Bird Fest

[bobm]

Yesterday, We took our grandson (6 1/2) and granddaughter ( 4) and our son tagged along too. to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. We went to the Carty Unit of the refuge where there is a re-creation of the very long Cathlopotle Indian Village Plank House of the lifestyle of the Chinookan culture made out of 2 " x 16" cut to leanth for siding and roofing and a round 4 +/- foot diameter entry door. The floor was wood but more like 2 x 6" .This was a HUGE building that was more like a meeting hall with 2 huge fire pits ( like 10' x 20' lined with rocks and sand on the bottom with openings in the roof with movable roof hatches for smoke to escape for cooking feasts ) in the middle of the building and bench seating along the 2 long walls 2 high.When Lewis and Clark visited this site on Nov. 6 , 1805, they found 14 plank houses and over 900 people living there. The original plank houses are long gone , and I venture to say that this is due to water leaks in the original buildings and certainly true of the re-creation building roof as well as in the plank siding as there are many gaps between the boards. Looking at the roof from the outside... the long 2" x 16" planks have pieces of wood similar to wood shingles wedged in the middle to allow for spacing between layers so that the rain water moisture could dry out the planks . In spite of this I saw many areas in this recreated plank house with many roof leaks, white fungal growth, mold, mildew and dry rot. I stepped on one floor plank that suddenly bent down by about an inch ( due to dryrot ). I told a guide about it and she said that they will be replacing the floor next year. Around the interior of the building the grandkids handled displayed deer, elk, mountain lion, badger, and beaver pelts. Played with rocks that the Indians used to make arrow heads out of. Beat a deer skin drum with a stick that had a deerskin tip. Lifted rocks (used for heated steam cooking Salmon in wooden carved out containers) out of the fire pit with a 4 foot long split branch that acts like a forecept. They then ground acorns in well worn original hollowed rocks with pointed rocks and made flour. We saw a demonstration in bow making. Saw quite a few ducks and geese at the many ponds and inlets from the Columbian River that dot the area. We had to cross over 3 rail road tracks by walking over them on a arched wood foot bridge. Man alive that bridge shook as a LONG freight train started to pass under it as we were almost right in the middle of the bridge. Who needs an amusement park ride when you can visit a Wild Fowl Refuge !

 

[so lucky]

That sounds like a lot of fun. The kids at that age will probably remember a lot of the things they were shown.
That Indian culture must have been pretty advanced. Good for the kids to see them as something besides the "savages" that the old western movies used to portray. Makes it all so much more meaningful.

 

[digitS']

"...the original Indian population of western Washington and Oregon was rated the densest..." so said that eminent authority on American Indians, Clark Wissler in 1940.

It doesn't mean that the Chinook and others lived in cities but they made efficient use of the resources available to them and generally prospered. Things began to change with the arrival of outsiders, however.

Here is what the University of Washington anthropologists have to say (link): "... it was epidemic diseases—which, again, were unknown to Indians prior to contact with Europeans, and therefore illnesses against which natives had no immunities and little resistance—which had the most substantial impact upon native populations in the era before the mid-19th century. Epidemics such as smallpox, measles, and influenza did not strike Indians once; rather they recurred over the decades, meaning that groups of Indians who were recovering from one epidemic would likely be hit by another. Perhaps a band or tribe had experienced smallpox and acquired some immunity to that disease, for example, but the next epidemic to strike might be measles or typhoid. Successive outbreaks of different diseases devastated native peoples. ... An outbreak of malaria between 1830 and 1833 offers a powerful illustration of the effect of diseases upon relations between Indians and non-Indians in the Pacific Northwest. Over the course of three years, beginning in 1830, malaria swept through groups of Indians along the lower Columbia and Willamette rivers. ... Before the epidemic struck, in 1830, there are estimated to have been 13,940 Indians in the lower Columbia and Willamette valleys (and this figure, remember, represents an estimate of how many had already survived epidemics of smallpox and other diseases); by 1841 there were only an estimated 1175 natives remaining. In other words, the depopulation over about one decade's time—largely the result of malaria—was approximately 92%. White observers recounted entire villages destroyed, with nobody left behind to tend to the dead and dying."

This sort of thing happened elsewhere but this is probably only a little better recorded. Astor's American Fur Company was expanding into the Pacific Northwest. Rather than being seen as an enemy or a people to be swept away in the interest of European expansion, the fur industry saw trade with the Indian people as a way to gain valuable furs. Opportunities for trade were collapsing because of disease.

Steve