The Chinook Indians, who originally lived at the mouth of the
Columbia River in present-day Oregon and Washington, were
experienced traders long before the arrival of white men to that
area. When Captain Robert Gray in the ship Columbia Rediviva, for
which the river was named, entered the Columbia in 1792, he found
the Chinooks in an important position in the trade system between
inland Indians and those of the Northwest Coast. The system was
based on a small seashell, the dentalium, as the principal medium
of exchange.The Chinooks traded in such items as sea otter furs,
elkskin armor which could withstand arrows, seagoing canoes
hollowed from the trunks of giant trees, and slaves captured from
other tribes. Chinook women held equal status with the men in the
trade, and in fact the women were preferred as traders by many
later ships' captains, who often feared and distrusted the Indian
men. The Chinooks welcomed white men not only for the new trade
goods they brought, but also for the new outlets they provided
Chinook goods, which reached Vancouver Island and as far north as
Alaska. The trade was advantageous for the white men, too, for
British and American ships that carried sea otter furs from the
Northwest Coast to China often realized enormous profits. Although
the first white men in the trade were seamen, land-based traders
set up posts on the Columbia not long after American explorers
Lewis and Clark blazed the trail from the United States to the
Pacific Northwest in 1805. John Jacob Astor's men founded the first
successful white trading post at Fort Astoria, the site of today's
Astoria, Oregon, and the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay
Company soon followed into the territory. As more white men moved
into the area, the Chinooks began to lose their favored position as
middlemen in the trade. Alcohol; new diseases such as smallpox,
influenza, and venereal disease; intertribal warfare; and the
growing number of white settlers soon led to the near extinction of
the Chinooks. By 1&51, when the first treaty was made between
them and the United States government, they were living in small,
fragmented bands scattered throughout the territory. Today the
Chinook Indians are working to revive their tribal traditions and
history and to establish a new tribal economy within the white
man's system.
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