaches of the river below Willamette Falls are influenced by tidal effects from the Columbia River. Over its entire course, the main stem of the Willamette varies from about in width.
Course of the Willamette River | Oregon City to Columbia River
The Flathead tribe inhabited the upper (Clark Fork) part of the basin, especially the Bitterroot Valley. The Ktunaxa lived just to the east of the Pend Oreille river. The first non-indigenous people to see the Pend Oreille were French-Canadian fur trappers working for various fur trading companies to provide beaver pelts to trade overseas. Some of these people were the ones to coin the term "Pend d'Oreille". Canadian explorer David Thompson saw the river in 1807, after a long and arduous journey from Saskatchewan. His primary mission was to find the source of the Columbia River (Columbia Lake), which he did.
Pend Oreille River | History
Archeologists believe the first humans to inhabit the Rogue River region were nomadic hunters and gatherers. Radiocarbon dating suggests that they arrived in southwestern Oregon at least 8,500 years ago. At least 1,500 years before the first contact with whites, the natives established permanent villages along streams. Even so, no evidence has been found to suggest that any of the native peoples, such as the Takelma who lived along the Rogue and Applegate rivers in the 19th century, used the cave. Largely bypassed by the early non-native explorers, fur traders, and settlers because of its remote location, the region attracted newcomers in quantity when prospectors found gold near Jacksonville in the Rogue River valley in 1851.
Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve | History
So many people came that the valley led the way to achieving statehood less than 16 years after it was claimed by the United States in 1846. A small part of the Willamette Valley ecoregion is in southwestern Washington around the city of Vancouver, which was once the site of an early colonial-era settlementFort Vancouver. The Willamette Valleyserved with its sawmills, lush productive farms, handy river transport network, and nearby timber and mineral resourcesdeveloped naturally as a cultural and major commercial hub, as the Oregon Country became the Oregon Territory. The Hudson's Bay Company controlled the fur trade in the valley and the rest of Oregon Country in the 1820s and 1830s from its Columbia District headquarters at Fort Vancouver.
Willamette Valley | Human history
Beaver populations, presumed to be much lower than historic levels, are increasing throughout the basin.
Willamette River | Flora and fauna
The Willamette River flows northwards down the Willamette Valley until it meets the Columbia River at a point 101 miles from the Pacific Ocean, in the U.S. state of Oregon.
Steamboats of the Willamette River | Introduction
In the historic era, the area of the Willamette Valley that makes up modern-day Albany was inhabited by one of the tribes of the Kalapuya, a Penutian-speaking, Native American people. The Kalapuya had named the area "Takenah", a Kalapuyan word used to describe the deep pool at the confluence of the Calapooia and Willamette rivers. A variation of the place name can also be written as Tekenah. The Kalapuya population in the valley was between 4,000 and 20,000 before contact with Europeans, but they suffered high mortality from new infectious diseases introduced shortly afterward. The tribes were decimated by a smallpox epidemic that raged through the Pacific Northwest in 1782–83.
Albany, Oregon | History
The Nez Perce (; autonym: , meaning "the walking people" or "we, the people") are an Indigenous people of the Plateau who have lived on the Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest region for at least 11,500 years. Members of the Sahaptin language group, the Niimíipuu were the dominant people of the Columbia Plateau for much of that time, especially after acquiring the horses that led them to breed the appaloosa horse in the 18th century. Prior to "first contact" with Western civilization the Nimiipuu were economically and culturally influential in trade and war, interacting with other indigenous nations in a vast network from the western shores of Oregon and Washington, the high plains of Montana, and the northern Great Basin in southern Idaho and northern Nevada.
Nez Perce people | Introduction
Other Chinookans of the lower Columbia River:
Clackamas people | See also
The Touchet River lay in the traditional range of the Palus American Indian tribe, marking their southern border with the range of the Walla Walla tribe. These peoples were of the Sahaptin-speaking group which traditionally inhabited the Columbia Plateau region of the northwestern United States. Roots provided plentiful food along the Touchet Rivers. These included quamash, camas, kouse, bitterroots, serviceberry (currant), chokecherry, huckleberry, gooseberries, rose berries and whortleberries, elderberries, wild strawberries, wild onions and balsamroot. Once Euroamerican immigrants began settling the area after 1858, Indian root grounds were displaced by agriculture. Prior to the white man coming into the valley of the Touchet River, there was an established American Indian trail through the valley, the "Nez Perce Trail to Celilo Falls" or "Old Celilo Falls Trail", by which the Nez Perce (also part of the Sahaptin-speaking group) passed west to fish for salmon at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River.
Touchet River | Native peoples
69) Ross described the lower Columbia River area of the Pacific Northwest as follows: The banks of the river throughout are low and skirted in the distance by a chain of moderately high lands on each side, interspersed here and there with clumps of wide spreading oaks, groves of pine, and a variety of other kinds of woods. Between these high lands lie what is called the valley of the Wallamitte , the frequented haunts of innumerable herds of elk and deer... . In ascending the river the surrounding country is most delightful, and the first barrier to be meet with is about forty miles up from its mouth .
Alexander Ross (fur trader) | North West Company
Leaving drought, worn-out farms, and economic problems behind, they emigrated from states like Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa in the Midwest to Oregon, especially the Willamette Valley in the western part of the state. After passage of the Homestead Act of 1862 and the discovery of gold in the upper John Day basin, a fraction of these newcomers abandoned the Willamette Valley in favor of eastern Oregon. Some established villages and engaged in subsistence farming and ranching near streams. Settlement was made more practical by a supply route from The Dalles on the Columbia River to gold mines at Canyon City in the upper John Day valley.
John Day Fossil Beds National Monument | History
The John Day basin remained largely unexplored by non-natives until the mid-19th century. Lewis and Clark noted but did not explore the John Day River while traveling along the Columbia River in 1805. John Day, for whom the river is named, apparently visited only its confluence with the Columbia in 1812. In 1829, Peter Skene Ogden, working for the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), led a company of explorers and fur trappers along the river through what would later become the Sheep Rock Unit. John Work, also of the HBC, visited this part of the river in 1831. In the 1840s, thousands of settlers, attracted in part by the lure of free land, began emigrating west over the Oregon Trail.
John Day Fossil Beds National Monument | History
The Canadian portion of the Columbia Basin outlines the traditional homelands of the Canadian Kootenay–Ktunaxa. The Chinook tribe, which is not federally recognized, who live near the lower Columbia River, call it ' or ' in the Upper Chinook (Kiksht) language, and it is "Nch’i-Wàna" or "Nchi wana" to the Sahaptin (Ichishkíin Sɨ́nwit)-speaking peoples of its middle course in present-day Washington. The river is known as "" by the Sinixt people, who live in the area of the Arrow Lakes in the river's upper reaches in Canada. All three terms essentially mean "the big river".
Columbia River | Indigenous peoples
Overton was described by James W. Nesmith as a "desperate, rollicking fellow." He and Lovejoy visited a site along the Willamette River between present-day Jefferson and Washington streets while traveling from Fort Vancouver to Oregon City by canoe in 1843 or 1844. The site had been previously cleared of trees, perhaps by natives, and had become a popular stopping point for those traveling the Willamette. It was generally agreed that a large city would be established somewhere in the vicinity of the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. Overton wanted to make a claim on the land, but prevailed upon Lovejoy to record the claim of , and the two men set about clearing more trees and building habitable dwellings.
William Overton (Portland founder) | Introduction
Arrangements were made with Nathaniel Wyeth for the small missionary group to travel with his party. In early 1834 the combined group departed from Independence, Missouri. Lee didn't refrain from judging and comparing the various native cultures along the Columbia River basin while en route west. He found the Walla Walla in particular "far more filthy and indolent than the Kioos Cayuse." The close to two thousand mile trek ended at the Hudson's Bay Company's (HBC) fur trading station of Fort Vancouver, where the missionaries wintered. During their stay there Chief Factor John McLoughlin advised against creating a mission in interior Flathead land and instead recommended the nearby Willamette Valley.
Jason Lee (missionary) | Missionary
The Klickitat tribe referred to Bull Run Lake as "Gohabedikt", meaning "Loon Lake".
Bull Run River (Oregon) | First peoples
The first white settler at Canemah was Absalom F. Hedges (1817–1890). He arrived in Oregon City in 1844, and found all the good lots already taken. He then went south to Canemah, and staked out a Donation Land Claim close to the canoe landing place. Water travel above the falls was still mainly conducted by the Native Americans using canoes at this point, although they also paddled the flat boats, sometimes known as bateaux, that were starting to appear on the river. A few settlers had already established themselves in the Willamette Valley, and the boats and canoes brought their farm products to Canemah.
Canemah, Oregon | Pioneer settlement
The HBC then named Dr. John McLoughlin as Chief Factor for the region the HBC called the Columbia District which encompassed much of the drainage of the Columbia River. In 1822, McLoughlin had a new post built near where the confluence of the Willamette River and the Columbia. On the north shore of the Columbia a new headquarters, Fort Vancouver, became the centerpiece of a multi-post system where furs and supplies were funneled in and out of Fort Vancouver. Brigades of fur trappers would spend months in the wilderness trapping animals, then return with the pelts to fur posts such as Fort George, Fort Umpqua, Fort Walla Walla, Fort Nisqually, Fort Okanogan, and Fort Boise.
Oregon pioneer history | Fur trade
Houses in the villages varied somewhat, but were often about wide and long, framed with posts sunk into the ground, and covered with split sugar pine or red cedar planks. People left the villages during about half of the year to gather camas bulbs, sugar-pine bark, acorns, and berries, and hunted deer and elk to supplement their main food, salmon. The total early-1850s native population of southern Oregon, including the Umpqua, Coos, Coquille, and Chetco watersheds as well as the Rogue, is estimated to have been about 3,800. The population before the arrival of explorers and European diseases is thought to have been at least one-third larger, but "there is insufficient evidence to estimate aboriginal populations prior to the time of first white contact...
Rogue River (Oregon) | First peoples
During the early 19th century, the area around the river was populated by the Molala people. During that time, an extensive system of trails along the river allowed trade between the peoples of the Willamette Valley and eastern Oregon. As late as the 1920s, the trails were used by Native Americans from the Warm Springs Indian Reservation to reach huckleberry-picking grounds near Table Rock. Starting in about 1840, European-American settlers began farming in the bottomlands along the lower Molalla. Spurred by passage of the Donation Land Claim Act, the influx continued, and by 1860 there were 75 households in the Molalla area.
Molalla River | History
The Willamette River is a tributary of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Oregon. The upper tributaries of the Willamette originate in mountains south and southeast of the twin cities of Eugene and Springfield. Formed by the confluence of the Middle Fork Willamette River and Coast Fork Willamette River near Springfield, the main stem meanders generally north from source to mouth. The river's two most significant course deviations occur at Newberg, where the stream turns sharply east, and about downriver from Newberg, where it turns north again. Near its mouth, the river splits into two channels that flow around Sauvie Island.
Course of the Willamette River | Introduction
The Kathlamet people are a tribe of Native American people with a historic homeland along the Columbia River in what is today southwestern Washington state. The Kathlamet people originally spoke the Kathlamet language, a dialect of the Chinookan language. They were also called "Guasámas, or Guithlamethl, by the Clackamas", and "Kwillu'chini, by the Chinook." Lewis and Clark reported "that about 300 Cathlamet occupied nine plank houses on the south side of the Columbia River", and lived between Tongue Point and Puget Island in Clatsop County, Oregon. On the north side, they lived "from the mouth of Grays Bay to a little east of Oak Point." Their villages were: Clark wrote:
Kathlamet | Introduction
In 1868 he published a book about the region, by which time the emigrants on the Oregon Trail had already numbered into the tens of thousands. Kelley Point Park in Portland, Oregon, is named for him, as he had encouraged settlement at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers.
Hall J. Kelley | Introduction
Large numbers of pioneer settlers began arriving in the Willamette Valley in the 1830s via the Oregon Trail, though life was originally centered in nearby Oregon City. In the early 1840s a new settlement emerged ten miles from the mouth of the Willamette River, roughly halfway between Oregon City and Fort Vancouver. This community was initially referred to as "Stumptown" and "The Clearing" because of the many trees cut down to allow for its growth. In 1843 William Overton saw potential in the new settlement but lacked the funds to file an official land claim. For 25 cents, Overton agreed to share half of the site with Asa Lovejoy of Boston.
Portland, Oregon | Establishment
Cathlamet was the largest, or one of the largest, villages of Columbia River Indians west of the Cascade Mountains, and the home of the Kathlamet people. "Cathlamet was sighted in 1792 by Lt. W.R. Broughton, while verifying Capt. Robert Gray's reported exploration of the Columbia River." This village of cedar houses included 300-400 inhabitants when visited by Lewis and Clark. In 1846, James Birnie became the first permanent white settler at Cathlamet, moving there after a career with the Hudson's Bay Company. He set up a trading post, remnants of which were reported still standing in 1906. "Birnie named the area Birnie's Retreat.
Cathlamet, Washington | History
Evidence suggests that as early as 8,000 years ago, long before the New River existed, ancestors of the Siletz and Coquille peoples lived here in large villages near an estuary. On January 26, 1700, a tsunami destroyed the estuary and altered the landscape. After the catastrophe, blowing sand blocked streams, creating wetlands behind the dunes.
New River (Oregon) | Pre-history
Between 50 and 20 million years ago, from the Eocene through the Miocene eras, tremendous volcanic eruptions frequently modified much of the landscape traversed by the Columbia. The lower reaches of the ancestral river passed through a valley near where Mount Hood later arose. Carrying sediments from erosion and erupting volcanoes, it built a thick delta that underlies the foothills on the east side of the Coast Range near Vernonia in northwestern Oregon. Between 17 million and 6 million years ago, huge outpourings of flood basalt lava covered the Columbia River Plateau and forced the lower Columbia into its present course.
Columbia River | Geology
Between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago, climate change brought dramatically drier conditions to the Northern Rockies. It is thought that far fewer animals survived in the region and the native peoples likely migrated elsewhere. Montana was apparently only intermittently inhabited after that until relatively recent times.
Jefferson River | First peoples
The first brother's arrow landed in the Willamette Valley where he became Chief Multnomah of the Multnomah people. The second arrow landed north of the river in what is now modern day Klickitat County where he became chief of the Klickitat people.
Multnomah people | Land and name claim
Various Native American tribes inhabited the region at the beginning of the pioneer settlement period. Each tribe had their own forms of government, but no modern nation existed. The first formal government in the region came in the form of the Hudson's Bay Company, who were granted the authority by their charter to in effect rule over the region's British subjects. Thus the HBC was the de facto government for much of the region until U.S. settlers eventually outnumbered the British in the region. Beginning in 1841 with the death of Ewing Young, settlers in the Willamette Valley held a series of meetings at Champoeg, Oregon.
Oregon pioneer history | Government
The gorge has supported human habitation for over 13,000 years. Evidence of the Folsom and Marmes people, who crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia, were found in archaeological digs. Excavations near Celilo Falls, a few miles east of The Dalles, show humans have occupied this salmon-fishing site for more than 10,000 years. The gorge has provided a transportation corridor for thousands of years. Native Americans would travel through the gorge to trade at Celilo Falls, both along the river and over Lolo Pass on the north side of Mount Hood. In 1805, the route was used by the Lewis and Clark Expedition to reach the Pacific.
Columbia River Gorge | History
About 2.5 million people lived in the Willamette River basin as of 2010, about 65 percent of the population of Oregon. As of 2009, the basin contained 20 of the 25 most populous cities in Oregon. These cities include Springfield, Eugene, Corvallis, Albany, Salem, Keizer, Newberg, Oregon City, West Linn, Milwaukie, Lake Oswego, and Portland. The largest is Portland, with more than 500,000 residents. Not all of these cities draw water directly from the Willamette for their municipal water supply. Other cities in the watershed (but not on the main-stem river) with populations of 20,000 or more are Gresham, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Tigard, McMinnville, Tualatin, Woodburn, and Forest Grove.
Willamette River | Watershed