A Little North Coast History TILLAMOOK BY WALT CURTIS III ISTORY is what happened yesterday, or a hundred years ago. Every U second the past disappears behind us leaving ghostly images. Are we making “history" with our lives? Or just walking through them indifferently? We live in an epic place, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Many of us don’t realize it. The paraphernalia of the 20th century has occluded our vision. Lately I’ve been researching a little bit of history. Particularly the area of Tillamook County. It’s amazing what went on there. It should have been Killamook, or Killimuck, or Killamox. That’s how Lewis and Clark spelled it. And the Methodist missionary J.H. Frost. In 1853, the locals applied to establish the county as “Tillamook." Maybe it was easier to say. Or the “kill” in the first syllable made them feel guilty? In 190506, Lewis and Clark arrived and estimated the Tillamook Indian population to be 2,000. Bt 1851, the pioneer Warren Vaughn thought there to be fewer than 200 Indians in the area. Smallpox was the main killer, but other white men’s diseases—such as tuberculosis and syphilis—prevailed. They were spread by selling “firewater,” prostitution and other sexual contact. According to the excellent book, Tillamook Indians of the Oregon Coast, written by Sauter and Johnson (Binford and Mort, 1974): "The decline in Illustrations by Dennis Cunningham Clinton St. Quarterly 9
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