The Chinook Indian Nation today is ~2,000 individuals with some Chinook heritage. They are a mixed remnant of peoples with the Clatsop, Kathlamet, Wahkiakum, and Willapa. It was reported many villages of over 1,000 inhabitants existed a short 200 years ago, where men hunted and fished, salmon abundant beyond imagination. Perhaps as many as 100,000 Chinook lived at the mouth of the Columbia River and traveled widely in search of trade (goods and slaves). Their society was marked by a complex social stratification: shamans, warriors, and traders; their language was more easily understood than other Indigenous Verbals. It evolved with trade with northern First Nations Peoples into a
“Chinook Jargon,” widely used by Indigenous and then Explorers and Pioneers alike and for decades the 1st language at Fort Vancouver. Their stature was short; they clothed from head to waist, living their lives around canoes that took them up and down the coast and “up-river” on the largest west coast river of the Americas, the Columbia. They used boards to flatten their foreheads allowing them to quickly identify “outsiders.” They used slaves, village populations were measured with 24 % to 46% slaves. In the 1810s they lost up to 90% of their populace from malaria, already ravaged by at least 2 waves of smallpox and other European diseases. In the 1830s the Chinooks lost 70-80% of their remaining populations from whooping cough and tuberculosis. After these many, many plagues, a final malaria epidemic all but eliminated their culture. Their longhouses (photo citation below) and infrastructure disappeared, especially the elders who provided their youth with education by word of mouth, teaching history, norms, and medicines. During the last years of the Indian Wars, the few Chinook people left were moved to Fort Vancouver area and given an island in the river, as was the U.S. practice since the Revolution. All remained captive until the end of the War; many died due to insufficient food, water, and shelter. Their DNA has all but disappeared, one of the reasons why the Tribe is not Federally recognized.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinookan_peoples
https://www.washingtontribes.org/the-tribes-of-washington/
http://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Chinook.pdf
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/bsp/undaunted.html
(page 179 & 247)
https://www.se.edu/native-american/wp-content/uploads/sites/49/2019/09/A-NAS-2017-Proceedings-Smith.pdf
https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1900/bulletins/demographic/52-population-wa.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/09/28/1918-flu-native-americans-coronavirus/
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