Chinookan Survival and Persistence on the Lower Columbia: The View from the Kathlamet Village

Abstract

Prominently mentioned in the Lewis and Clark journals, the Kathlamet were devastated by infectious diseases and gradually lost their identity as a distinct, local Chinookan group in the historical record. In part because of the alleged abandonment of the Kathlamet village about 1810, the Kathlamet were subsumed under the Lower Chinook in the principal ethnographic account of the Chinookan peoples around the mouth of the Columbia River. Archaeological evidence from the Kathlamet village, as well as historical records, contradicts the alleged date of abandonment, and indicates that occupation of this settlement actually persisted into the mid-19th century. The use of material culture and historical records to examine the Kathlamet’s post-contact experience helps reestablish their cultural identity for this time period, and reasserts their position as one of the more important of the many local groups of Chinookan peoples in the Lower Columbia Valley.