During the early nineteenth century, upwards of thirty Native American villages were documented in the Portland Basin (present-day Multnomah, Clark, Clackamas, and east Columbia Counties). Most of the villages were sited on riverbanks and in wetlands along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers and were occupied by people who spoke dialects of a Chinookan language or languages. In their journals, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark classified the villages under three headings: “Wappato Indians” for those villagers around Sauvie Island and on the Columbia River between present-day Kalama and Vancouver; "Sha-ha-la" (for šáx̣l(a) ‘upstream’) from Vancouver to the Cascades Rapids; and the peoples of the lower Willamette River, including the Clackamas River and Willamette Falls. Non-Chinookan villages, mostly upstream on tributaries to the Columbia, were home to Sahaptin-speaking Upper Cowlitz and Klikatat [var: Klickitat] in present-day Clark County, Clatskanie in present-day Columbia County, and Molala in present-day Clackamas County.

Lewis and Clark’s “Estimate of the Western Indians,” the most complete listing of Portland Basin villages, appears in two versions in their journals, with different population estimates for many Chinookan villages. They estimated the population of the Portland Basin peoples at 4,840 (Estimate 1) and 10,940 (Estimate 2). The most likely explanation for the variable numbers is that they represent seasonal populations that the explorers observed during their two transits of the Wappato Valley. At first transit, from late October to early November 1805, most local people had retired to their winter villages; at the second transit, from late March to early April 1806, the population was augmented by visitors who had arrived to take advantage of the seasonal Columbia River fisheries (sequentially, eulachon, sturgeon, chinook, and coho salmon).

Lewis and Clark’s estimates date to a generation after a major smallpox epidemic that had significantly diminished the Native population. The Portland Basin villages continued as functioning entities until the early 1830s, when annual summer epidemics of “fever and ague” took most of the people to their graves. After 1835, most riverbank villages were abandoned, and non-Chinookan interior peoples moved closer to the rivers. Villages of Chinookan survivors, often mixed with newcomers, continued at Wakanasisse below present-day Vancouver, West Linn, Gladstone (Clackamas), and the Upper Cascades. A Cascades seasonal village was located on the south bank of the Columbia River opposite present-day Vancouver. All villages were vacated in the mid-1850s, when most surviving Native people in the Portland Basin were removed to the Grand Ronde and Yakama Reservations.

Archaeologically, the record on the early 1800s Portland Basin villages is mixed. Most of the villages were destroyed soon after they were abandoned, and only a few survived to be excavated by professional archaeologists. Multnomah village, for instance, was burned by the Hudson’s Bay Company after the epidemics, and the site itself has mostly washed away. Most exposed sites were destroyed by looters after 1830, and some were excavated by the Oregon Archaeological Society in the mid-1900s (particularly along Lake River). Only a few survived to be examined by professional archaeologists after 1980, including Cathlapotle, Meier near Scappoose, Clahclellar at the Middle Cascades, the Portland St. Johns sites, and the “Sunken Village” at the Sauvie Island bridge. Several seasonal and nonsettlement sites—for example, resource areas and cemeteries—suffered similar fates.

Table of Portland Basin Chinookan Villages in the 1800s

1. Wapato Valley to The Cascades: according to Lewis and Clark’s Estimate:

“Wappato Indians”

(Clackamas River and Willamette Falls)

“Shahala Nation” (šáx̣l(a) ‘upriver, above’; total population: 1300/2800)

2. Noted in later sources.