page_title: Native American peoples of Oregon
section_title: Explorers, fur traders, and indigenous peoples
hierarchical_section_title: Native American peoples of Oregon / History / Explorers, fur traders, and indigenous peoples
context_page_description: The Native American peoples of Oregon are the set of indigenous peoples who have inhabited or who still inhabit the area delineated in today's state of Oregon in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. While the state of Oregon currently maintains relations with nine federally recognized tribal groups, the state was previously home to a much larger number of autonomous tribal groups, which today either no longer exist or have been absorbed into these larger confederated entities.
context_section_description: 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. 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.
  After the departure of the Corps of Discovery, the earliest whites to enter the region were traders in furs, with the pelt of the river-dwelling beaver particularly desired. A written account by a fur trader was left to posterity by Ross Cox, who arrived on May 10, 1812, at the newly constructed Fort Astor, located about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Tongue Point at the mouth of the Columbia. Writing two decades after the fact, Cox recalled tension between the indigenous population of the region and fur traders related to the attempted and actual theft of supplies by brazen native males, sometimes met with violence on the part of the whites.
  Cox recalled the Chinook-speaking people he first encountered outside the fort as physically repugnant:
  
  "They were the most uncouth-looking objects; and not strongly calculated to impress us with a favourable opinion of aboriginal beauty, or the purity of Indian manners. A few of the men were partially covered, but the greater number were unannoyed by vestments of any description. Their eyes were black, piercing, and treacherous; their ears slit up, and ornamented with strings of beads; the cartilage of their nostrils perforate and adorned with pieces of hyaquau placed horizontally; ... and their bodies besmeared with whale oil, gave them an appearance horribly disgusting. Then the women — Oh ye gods! With the same auricular, olfactory, and craniological peculiarities, they exhibited loose hanging breasts, short dirty teeth, skin saturated with blubber, bandy legs, and a waddling gait; while their only dress consisted of a kind of petticoat, or rather kilt, formed of small strands of cedar bark twisted into cords, and reaching from the waist to the knee."
  Despite his physical aversion, Cox and his associates traveled freely to the villages of several tribes that dotted the mouth of the Columbia, noting that "the natives generally received us with friendship and hospitality." Over time, Cox's opinions became more specific, and he came to characterize the Kathlamets as "the most tranquil," the Tillamook as "the most roguish," and the Clatsops as "the most honest." He considered the Chilwitz people's practice of enhancing their conception of beauty by binding the skulls of infants to flatten foreheads to be repellant.
  Venturing up the Columbia by canoe for the first time in June 1812, according to Cox's testimony, no problematic contact was made with Native American inhabitants until the party reached the first unnavigable rapids on the Columbia about 170 miles (270 km) upriver. Cox found these "incontestably more filthy and ugly" than the coastal tribes and seemed to have been divided into family groups that "seemed quite independent of the other" and no
caption: Approximate geographic locations of the First Nations of today's Oregon and southern Washington state
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