Strategically located between inland tribes and those along the Pacific Coast, the Chinooks occupied the crossroads of a major trade network. They capitalized on this location and came to enjoy wealth unknown to most North American Indians. The Chinook economy included trade in arrowheads, baskets, beads, berries, canoes, furs, leather, shells, salmon, slaves, and whale oil and blubber. Of all the Native Americans trafficking goods throughout the Northwest, the Chinooks were perhaps the most astute bargain makers and among them trading became well-honed art. Later contact with white traders only increased the Chinooks’ wealth and business acumen. The Chinooks’ preoccupation with trade was made possible by the natural abundance of their surroundings. They spent most of the year in villages along the Columbia River, fishing, feasting, and trading. The Big River provided a bountiful harvest of steelhead, salmon, smelt, sturgeon, and waterfowl. From the seashore and bays came a multitude of shellfish, and just inland, wild cranberries. As fall approached, most Chinooks would relocate to villages in the hills away from the coast where they would winter. With the arrival of spring they would once again migrate back to their fishing grounds along the Columbia as part of this rhythmic natural cycle. What the waters did not provide, the forest did. Foodstuffs like salal and salmon berries, edible roots, and large game were plentiful most years. From the forests, too, came western red cedar, the substance from which they crafted most of their material goods. From single cedar logs, Native woodworkers fashioned dugout canoes, many over 50 feet in length, which provided the Chinooks with their primary means of long-distance trans32 Astoria Bicentennial
freemen there were nuanced gradients in status. The Chinooks had no chiefs, as commonly pictured in popular culture, but high-ranking males often assumed leadership roles, usually in hereditary succession. Headmen were chosen by the consensus of the village dwellers, and if they proved unworthy leaders would be replaced in this loosely democratic system. Women sometimes held positions of power as well with the elders active in village councils, but generally their social standing was secondary to that of men.
portation and helped facilitate their intricate trade networks. From the cedars’ bark, branches, and roots, skilled weavers fashioned watertight robes, hats, baskets, and fishing nets.
Slavery was a common practice among Northwest Coast Indians, including the Chinooks. The slaves were either purchased or taken as spoils of victory in battles between warring villages. The Chinooks compelled their slaves to do the most wearisome tasks like carrying water, gathering wood, and paddling their master’s canoe. Slaves were also used as a means of barter and were even given as gifts. Any free Chinook could own slaves but oftentimes only the wealthy were able to afford them. According to author Rick Rubin, 10 to 25-percent of the population of a Chinookan village was held in bondage.
“Tribes” were of little importance to the Chinooks. Instead, their fundamental socio-political unit was the village. Here, extended families dwelt in cavernous cedar-plank longhouses neatly situated in rows not far from the water’s edge. Larger Chinook villages, like Qwatsamts near presentday Megler, Washington, were known to contain some 30 longhouses.
A striking feature among the Chinookan people, and one that separated free persons from slaves, was the artificial flattening of the forehead. The deformation of the skull began at birth when the mother tied her newborn onto a cradleboard and laced a fur-padded plank over the infant’s head. As the child grew its brow became elongated, which in Chinook culture was an unequivocal sign of both beauty and freedom.
Within these villages the Chinooks had a stratified social structure where heredity and wealth determined rank. The two fundamental classes were freemen and slaves, though among
In the early 1780s, life as the Clatsops, Kathlamets, Wahkiakums, and Shoalwater Chinook had known it was jarred by disease. It was smallpox, and to Native Americans that had no