PSU Magazine Winter 2001

M ost of the footprints of cul– tures that preceded us have disappeared. At one time the Pacific Northwest wa home to the large t indigenous populations in all of North America. Large towns, one right after another, dotted the rivers of the Port– land Basin and the area known as Wapato Valley. The people developed complex social structures, specialized labor, and highly developed art. But when Chief C liff Snider of the Chinook asks local fourth-graders to draw pictures of Native Americans, they give him images of tepees and feathered headpieces. "It is the Indians of Hollywood that they know," he say . "They have no idea about the Native American culture that was here, where they are now." By and large, the evidence from the lives of previous native people have disappeared under the onslaught of development, flooding, levee building, and simple decay. The enormous long houses planked with plit timbers have 4 PSU MAGAZINE WINTER 2001 In Search ot disappeared from the edges of the rivers. Tools, trade good , and towns, wh ich demonstrated the Chinook world view, have all but vanished from sight. And the remaining people have lost their ability to describe the world of the past to future generation . The silence might be deafening if it weren't for the work of scientists such as PSU's Kenneth Ames, professor of anthropology. Ames has been conduct– ing fie ldwork to excavate the ancient Chinook town of Cathlapotle for the pa t nine years. He located the former town site in 1991 at the request of U.S. Fish and Wildl ife Service officials. They knew approximately where the site was because they had written accounts from several sources, including the Lewis and Clark party who visited Cathlapotle in 1805 and again inl806. But only a few years later-beginning in the 1830s-the who le of the Wap– ato Valley suffered fearfully from attacks of fever, later identified as ma laria. The disease deva tated the native population of the valley– located on the site of today's Portland– Vancouver metropo litan area. There is ev idence that the area was occupied by natives from other tribes after the original inhabitants had died a a re ult of the epidemic. No one is absolutely sure when Cathlapotle, which had lasted for half a millen– nium, sank back into the landscape to be reclaimed by the relentless growth of the wetlands. Certainly the signs of its former glory are unremarkable in amongst the soggy features of what is now the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge in Ridgefield, Washington. A nan Raymond, regional arche– ologist for the agency, say that without work like the excavations Ames is directing, we might lose the knowledge that the area had once been a metropolis for centuries. "That per pective is mostly lost on people," he says. "The spectacular