There is an ongoing dispute over the Cowlitz people, their history, territory, ancestry, ethnicity, and language; which is important for land claims and treaty negotiations with the U.S. government by Cowlitz descendants.[4]
Some scholars believe that they were originally divided into four multi-linguistic tribal bands and generally spoke two different dialects of Salish; the common language of Western Washington and British Columbia native peoples, and one Sahaptin dialect. However, not every band understood the specific dialect of another, and they bridged the language barrier with an intertribal trade language called Chinook Jargon.[5] Today, the majority is of the opinion that the tribal term "Cowlitz" is a regional collective designation applied by the Europeans to ethnically and linguistic different groups or bands of Indian peoples of the entire Cowlitz River Basin.[6]
These are the four (or two) Cowlitz tribal groups or bands:
the Upper Cowlitz, sometimes called Stick Indians,[8] today identified as Sahaptin-speaking Taidnapam (″People of the Tieton River″, occupied and controlled fourteen villages along the Upper Cowlitz River (shch'il) above Morton and Mossyrock, other villages along the Cispus River (shíshpash), and the Tilton River (lalálx) and had frequent contact with their Upper and Lower Yakama and Klickitat kin who lived on the east side of the Cascade Range and spoke Sahaptin. They apparently intermarried with Salish-speaking Lower Cowlitz communities downriver and traveled freely as far as the mouth of the Cowlitz River but were not originally Salish-speaking people. Their own name Taitnapam indicates that they originally came from east of the Cascades - along the Tieton River (in Yakama: Táitin) hence territory of the Nahchísh-ħlama, a Yakama/Lower Yakama band along the Naches River and had strong linguistic and family ties to that band and the Klikatat / Klickitat; today as Yakima Cowlitz or Cowlitz Klickitat Band part of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation).[9]
Comparably with the dispute over who the original Cowlitz people were, there is debate over the originallanguage of the Cowlitz tribes. The commonly called Cowlitz language or Sƛ̕púlmš is placed closer to the Upper Chehalis language, closer than Lower Chehalis itself is placed to Upper Chehalis, and belongs to the Tsamosan (Olympic) branch of the Coast Salish family of the Salishan languages, and was spoken by the Lower Cowlitz / Cowlitz proper. There is a dispute over the original language of the Upper Cowlitz and Lewis River Cowlitz bands. The question concerns whether they had adopted the Sahaptin language from east of the Cascade Mountains, ceased to use their original, heritage language, and developed a separate Taitnapam / Upper Cowlitz / Lewis River dialect of Sahaptin, or whether they were Sahaptin-speaking people from east of the Cascade Range who came to occupy the Upper Cowlitz River Basin by conquest and intermarriage.
from a strong system of chiefs to an elective presidential system in the early 20th century; and a constitutional elective Tribal Council system after 1950. Chief How-How (c. 1815), Chief Kiscox (c. 1850), Chief Umtux (c. 1850), Chief Scanewa (c. 1855), Chief Richard Scanewa (c. 1860), and Chief Antoine Stockum [Atwin Stokum] (1878) led the Cowlitz in the 19th century. Twentieth-century figures include Chief Baptiste Kiona (1912), President Dan Plamondon (1921), President John Ike Kinswa (1922), Chairman John B. Sareault (c. 1925), Chairman Jas. E. Sareault (c. 1930), Chairman Manual L. Forrest (1950), Chairman Joseph Cloquet (1959), Chairman Clifford Wilson (1961), Chairman Roy Wilson (1974), Chairman John Barnett, Chairman Bill Iyall (1993), Chairman Phil Harju (2020), Chairman David Barnett (2021), and Chairman Patty Kinswa-Gaiser (2022).[13]
The current Cowlitz Tribe General Council Chair is Patty Kinswa-Gaiser.[14]
Culture
The Cowlitz tribe was unique among other tribes of Western Washington and Oregon in that they did not typically have access to saltwater or the coast and the Columbia River's resources were of little use to the tribe. Salmon was important to their diet, but not as much as compared to other tribes; as they were accomplished hunters who relied on harvesting roots as diet supplements, and utilizing horses for multiple purposes.
The Cowlitz tribe completed a yearly cycle where they inhabited locations during certain seasons and harvested seasonal crops, in preparation for cold winter months. The season started in spring, when the Cowlitzes left their cedar houses along the river and streams by traveling via canoe and horseback to harvest camas bulbs, roots, barks, and grasses to make mats, fishnets, and basketry. Followed by the arrival of summer, where they would move into the higher country to pick and harvest seasonal berries. Lastly, followed by the return to fall, where the Cowlitzes would return to their cedar homes along the river to harvest Salmon, for the upcoming season. Generally, hunting and fishing were practiced all year round, but only roots and fruits had to be harvested seasonally.[15]
The Cowlitz, like the Chinookian tribes, practiced the custom of flattening the head; signifying the mark of freedom and an intellect similar to that of round-head Indian tribes. Indian Mothers typically practice head flattening on newborn infants until they reach eight to twelve months old; when the head has lost its original shape. The process is completed by placing a child onto a wooden board, usually covered with moss or loose fibers of cedar bark, then placing a pad between a piece of smooth bark, strapped on through the holes with leather bands, creating great pressure on the forehead. The result creates a wedge in between the skull, with the front of the skull flat and the skull risen at the crown. These practices were not seen as harmful to the mothers and their children; in fact, some children would cry until they were placed back into the head flattening device.[16]
The Cowlitz produced fully imbricated, coiled baskets with strong geometric designs. These were made of bear grass, cedar root, horsetail root, and cedar bark and were used to gather berries and fruits. The pigments were made from very bright fruits and vegetables like beets or blackberries. Such baskets were often repaired and kept through many generations.
Today, the Cowlitz continue to practice their culture.
The first white man known to have contacted the Cowlitz was French-Canadian Simon Plamondon of Quebec. Plamondon was hired as a fur trapper for Fort Astoria at the age of sixteen. In 1818 while making his first trip up the Cowlitz, Simon was captured by Chief Scanewea, of the Lower Cowlitz. He was then asked to stay with Scanewa's tribe and to prove his loyalties through the exchange of goods for furs. Once he had gained the trust of the tribe, he was rewarded with the marriage of Chief Scanewea's daughter, Thas-e-muth. When Chief Scanewea passed, Plamondon inherited most of his land and settled down with his wife on the Cowlitz Prairie where they bore four children: Sophie, Simon, Jr., Theresa, and Marianne. It is rumored that Plamondon was married many different times and very young; fathering nearly 100 descendants.[17] Plamondon was employed with the Hudson's Bay Company until 1837 and in 1838 oversaw the building of Cowlitz Farm under the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, the Hudson's Bay Company agricultural subsidiary.[18]
The first European who attempted to convert the Cowlitz to Christianity was Herbert Beaver, an Anglican, who settled with his wife at Fort Vancouver in 1836. The couple set their sights on the Cowlitz tribe, only 50 miles southeast of Fort Vancouver, but growing tensions with John McLoughlin, the head at Fort Vancouver, prevented the couple from having any influence over the tribe; implementing their practices was with great difficulty.[19] When the intermittent fever broke out, Beaver was responsible for vaccinating nearly 120 Lewis River Cowlitzes.[20] After conflicts arose with McLoughlin, Beaver and his wife headed home to London in 1838, to continue on their work.[19]
Later that same year in December 1838, Catholic missionaries began to visit the Cowlitz tribe, including François N. Blanchet, a Roman Catholic Priest, who arrived near Toledo, Washington, and established St. Francis Xavier Mission.[20] A once optimistic priest, he became discouraged when the Cowlitz tribe did not fully immerse themselves into Catholicism, and instead held onto sediments of Native spirituality. As a response, a replacement, Father Modeste Demers, continued with Catholic teachings and baptizing, but he continued to remain just as pessimistic as his past predecessor did.[19] After the priest left, the Cowlitz reportedly told the French-Canadian farmers, "We want to do something for them, we will work, make fences, and whatever they wish us to do."[21]
With the arrival of American settlers and conflicts arising over land claims, the 1846 Oregon Treaty gave the US government power back over once owned British lands of the Hudson's Bay Company. With British influence and French-Canadian fur trappers out of the picture, newly appointed Washington governor Isaac Stevens drafted four main treaty negotiations: Point Elliot, Point No Point, Neah Bay, and Medicine Creek. The Chehalis River Treaty, which included the Cowlitz tribe, was the last negotiation for Stevens; his refusal to listen to the tribe leader's negotiations and concerns led to the document never being signed. The fever struck the tribe during this time, and Stevens's assistant George Gibbs had determined that "the Cowlitz, a once numerous and powerful tribe, are now insignificant and fast disappearing." As a consequence[clarification needed], this led to the Indian Wars of 1855–1856, in which the U.S. Army was called to settle disputes with Indian tribes. The Cowlitz tribe remained neutral because of the government's promise of reservation lands if they remained peaceful, but after returning home, they found their land destroyed and property stolen.[citation needed]
In 1924 the Cowlitz sent Frank Iyall as a delegate to congress for the American Indian Citizenship Act. He also served as delegate for the recognition of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe which received approval from congress but a veto from President Calvin Coolidge.
In the 1960s Dale M. Kinkade conducted interviews and audio recordings with Emma Mesplie and Lucy Foster for the Cowlitz Language which went on to be much of the basis for the Lower Cowlitz dictionary the Cowlitz Indian Tribe uses today.
The Cowlitz tribe did not receive federal recognition until 2000.[22]
↑ "History of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe," by Roy I. Wilson, and Dr. Verne F. Ray, Indian Claims Conference, 1966 and 1974
↑ Eugene Hunn: Anthropological Study of Yakama Tribe: Traditional Resource Harvest Sites West of the Crest of the Cascades Mountains in Washington State and below the Cascades of the Columbia River
1 2 The other version is: Intermarriage among the tribes was common. Yakama and Klickitat tribes on the eastern side of the Cascades spoke Sahaptin. Over time a new dialect of Sahaptin came into common use by the Upper Cowlitz tribe called Taidnapum — which eventually came into wide use by the Lewis River Cowlitz as well.
↑ Kane, Paul (1971). Paul Kane's frontier: including Wanderings of an artist among the Indians of North America. Published for the Amon Carter Museum and the National Gallery of Canada by the University of Texas Press. ISBN978-0292701106. OCLC701742143.
↑ "Death of One of the 100 Descendants Of Trapper Who Married 19 Times". The Washington Post. April 9, 1916. ProQuest145459202.
1 2 3 Rushforth, Brett (Fall 2002). ""The Great Spirit Was Grieved": Religion and Environment among the Cowlitz Indians". The Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 93 (4): 188–198. JSTOR40492750.
1 2 Ruby, Robert H. (2014). Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN9780806140247. OCLC1020653043.
Moclips is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Grays Harbor County, Washington, United States. The population was 207 at the 2010 census. It is located near the mouth of the Moclips River.
The Yakama are a Native American tribe with nearly 10,851 members, based primarily in eastern Washington state.
The Chehalis people or Tsihalis are a native people of western Washington state in the United States. They should not be confused with the similarly named Chehalis First Nation of the Sts'Ailes people along the Harrison River in the Fraser Valley area of British Columbia.
Chinookan peoples include several groups of Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest in the United States who speak the Chinookan languages. Since at least 4000 BCE Chinookan peoples have resided along the Lower and Middle Columbia River (Wimahl) from the river's gorge 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.
The Lewis River is a tributary of the Columbia River, about 95 miles (153 km) long, in southwestern Washington in the United States. It drains part of the Cascade Range north of the Columbia River. The drainage basin of the Lewis River covers about 1,046 square miles (2,709 km2). The river's mean annual discharge is about 6,125 cubic feet per second (173.4 m3/s). Unlike nearby Lewis County and Fort Lewis the Lewis River was not named for Meriwether Lewis, but rather for A. Lee Lewis, an early colonizer who homesteaded near the mouth of the river.
The Palouse are a Sahaptin tribe recognized in the Treaty of 1855 with the United States along with the Yakama. It was negotiated at the 1855 Walla Walla Council. A variant spelling is Palus. Today they are enrolled in the federally recognized Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation and some are also represented by the Colville Confederated Tribes, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Nez Perce Tribe.
Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau, also referred to by the phrase Indigenous peoples of the Plateau, and historically called the Plateau Indians are Indigenous peoples of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada, and the non-coastal regions of the Northwestern United States.
The Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation is a federally recognized tribe located in Southwest Washington. The Confederation consists of the Upper and Lower Chehalis, Klallam, Muckleshoot, Nisqually, and Quinault peoples. They are a part of the Northern Straits branch Central Coast Salish peoples of indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast.
The Klickitat are a Native American tribe of the Pacific Northwest. Today most Klickitat are enrolled in the federally recognized Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, some are also part of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon.
The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians in the United States is a federally recognized confederation of more than 27 Native American tribes and bands who once inhabited an extensive homeland of more than 20 million acres from northern California to southwest Washington and between the summit of the Cascades and the Pacific Ocean. After the Rogue River Wars, these tribes were removed to the Coast Indian Reservation, now known as the Siletz Reservation. The tribes spoke at least 11 distinct languages, including Tillamook, Shasta, Lower Chinook, Kalapuya, Takelma, Alsea-Yaquina, Siuslaw/Lower Umpqua, Coos, the Plateau Penutian languages Molala and Klickitat, and several related Oregon Athabaskan languages.
The Sahaptin are a number of Native American tribes who speak dialects of the Sahaptin language. The Sahaptin tribes inhabited territory along the Columbia River and its tributaries in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Sahaptin-speaking peoples included the Klickitat, Kittitas, Yakama, Wanapum, Palus, Lower Snake, Skinpah, Walla Walla, Umatilla, Tenino, and Nez Perce.
Sahaptin or Shahaptin, endonym Ichishkin, is one of the two-language Sahaptian branch of the Plateau Penutian family spoken in a section of the northwestern plateau along the Columbia River and its tributaries in southern Washington, northern Oregon, and southwestern Idaho, in the United States; the other language is Nez Perce or Niimi'ipuutímt.
Wasco-Wishram are two closely related Chinook Indian tribes from the Columbia River in Oregon. Today the tribes are part of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs living in the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon and Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation living in the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington.
Cowlitz, also known as Cowlitz Salish, is a Tsamosan language of the Coast Salish family of Salishan languages. It was spoken by the Lower Cowlitz people of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and is spoken today by both Lower and Upper Cowlitz people. Although it went dormant in the 1960s, it is being revitalized by the Cowlitz Tribe.
The Wenatchi people or Šnp̍əšqʷáw̉šəxʷi / Np̓əšqʷáw̓səxʷ are Native Americans who originally lived near the confluence of the Columbia and Wenatchee Rivers in Central Washington state. Their language is Interior Salish. Traditionally, they ate salmon, starchy roots like camas and biscuitroot, berries, deer, sheep and whatever else they could hunt or catch. The river that they lived on, the Wenatchee River, had one of the greatest runs of salmon in the world prior to numerous hydroelectric dams being put in on the downstream Columbia, pollution and other issues, and was their main food source.
The Tenino people, commonly known today as the Warm Springs bands, are several Sahaptin Native American subtribes which historically occupied territory located in the North-Central portion of the American state of Oregon. The Tenino people included four localized subtribes — the Tygh or "Upper Deschutes" divided in Tayxɫáma, Tiɫxniɫáma and Mliɫáma, the Wyam (Wayámɫáma) (Wayámpam) or "Lower Deschutes", also known as "Celilo Indians", the Dalles Tenino or "Tinainu (Tinaynuɫáma)", also known as "Tenino proper"; and the Dock-Spus (Tukspush) (Takspasɫáma) or "John Day."
The Quinault Indian Nation, formerly known as the Quinault Tribe of the Quinault Reservation, is a federally recognized tribe of Quinault, Queets, Quileute, Hoh, Chehalis, Chinook, and Cowlitz peoples. They are a Southwestern Coast Salish people of indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their tribe is located in Washington state on the Pacific coast of the Olympic Peninsula. These peoples are also represented in other tribes in Washington and Oregon.
The Cowlitz Indian Tribe is a federally recognized tribe of Cowlitz people. They are a tribe of Southwestern Coast Salish and Sahaptan indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest located in Washington.
The Skinpah were a Sahaptin-speaking people of the Tenino dialect living along the northern bank of the Columbia River in what is now south-central Washington. They were first recorded as the E-nee-shers in 1805 by Lewis and Clark. Their village, Sk'in, was located adjacent to Celilo Falls in modern day Klickitat County.
The Kittitas are a Sahaptin tribe closely related to the Yakama, sometimes described as a band or subtribe of the Yakama. Their traditional territories are found within Kittitas and Yakima counties within Washington state, chiefly in the Kittitas Valley, Naches Valley, Wenas Valley, and upper Yakima Valley. Individuals of Kittitas descent are today enrolled in the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakima and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, but the Kittitas are not recognized as a distinct band by either tribal government.
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