How far back is the beginning of the story?

Although there is no clear consensus on how and when the first people arrived in the Pacific Northwest many experts estimate humans have lived here for close to 14,500 years. This would mean the first settlers came toward the end of the last glacial period when extinct species such as giant bison, mammoth, and mastodon still roamed North America.

Human skeletal remains of southwest Idaho's Buhl Woman are dated from about 13,000 years ago and the Kennewick Man 9,400 years ago. In 1938, University of Oregon archaeologists on a dig at Fort Rock Cave (Central Oregon) discovered sagebrush sandals carbon dated between 9,300 to 10,500 years old.

Sandal from the Fort Rock Cave

We have all heard theories about early humans making their way across a land bridge between present day Russia and Alaska eventually populating the NW Coast from Alaska to California and inland across the Plateau and Great Basin. Recently archaeologists have also developed theories about early settlers finding their way here by boat. No matter how they got here, research has shown a connection between the people of Asia and the first Americans.

"Studies of mitochondrial DNA from modern populations confirm a close genetic linkage between Native American peoples as a whole and Asians living today across a broad zone from Siberia to northern China."  

(Oregon Archaeology, by Aikens, Connolly and Jenkins)

The first people spread out over Western North America and settled into geographic/cultural groups where they became familiar with the place, the seasons, and the food supply. In Oregon, archaeologists have identified similarities among groups living within five areas - Coast & Lower Columbia, Willamette Valley, Southwest Valleys & Mountains, Columbia Plateau, and the Great Basin.

Multnomah County, named for the Multnomah people living on Sauvie Island for an estimated 3,000 years, is part of the Coast & Lower Columbia area. Groups living in the area from Celilo Falls (the Dalles) through Wapato Valley (Portland Basin) to the mouth of the Columbia were all Chinookan speaking people. These people were also connected by their diet of fish, game, berries, and roots; the materials they used for their clothing, homes, weapons, baskets, and canoes; by marriage between groups; and by an active trade network.

Approximate locations of Native American groups in the mid 19th century.

Before European explorers and traders came, as many as 300,000 people were scattered around the NW. After the arrival of Europeans, repeated epidemics of small pox, malaria, influenza, and dysentery devastated native groups. A population of approximately 20,000 in the Lower Willamette/Lower Columbia region was reduced to a few hundred by 1830. In the mid 1800s, without the manpower or resources to stop the waves of new settlers, native people soon lost their land. 

How far back is the beginning of the story? Thousands of years before EuroAmericans "discovered" the land we now call Oregon it was populated by native people with a long and rich cultural heritage that makes our EuroAmerican society look like little more than a tiny blip on the timeline of history.