# data[].attributes.body
https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/winter-lodge-of-umpqua-indians/#.YmV629rMJPY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Winter Lodge of Umpqua Indians

This engraving was prepared from a sketch made in 1857 by an unknown artist. It appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, April 24, 1858, accompanying an article titled, "Scenes and Incidents of Oregon Territory."

The lodge that is pictured represents a typical lodging among the Lower Umpqua Indians, who spoke a dialect of the Siuslawan tongue. They lived in winter villages along the lower reaches of the Umpqua River and Smith River, Tahkenitch Lake, and Winchester Bay, with seasonal camps farther inland.

The winter villages included houses built of cedar planks, from 20 to 50 or more feet in length and ten to 25 feet in width. A house was built over an excavation of from three to six feet in depth. Two or more center posts supported a ridgepole, and rafter poles extended down either to the ground-as shown in this illustration-or to side supports. The planks were held on by lashing, and the boards near the top could be moved to allow smoke to escape from the interior fire pits. Entry was through a rounded doorway at one of the gable ends.

The interior of the lodge was lined with tule mats, and mats or hides covered the floor. Mats were used to partition the lodge into separate living areas for several families. Wooden platforms or tule mats were used for beds. Food storage and preparation took place in the lodge, and meat and fish might be smoked above the lodge fire pits.

Lodges in summer camps were temporary, often huts made of thatched grass. Similar structures could often be found in the winter villages, used for work areas or extra sleeping quarters. Sweat houses were of two kinds. One was a small earth-covered hut used by both men and women specifically for ritual and recreational sweating. Another sweat house was similar in structure to the family lodge, but square, with a deep excavation and with the boards covered with earth. This lodge was specifically for men and adolescent boys.

Despite wide differences in tribal customs and language, family lodges of similar design and materials were used by Indians along the entire Oregon Coast and in the western river valleys: Chinook, Kalapuyan, Tillamook, Alsean, Siuslawan, Coosan, and the various Athapaskans of the southwestern corner.

Further Reading:
Beckham, Stephen Dow with Christina Romano. The Indians of Western Oregon: This Land Was Theirs. Coos Bay, Oreg., 1977.

Suttles, Wayne, ed. Handbook of North American Indians: Northwest Coast, Vol. 7. Washington, DC, 1990.

Written by Richard Engeman, © Oregon Historical Society, 2005.

Related Historical Records

Related Oregon Encyclopedia Articles

This entry was last updated on March 17, 2018

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Winter Lodge of Umpqua Indians This engraving was prepared from a sketch made in 1857 by an unknown artist. It appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, April 24, 1858, accompanying an article titled, "Scenes and Incidents of Oregon Territory." The lodge that is pictured represents a typical lodging among the Lower Umpqua Indians, who spoke a dialect of the Siuslawan tongue.

# data[].attributes.body
My paternal grandparents bought 100 acres on Elk Creek in Drain in 1953. They told many stories about the artifacts they found over the years of developing the land, including hundreds of arrowheads and arrowhead shards, and one well used hand tool. The local understanding was that the place where my father, myself and my children spent all of our summers was a common place for the native people to also spend theirs. There is a substantial rock fall where the steelhead ran, making harvesting the fish in large quanitites easy. Unfortunately over the years these small pieces of history were lost, mostly through my dad and his siblings trading them with other children for "town treats."

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/kalapuyan_peoples/#.YmV2v9rMJPY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The name Kalapuya (kǎlə poo´ yu), also appearing in the modern geographic spellings Calapooia (for a river in Linn Country) and Calapooya (for a mountain range and creek in Douglas County), goes back to a term of uncertain origin and significance. It was applied by Chinookans of the lower Columbia River to speakers of the three Indigenous languages that are today termed Kalapuyan: Northern Kalapuya, spoken on the west side of the Willamette River from modern Washington County south to about Monmouth; Central Kalapuya, spoken on the east side of the Willamette River from Champoeg south to Salem and on both sides of Willamette River south at least to Eugene; and Southern Kalapuya, spoken on Elk Creek and perhaps also Calapooya Creek, both tributaries of Umpqua River.

Kalapuyans lived in tribal territories containing numbers of related and like-speaking, but basically autonomous villages. For example, sixteen named villages are known for the early nineteenth-century Tualatin Kalapuyans of modern Washington and Yamhill counties. Judging from treaty documents and the ethnographically better-described groups, tribal territories were associated with one or more tributary watersheds of the region's two main streams-the Willamette River and the Umpqua River-with each territory offering a range of riverine, prairie, savanna, and forest habitats. Extensive prairies and savannas were a managed, not a natural, feature of this region, maintained by the Kalapuyans themselves, who burned off their grasslands at summer's end.

Kalapuyans exploited a wide range of animal and vegetable resources specific to these different habitats, moving across their tribal territories in response to seasonal variations in resource availability. Vegetable resources, harvested primarily by women, were particularly important in their diet. These included especially the bulbs of the camas lily, available in remarkable seasonal abundance on the region's low wet prairies. Curved hardwood digging-sticks, fitted at the top with transverse antler handles, were used to harvest the bulbs. Harvested bulbs were layered between leaves and buried in pit-ovens over fire-heated stones. Brown and sugary when done, they were then dried for storage; they might be further processed into small cakes, which were important articles of inter-group commerce.

Other important vegetable resources were wapato ( Sagittaria latifolia), a marsh plant whose tubers were harvested during the fall, stored in pits, and baked in ashes for eating; tarweed seeds ( Madia spp), beaten off standing plants on burned-over prairies, tossed with hot coals on bark or woven trays for parching, and finally ground into meal in stone mortars; and hazel-nuts, dried in the sun and beaten to remove their husks before being stored in soft-woven baskets. The acorns of the Oregon white oak were also used-shelled, then immersed in water or buried in wet clay to leach them, then ground into a meal which might be cooked with deer blood-but in contrast to many California Native peoples, Kalapuyans did not depend on acorns for their main subsistence.

The drier months found Kalapuyans camped out in the open, under minimal shelter. During the winter season of reduced harvest activity, they lived in winter houses at sheltered village sites. The division of the yearly cycle into clearly demarcated halves was reflected in personal attire, with warm-weather nudity noted for men only (women always had at least a skin or rush apron or short skirt) and robes and sewn buckskin clothing for cold weather (gowns for women, trousers and shirts for men, leggings and moccasins for both). Men favored fur caps, made from the intact skins of smaller animals or the head-skins of larger animals, while women wore tightly woven basketry caps.

The best documented of the Kalapuyan tribes is the Tualatin. Unlike Tualatins, interior Kalapuyans did not flatten the foreheads of freeborn infants, nor were they as active in the regional slave trade. At the same time, the practice of selling orphans and children of poor parents into slavery is noted only for interior Kalapuyans.

All the Kalapuyan groups suffered catastrophic population declines due to introduced diseases. The record on interior Kalapuyan groups is particularly fragmentary, with even the identification and original disposition of the tribes there in doubt. The first Indian census taken at Grand Ronde Reservation, to which all Kalapuyans were removed in 1856, shows eleven Kalapuyan "bands" there, with a total population of 344 men, women, and children.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The name Kalapuya (kǎlə poo´ yu), also appearing in the modern geographic spellings Calapooia (for a river in Linn Country) and Calapooya (for a mountain range and creek in Douglas County), goes back to a term of uncertain origin and significance.

# data[].attributes.body
The Kalapuya (Calapooia) Tribe that was native to the area surrounding my home county relied heavily on the native plants found locally. The camas lily was an especially important component of thier diet. The process by which the roots were processed into flour is quite labor extensive.

# data[].attributes.body
If you want to chase rabbits down the Native American Primary Sources trail, this is the place to go! https://ndnhistoryresearch.com/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Journal of Critical Indigenous Anthropology | David G. Lewis, PhD