Saltmakers' Oven, 1899

The late Silas B. Smith, a descendant of the Clatsop chief, Comowool, is seated on remains of the fireplace where Lewis and Clark's detail boiled seawater for the salt, near Seaside, Oregon. The photographer may have been of Portland, Oregon. From Olin D. Wheeler, The Trail of Lewis and Clark: 1804-1904 (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904), 2:207.

ilas Smith's mother, Se-li-ast, was the daughter of Comowool--properly Coboway--the Clatsop Indian chief to whom the captains gave the buildings they called Fort Clatsop. Se-li-ast was born sometime between 1801 and 1804. Her son Silas, born in 1840, became a leading regional historian and a prominent member of the Oregon Historical Society.

--Joseph Mussulman