What are some facts about the Chinook tribe?

Asked by: Susana Rojas

The Chinook Indians were fishing people. Their staple food was salmon. Chinook men also caught many other kinds of fish and sea mammals from their canoes and hunted deer, birds, and small game on land. Chinook women gathered clams and shellfish, seaweed, berries, and roots.

How old is the Chinook tribe?

These were the first Chinook people and many of their descendants remain near Saddle Mountain at the mouth of the Columbia River to this day. 12,000 BPE — This is the earliest date of human presence documented by archaeologists in the Pacific Northwest.

What were the Chinook people known for?

The Chinook were famous as traders, with connections stretching as far as the Great Plains. The Columbia was a major indigenous thoroughfare, and the Chinooks’ location facilitated contact with northern and southern coastal peoples as well as with interior groups.

What language did the Chinook tribe speak?

Chinook Jargon, also called Tsinuk Wawa, pidgin, presently extinct, formerly used as a trade language in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It is thought to have originated among the Northwest Coast Indians, especially the Chinook and the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) peoples.

How did the Chinook people live?

Chinook people traditionally lived in winter villages of plank houses, then moved around for the summer season. Plank houses were large enough for several families to live inside, as long as seventy feet by twenty-five feet.

How did Chinook tribe get its name?

It may have come from a Chehalis name meaning “Fish Eaters,” or it may have derived from a word meaning “strong fighters.” Where do the Chinooks live? The Chinook Indians are original people of the Pacific Northwest Coast.

What did Chinook tribe eat?

salmon

Their main food source was salmon, but Chinook men also caught other fish and sea animals. The Chinook woman gathered clams, mussels, shellfish , berries, and roots. The Chinook men hunted elk, deer, buffalo, and sea animals.

How did the Chinook tribe cook their food?

Each family had its own small fire in the longhouse. To roast the salmon, Chinook and Nez Perce people put the salmon into a split cedar wood stick that held the salmon tight like a clothespin, and stuck the wooden stick in a sand pit near their fire.

What did the Chinook tribe make?

The Chinook tribe lived off the produce from the river and ocean and constructed their plankhouses and canoes from the abundant Red Cedar trees. Many items of their clothing were also made from the bark of the cedar trees.

What did the Chinook tribe trade?

They were also famous as traders, using the waterways to make routes and to make contact with many other Indian tribes. Not only did the Chinook trade dried fish, they also traded slaves, canoes, and ornamental shells. The tribe’s basic social unit was their villages.

When did the Chinook tribe start?

When did Native Chinook people arrive? About 2000 BC (again a little later than in the south), the people of the Pacific Northwest entered the Middle Archaic. They still used spears and atlatls for hunting. But, like other Middle Archaic people further south, they began to feel a little more crowded on their land.

Did the Chinook have slaves?

Some Chinookan peoples practiced slavery, a practice borrowed from the northernmost tribes of the Pacific Northwest. They took slaves as captives in warfare, and used them to practice thievery on behalf of their masters. The latter refrained from such practices as unworthy of high status.

What type of tribe is the Chinook?

The Chinook Tribe is a Northwest Indian Tribe located in the present-day state of Oregon. They are a Chinookan speaking tribe that encountered Lewis and Clark in 1805 while they were exploring the Louisiana Purchase that was purchased by President Thomas Jefferson.

Who was the leader of the Chinook tribe?

Comcomly

Comcomly (or Concomly) (1765 – 1830) was a Native American leader of the Lower Chinook, a group of Chinookan peoples indigenous to the Pacific Northwest, who inhabited the area near Ilwaco, Washington. Concomly spoke Lower Chinook and was known for his skill with diplomacy and trade.

What is the population of the Chinook tribe?

LISTEN. The Chinook Indian Nation has about 3,000 members who mostly live near the mouth of the Columbia River in southwest Washington.