Rubin's book

[Mike Cleven]

At 06:44 PM 12/10/99 -0500, Linda Fink wrote:
>As to what Rubin says about the Chinook people being extinct, here is a
>quote from his introduction. (I haven't read the book, but this quote from
>the book appeared in the Salem Statesman-Journal book review.)
>
>"They didn't sign away their rainy Eden or sell it, die in warfare, or move
>to reservations, not until twenty-five years after the catastrophes that
>swept most of them away. It wasn't smallpox that laid them low. Suddenly
>most of them were simply gone. The Wapato Lowlands in particular were empty
>and silent. Did God call them home? The few survivors walked away dazed.
>Took to speaking other languages. Were replaced by strangers. After a few
>decades hardly anyone remembered that they had ever been there."
>
>I can see how this might be based on facts, then embroidered grandly. "It
>was not smallpox": that's generally agreed upon. It was fever and ague of
>some sort: most experts suspect malaria. "Suddenly most of them were simply
>gone" is pretty bizarre, considering all the eye-witness accounts of dead
>and dying during the "killing fevers" of 1829-33 (or thereabouts) that wiped
>out perhaps 9/10ths of the population. "Took to speaking other languages" --
>remaining members of the various Chinook tribes intermarried with other
>tribes, not just those speaking their lanugage, just as all the other native
>peoples did during that time. "Were replaced by strangers" -- white settlers
>are pretty strange! (sorry, couldn't resist.) "After a few decades hardly
>anyone remembered that they had ever been there." Well, there was a period
>in our history when a whole lot of people tried hard not to remember that
>the Columbia River Indians were there before white man came.

Agreed; it was that absence in the teaching/awareness of Northwest/BC
history that puzzled me and led me to find out what had happened; there was
almost complete ignorance of native affairs by most non-natives in Canada
(other than those in native-dominant areas, especially the North) before
the Trudeau White Paper of 1968 (Terry? 1970?), which preached an
assimilative policy and called for an end to the separateness and
uniqueness of Indian culture, that it should be submitted to the greater
new Canadian nationality that Trudeau was attempting to build in Canada.
It's a pretty out-dated policy now, obviously, and the Libs would never
think of going back to it.

About the "killing fevers", I believe that these were the same that
rampaged through the Lower Fraser ("the mortality") in the '20s and might
have also been introduced by the same vengeful Boston trader captain that
is said to have introduced it there.  The bit about "took to speaking other
languages", though - isn't it more true that other nations came to speak
Chinook, or rather the richer form of the Jargon that is now Grande Ronde
Wawa, rather than the Chinook learning, say, Cathlamet or Kalapuya?
>
>And when Rubin says they were the wealthiest of the western Native
>Americans, perhaps he is alluding to the fact that they lived on the
>Columbia and had plenty of fish and didn't have to do as much hunting as the
>inland tribes did.

I'm not as familiar with Chinook cultural history as I'd like to be, but
wasn't their prosperity also reflected in a very high material culture like
that of the Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwala-speaking and Salishan nations?  At
least that was my impression from what little I've seen of the
ethnographies.  This was more than mere fishery wealth, but actual consumer
properity, at least for some classes or castes or whatever the correct term
may be.  Some of the inland tribes were pretty well-off, too, especially
those along the Fraser and Thompson and Skeena-Bulkley, where there was
nearly as much more fish as well as abundant game.....I know it's different
down in the Columbia Basin, though...

>
>Why he would argue with Tony's relatives about whether or not they exist is
>a bit difficult to comprehend. I can only guess that he was embarrassed that
>they contradicted his book and might make him look like not such a great
>researcher after all. If he truly wanted to set the record straight, it
>seems he would welcome additional information that he didn't have before he
>wrote the book.

There was a case here a few years ago to re-establish the claims of the
Sinixt, a Salishan-speaking nation now exiled from the flooded Arrow Lakes
Valley that runs north from Grand Forks, BC to Revelstoke, now living with
kin in Idaho and Montana.  They were declared "extinct" a few years ago and
I think even have launched a claim in the treaty process waiting-line.

It would help if there were more available CORRECT information in print or
on the Web on the various native peoples of this region, which of course is
properly a task for native peoples themselves, or those intimately familiar
with their issues and ideas.  Then you would have a better-informed
non-native authorship whenever cultus whiteman writings on native peoples
get into print.   I myselfwould like to be able to find out a lot more
about the Chinook, Yakima, Nez Perce and other peoples from "the other side
of the line", and it would also be good if more BC First Nations "made
their presence known" on the Web; it's amazing what even the Taino and
Choctaw have on line, never mind the extensive web presences of the Navajo,
Ojibway, Lakota, and Cherokee; I wish there were more web-presentations and
gateways from Northwest Native peoples.  Despite the profound artistic
rebirth among BC's coastal peoples, and BC's dynamic native political
arena, there is little in the way of public information (cultural or
political) on the Web.  Washington's Suguamish (www.suguamish.org or
www.suguamish.com maybe) have done a great job with their site, and one of
the earliest members of the CHINOOK list - a young Chinook tribe member -
put up what I thought was a well-done history of his people (although he
got into trouble for it as I recall).  I tried to talk my Stl'atl'imx
friends into asserting their territory on the Web, but they contended that
they had enough on their hands dealing with immediate territorial claims .
. . ;-) . . . and viewed the Web as "whitemans illahee" anyway (though they
didn't use that particular term).

>
>But all this is supposition.
>
> Okay, you Native Americans and students of Northwest Native Americans --
>what do you think about Beckham's book, "The Indians of Western Oregon"?
>I've always assumed it was giving me the straight skinny. Is it?

Is this an old curriculum thing in the US?  Haven't heard of it.  I _do_
have an old and probably very icky Washington State publication on the
Indians of Washington State; sort of a pamphlet thing, reminiscent of the
old Royal BC Museum native-culture pamphlets.