Chinook (people)

Chinook (people), Native Americans of the Chinookian language family and of the Northwest Coast culture area. The Chinook lived near the Pacific Coast at the mouth of the Columbia River, mostly on the river’s north side in present-day Washington. Other tribes speaking Chinookian dialects lived opposite the Chinook on the Columbia’s south side in present-day Oregon as well as upriver on both sides. The Chinook and other Chinookian groups, such as the Cathlamet, Cathlapotle, Chilluckittequaw, Clackamas, Clatsop, Clowwewalla, Multnomah, Skilloot, Wasco, Watlala (Cascade), and Wishram are sometimes referred to as either Lower Chinook or Upper Chinook, depending on their location on the river. The name Chinook, or Tchinouk, was originally a village name.

The Chinook depended on salmon as a food staple; the annual spawning runs upriver from the ocean were a time of congregating and feasting for the tribe. They also hunted deer and birds and gathered roots and other wild plant foods. The Chinook had permanent villages, with groups of close relatives living in rectangular cedar plank houses built partly underground. When away from home, they constructed temporary shelters of mats. They carved seaworthy dugout canoes for traveling along the coast or upriver.

The Chinook were known as traders. The Columbia River served as an avenue of trade between coastal and inland peoples. Other tribes from as far away as the Great Plains traded their articles for Chinook dried salmon, fish oil, seal oil, furs, seashells, horn carvings, cedar, and other goods. Slaves, captives from other tribes, were also bartered. The Chinook even developed a simple trade language, known today as the Chinook Jargon or Oregon Trade Language, which was a mixture of local native languages. It came to be used along the entire Northwest Coast and eventually incorporated some English and French words.

The first non-Indians to reach the mouth of the Columbia River and Chinook territory came by ship in the late 18th century and traded with area tribes for furs. In 1800 the Chinook population numbered between about 800 and 1,800. The American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (see Lewis and Clark Expedition) reached Chinook lands overland in 1805 and reported only 400 Chinook. In 1811 traders sent by John Jacob Astor and his Pacific Fur Company established the Astoria trading post near Chinook land. Explorers, traders, and missionaries brought diseases that decimated the Chinook, altered their culture, and ended Chinook dominance of regional trade.

In the 2000 U.S. census about 600 people identified themselves as Chinook only; an additional 1,100 reported being part Chinook. Most live on reservations in Washington and Oregon among traditionally Salishan-speaking tribes.