The Chinook Indian Nation is an unrecognized tribe in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington that was federally recognized from 2001 to 2002. It consists of the five westernmost Chinookan tribes: the Cathlamet, Clatsop, Lower Chinook, , and Willapa. Its headquarters is in Bay Center, Washington.
The Chinookan people of the Columbia River had a vast trading network before and during European colonization. The trading center of Cathlapotle, established in the 15th century, was visited by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The governments of the Oregon and Washington Territories negotiated treaties with Chinookans as settlers entered the region. The tribes that would become the Chinook Nation signed the Tansy Point Treaty (1851), which would grant them land, but it was not ratified by Congress. Treaty negotiations at the Chehalis River in 1853 failed. After Chinookans were relocated to the Grand Ronde reservation in 1856, some refused and were not included in negotiations ceding the region to the United States. They began efforts toward recognition as the Chinook Indian Nation, which wrote its constitution in 1925. In the 1920s, the tribe successfully sued to receive allotments of the Quinault Indian Reservation under an 1873 law.
The tribe petitioned for recognition in 1981, under the Federal Acknowledgment Process introduced by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Cowlitz Indian Tribe supported their petition, but the Quinault Reservation opposed it. The tribe's federal recognition was signed by Kevin Gover in January 2001, near the end of Bill Clinton's presidency. It was revoked in July 2002 by Neal A. McCaleb, after George W. Bush had taken office, saying that the tribe did not sufficiently document its uninterrupted existence. The Chinook Nation's unsuccessful attempts to regain recognition included a campaign for an act of Congress. A 2023 court ruling overrode a ban on re-applications for recognition and granted the tribe land claim settlement money promised in 1970.
The Chinook Indian Nation is governed by a chair and a nine-member council. Most members live near its traditional lands. The tribe works on efforts for canoe revitalization and language revitalization of Chinook Jargon. The tribe's events include the Winter Gathering and the First Salmon Festival.
History Background
The Chinookan peoples historically lived along the Lower Columbia River, from the river's mouth on the Pacific Ocean to the location of modern The Dalles, Oregon. The Lower Chinookans, including the Lower Chinook, Clatsop, and Willapa, lived near the mouth of the river; the Upper Chinookans, including the Cathlamet, lived upstream; and Middle Chinookans lived in a central region containing Willamette Valley. The westernmost Chinookan groups, the Cathlamet, Clatsop, Lower Chinook, Wahkiakum, and Willapa, are the ancestors of the Chinook Indian Nation.
The Chinookans ran a large trading network centered on the Columbia River. The largest unit of government was villages. The village of Cathlapotle, near modern Ridgefield, Washington, was established circa 1450. It became a trading hub one of the largest settlements on the river. The Chinookans first traded with Europeans by May 1792, when American merchant Robert Gray documented a visit to the region. In October of the same year, the Cathlapotle Chinookans met and traded with explorer William Broughton, who worked for George Vancouver. The Lewis and Clark Expedition entered Chinookan land in November 1804 and visited Cathlapotle for two hours on March 29, 1806. They said it had about 900 inhabitants. The expedition was followed by a wave of white settlers. The United States and the British Empire both staked claims to the region; the former established Fort Astoria in 1811, and the latter established Fort Vancouver in 1825.
Once Europeans settled the area, new diseases and the introduction of alcohol led to higher death rates among the Chinook. The Chinookan people faced several smallpox outbreak in the late 18th and 19th centuries and a deadlier malaria epidemic that began in 1830. By 1850, the population of the Middle Chinookan region was the lowest since 1830. Cathlapotle had the highest death rate and was abandoned. As the descendants of the Cathlapotle Chinookans became displaced and mixed with other tribes, multiple groups had connections to them, including the Chinook Indian Nation, though the five tribes had lived downriver from the village.
Chinook was originally the name of a village on the mouth of the Columbia. The first source to use the term Chinook to label a region was a map by ethnologist Horatio Hale from the 1844 Wilkes Expedition. He drew boundaries based on language, which were followed by later maps. Earlier maps, such as Lewis and Clark's, had only labelled villages.
Treaty era and failed attempts at recognition (1851–1978) After the establishment of the Oregon Territory, the government was required to negotiate land with local tribes. The Donation Land Act of 1850 established a treaty process, though some settlers had already been present. The Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Anson Dart, began negotiations with Middle Chinookans with the goal of evicting them, but failed.
The Tansy Point Treaty of August 1851 was negotiated between Dart and seven groups of Lower Chinookans. The final treaty, signed by Chinook leader Huckswelt, would grant the Chinookans land in the region, the right to hunt and gather within the region, services from the Office of Indian Affairs, and compensation for relinquished land. The treaty was received by Congress in November. It was not signed due to opposition from Oregon delegates Joseph Lane and Samuel Thurston, so Chinookans lost land to settlers without legal recourse. Tansy Point was the only meeting of all five ancestral tribes of the Chinook Nation.
The Washington Territory was formed in 1853 with Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens. He negotiated a treaty in 1855 at the Chehalis River with 350 representatives of groups including the Chinook. Stevens planned on moving the tribes to a reservation spanning from Grays Harbor to Cape Flattery. The Chinook and the Cowlitz refused to sign it as Stevens's proposal would require them to relocate and live with the unfamiliar Quinault people. Their rejection was motivated by anger at the result of the Tansy Point Treaty. Stevens got angry and refused further discussions.
Dart was succeeded in 1853 by Joel Palmer, who continued his goal of evicting Middle Chinookans. After the tribes refused to move to the east of the Cascade Mountains, Palmer planned a reservation at Grand Ronde in Western Oregon. The 1855 Willamette Valley Treaty ceded the region to the United States. In 1856, Palmer required all Middle Chinookans to move to Grand Ronde in order to appease settlers. Some refused to join and stayed in the region, where they lacked representation and often married into other tribes. The Chinook Indian Nation was formed from those who stayed near the Columbia River.
The United States annexed most of the region in 1855 and 1856 through a series of treaties, including the Treaty of Olympia, which established the Quinault Indian Reservation. The Chinook were not involved in these treaties. The Shoalwater Bay Reservation was created in 1861 for some Chinook and Lower Chehalis people. However, legislation of the era only addressed a small segment of Chinook people or required them to move farther than they wanted. The nation began pursuing legal representation in 1899. Efforts to receive recognition continued to fail.
The five tribes were included in the 1906 McChesney Rolls, a U.S. government census of Pacific Northwest tribes. Many of the tribe's children were sent to the American Indian boarding schools of Chemawa and Puyallup, where they were forced to assimilate to White culture. The Chinook Tribe wrote its constitution in 1925. It is one of the region's oldest tribal constitutions. The nation continued to advocate for recognition by holding monthly council meetings and by maintaining enrollment lists, which began in 1926.
Under an 1873 executive order by Ulysses S. Grant, allotments of the Quinault Indian Reservation were granted to "fish-eating Indians", which included the Chinook. The Chinooks sued to receive allotments in 1926 and won the 1928 court case , which was upheld in 1931 by the Ninth Circuit Court. They received their first allotment in 1933.
The State of Washington gave the Chinook Nation the status of nonprofit corporation in 1953. In 1956, the tribe's chairman, J. Grant Elliott, wrote to oppose the construction of the Pelton Dam on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation as he believed it would hinder access to fish for Chinook fishers. In the 1970s, the Chinook lost their fishing rights after a federal court limited these rights to recognized tribes. The Indian Claims Commission ruled in 1958 that the Chinook Nation was the successor of the Lower Chinook and Clatsop people. In the Docket 234 decision on November 4, 1970, it awarded the tribe $48,692.05 for the land it lost in 1851. The money was placed in a trust without an agreement about how to distribute it.
Federal recognition process and reversal (1978–2002) After the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) introduced the Federal Acknowledgment Process (FAP) in 1978, the Chinook Indian Nation began work on filing for recognition. It began its petition in 1981. The tribe's federal recognition effort occurred at the same time as that of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, which supported its effort. Both tribes consulted historian Stephen Dow Beckham and attorney Dennis Whittlesey. The Quinault Reservation opposed the Chinook effort. It had a rivalry with the Chinook Nation as Chinook people owned a majority of land on the reservation.
The Chinook's petition passed and was signed on January 3, 2001, one of the final days of the presidency of Bill Clinton, by the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs, Kevin Gover. The decision excluded "those members of the petitioning group whose Indian descent is exclusively from the historical Clatsop Tribe" on the grounds that the Clatsop had lost official status under the Western Oregon Indian Termination Act and that they had joined the nation later than the other subgroups.
A memo within the BIA raised doubts about the validity of the case on the same day as the decision. Eighty-nine days later, the Quinault filed a claim to the Interior Board of Indian Appeals that the Chinook did not meet the requirements of the FAP. The board decided on August 1 that this claim did not meet the burden of proof and affirmed the original decision. However, it said that part of the case was outside of its jurisdiction. Neal A. McCaleb, Gover's successor under George W. Bush, received the case. On July 5, 2002, he revoked the recognition on the grounds that the tribe failed three of the seven FAP criteria:
The decision said that the tribe lacked documentation between the 1850s and 1920s. Tribal chair Gary Johnson argued that the decision was arbitrary and that the tribe had almost 19,000 pages of documentation, equal to most recognized tribes. He said, "The government worked against Chinook all of these years and how can you expect us to have this perfect—and I guess I would use the term 'white man's government'—with paper trails over all this period of time. It ends up that people that are three thousand miles away are making decisions about us without even spending much time with us."
Attempts at re-recognition (2002–present)