12 THE CHINOOK INDIANS. 



Of these I have selected, as the subject of the present paper, the Chi- 

 nooks, a tribe inhabiting the tract of country at the mouth of the 

 Columbia river. Residing among the Flat-Heads, I remained from 

 the fall of 1846 to the following autumn of 1847, and had consequently 

 ample opportunity of becoming acquainted with the peculiar habits 

 and customs of the tribe. They are governed by a Chief called 

 Casenov. This name has no translation : the Indians on the west 

 side of the Rocky Mountains differing from those on the east, in hav- 

 ing hereditary names, to which no particuliar meaning appears to be 

 attached, and the derivation of which is in many instances forgotten. 

 Casenov is a man of advanced age, and resides principally at Fort 

 Vancouver, about 90 miles from the mouth of the Columbia. I made 

 a sketch of him while staying there, and obtained the following infor- 

 mation as to his history : — Previous to 1829 Casenov was considered 

 a great warrior, and could lead into the field 1,000 men, but in that 

 year the Hudson's Bay Company and emigrants from the United 

 States introduced the plough for the first time into Oregon, and the 

 locality, hitherto considered one of the most healthy, was almost depop- 

 ulated by the fever and ague. 



Chinook Point, the principal settlement of the tribe, at the mouth 

 of the river, where King Cumcomley ruled in 1811, was nearly re- 

 duced to one-half its numbers. The Klatsup village now contains 

 but a small remnant of its former inhabitants. Wasiackurn, Catlamet, 

 Kullowith, the settlements at the mouth of the Cowlitz, Kallemo, Kat- 

 tlepootle and Walkumup are entirely extinct as villages. On Sovey's 

 Island there were formerly four villages but now there scarcely re- 

 mains a lodge. They died of this disease in such numbers that their 

 bodies lay unburied on the river's banks, and many were to be met 

 with floating down the stream. The Hudson's Bay Company supplied 

 them liberally with Quinine and other medicines, but the good effects 

 of these were almost entirely counteracted by their mode of living 

 and obstinacy in persisting in their own peculiar mode of treatment, 

 which consisted principally in plunging into the river without refer- 

 ence to the particular crisis of the disease. 



From these causes the numbers of the Indians have been very much 

 reduced, and the effective power of the tribes so greatly diminished 

 that the influence which Casenov owed to the number of his followers 

 has correspondingly declined ; his own immediate family consisting of 

 ten wives, four children, and eighteen slaves, being reduced in one 

 year to one wife, one child, and two slaves. Their decrease since 

 that time has also been fearfully accelerated by the introduction of 



