KALAPUYA

The Kalapuya (or Calapooya or Calapooia) are one of eight tribes of the Kalapuyan language family, a subdivision of the Penutian phylum. In some texts all eight Kalapuyan tribes are discussed as the Kalapuya, pronounced ka-la-POO-ya. The Kalapuyans occupied the fertile Willamette Valley between the Coast Range and the Cascade Mountains in present-day western Oregon. The Kalapuya proper lived at the headwaters of the Willamette River; the Ahantchuyuk, on the Pudding River; the Atfalati (or Tualatin), at present-day Forest

Grove; the Chelamela, west of present-day Eugene; the Chepenafa (or Mary’s River) near present-day Corvalis; the Luckiamute (or Lakmiut), on the Luckiamute River; the Santiam, on the Santiam River; the Yamel (or Yamhill), near present-day McMinnville; and the Yon-calla (or Yonkalla), on the Umpqua River. These groups were subdivided into bands known by other names.

The Kalapuyans are classified among NORTHWEST COAST INDIANS, but as they lived inland, they shared cultural traits with the PLATEAU INDIANS to the east, especially with regard to an emphasis on the gathering of wild plant foods, such as camas roots, supplemented by fishing and hunting. Some tobacco was planted, typically in rotten logs prepared with burning. Tribal members moved seasonally between winter villages of multifamily houses of wood, bark, thatch, and earth and summer base camps of temporary structures of boughs and grass. The Kalapuyans used dentalia and olivella shells harvested from the sea as a medium of exchange. They carried out vision quests to attain Spirit or Dream Power.

Disease decimated the Kalapuya and related tribes. Smallpox brought to the region by non-Indians reached them by way of other tribes in 1782—83. The Lewis and Clark Expedition did not have any known direct contact with any of the Kalapuyan tribes but reported hearing of “Calahpoewah villages” along the Multomah (Willamette River). The first recorded contact between Kalapuya tribes and non-Indians occurred in 1812, when a party of Pacific Fur Company traders headed by Donald McKenzie traveled through the Willamette Valley. Another deadly epidemic, thought to be malaria that started among Columbia River tribes after contact with a trading ship, spread among the Kalapuyans in 1830—33. A series of treaties in 1851 did little to protect the Kalapuyans from non-Indian settlers in the Willamette Valley. Alquema, a Santiam chief, told U. S. officials:

We have been willing to throw away the rest of our country, and reserve the land lying between the forks of the Santiam. You thought it was too much! Then we agreed to take only half of it, and take in the people south of us, if they are willing. You thought it was too much! Then we agreed to take this small piece between the Creek and the North Branch. You want us still to take less. We can’t do it. It is tying us up in too small a place.

In 1855—56, the U. S. government inaugurated a policy of Removal, relocating tribes to the Grand Ronde Reservation far to the northeast of their ancestral lands.

In about 1870, with extreme poverty at Grande Ronde, some Kalapuyans began practicing an early form of the Ghost Dance as developed among the PAIUTE by the prophet Wodziwob, who predicted the return of deceased ancestors and traditional ways of life. Modern Kalapuyans of the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde Community of Oregon, which includes CHI NOOK and other peoples, have had some success in fulfilling Wodziwob’s prophecy of reclaiming traditional values and crafts.