Kiscox, A Cowlitz River Chief (1847)
Paul Kane (1810–1871)
Bequest of H.J. Lutcher Stark, 1965, Stark Museum of Art, http://collections.starkculturalvenues.org. Digitally altered for brightness, contrast, levels, curves, and exposure.
The Cowlitz proper were Southwestern Coast Salishan Indians living mainly along the Cowlitz River. The people were blenders. Those living among the Chinookan Skilloots intermarried and may have been indistinguishable when the expedition passed the “Cow-e-lis’-kee” River. To the north, they assimilated with the Upper Chehalis and Taitnapam, a transitory Sahaptin-speaking people. Further changes occurred as the Hudson’s Bay Company maintained Cowlitz Farm to supply Fort Vancouver and Fort Nisqually on Puget Sound. Such was the movement of people and culture through that corridor tht in 1847, Caw-Wacham and baby posed separately for artist Paul Kane becoming the poster mother and child for Chinookan head flattening even though the baby was Cowlitz and Caw-Wacham was Songhee, a tribe then living near the trading company’s fort on Vancouver Island.[1]For more on Caw-Wacham, see on this site, The Wahkiakums.
Clark’s “Cow-e-lis’-kee” is from the Salishan name for the river, káwlic. Moulton speculates that the final “ee” “probably represents the Chinookan locative suffix ‘-i[x]’.” The word káwlicq refers to the people themselves.[2]Yvonne Hadja, Handbook of North American Indians: Northwest Coast Vol. 7, ed. Wayne Suttles (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 516; Moulton, Journals, 7:21n3.
The Cowlitz were Federally recognized in 2000, but remain the only Federally recognized tribe in Washington State without a reservation.[3]Robert H. Ruby, John A. Brown, and Cary C. Collins, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 114.
Selected Encounters
November 6, 1805
Among the Cowlitz People
Little Cape Horn, WA The night is rainy and during the day, the men paddle in the rain past villages at the mouth of the Cowlitz. They buy salmon and wapato and are told that Captain Haley visits the mouth of the Columbia. At camp, they build large fires to dry out and kill the fleas infesting their blankets.
January 13, 1806
Running out of candles
Fort Clatsop, Astoria, OR Elk tallow is rendered to make new candles, Lewis finds that the area’s elk do not have enough fat to make a sufficient supply, and President Jefferson writes to Lewis’s mother with news of the expedition’s progress.
The most remarkable trait in the Clatsop Indian physiognomy, Lewis wrote on 19 March 1806, was the flatness and width of their foreheads, which they artificially created by compressing the heads of their infants, particularly girls, between two boards.
March 27, 1806
Generous Skilloots
Near present Deer Island, Oregon, some generous Skilloots give away food with hopes that the expedition hunters will hunt with them. Lewis describes the area’s trees and prepares a salmonberry specimen.
Notes
| ↑1 | For more on Caw-Wacham, see on this site, The Wahkiakums. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Yvonne Hadja, Handbook of North American Indians: Northwest Coast Vol. 7, ed. Wayne Suttles (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 516; Moulton, Journals, 7:21n3. |
| ↑3 | Robert H. Ruby, John A. Brown, and Cary C. Collins, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 114. |
