Skáppus
The name Scappoose is derived from Skáppus (also sqə́pus), a Chinookan village on the west side of the Multnomah Channel. The village was a Native trading site that early resettlers described as the Scappoose Plains, a thousand acres of land in the Wapato Valley surrounded by 6,000 acres of wetlands. Chinookan Chief Kiesno (Cassino) was the valley’s principal Indian leader from 1811 to 1847. His village, Gatlakmap, was near Skáppus, but farther south along present-day Scappoose Bay.
Like most peoples of the Northwest Coast and Columbia Plateau, the household and village or town were the primary economic, social and politic units. The household was the most important. Households ranged in size from a score of people to well over a hundred. Households occupied large, cedar plank houses. Chinookan societies were stratified, divided into classes of free individuals and slaves. Free people were divided into a relatively powerful elite and commoners who were household members but who exercised little or no power.
In the Wapato Valley, it appears that the occupants were fully sedentary, with people remaining in the same settlement year-around. Excavations of a plank house near present day Scappoose called the Meier site, indicate the structure stood for 400 years and was continuously occupied. The Chinookan peoples were deeply involved in trade. An annual trade fair at The Dalles was the largest such fair in Western North America, and any movement of materials between the coast and the fair passed through Chinookan territory. The Dalles trade fair itself was within the territories of Kitsht speakers. The Chinook were also engaged in trade up and down the coast itself. The town of Cathlapotle, on the opposite bank of the Columbia River, appears to have been among the largest towns in the region and was strategically located to observe any movement up or down the river.
Chinookan model of a canoe: note the distinctive paddles.
To the Chinook, a canoe would have been the equivalent of a car used for travel on Highway 30
Chief Kiesno
Also Keasno, Casino, Kiyasnu, Q’iesnu, Ciasno, Cassino, and Cassinov
Kiesno was an important Multnomah-Wakanasisi Chinookan leader in the Wapato Valley (Portland Basin). Throughout the fur trade era (1810-1840s), he had the respect of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Pacific Fur Company, and the North West Company. Well connected through intertribal marriage to other groups on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, he was the highest profile leader west of the Cascades from 1830, when Chief Concomly (Chinook) died, until his death in 1848.
The Wapato Valley people occupied a large area at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, including the Multnomah and other villages on Wapato Island (today’s Sauvie Island) and Cathlapotle and its neighbors in present-day Clark County, Washington. Kiesno’s principal village was Gatlakmap (Cathlacumup, Wacomapp) in the vicinity of present-day St. Helens. He also had direct influence over Nayaguguwikh (Niakowkow, Nayakaukauwi) at the mouth of Multnomah Channel and Wakanasisi on the north bank of the Columbia, downriver from Fort Vancouver.
Kiesno maintained political influence over the Wapato people and had ties with neighboring groups—including the Clackamas Chinook near Willamette Falls, the Cascades Chinook at Cascade Rapids, and the Tualatin Kalapuya in the Willamette Valley—taking advantage of those connections when needed. In August 1813, for example, the Cathlacumups and “70 warriors from some of the neighboring tribes” fended off an attack by seven canoes of Clatsop-Nehalem. In April 1814, when an incursion of forty canoes of Cowlitz and their allies entered the Columbia River, Kiesno called for aid from “Indians at the Falls of the Willamette, [and] the Calleporeyours,” and the defense of the Wapato Valley Chinook territory was successful.
Native leaders in the region had a practice of arranging marriages in order to marshal political influence and maintain peaceful trade relations. Kiesno had as many as ten wives and numerous slaves, demonstrating his wealth. He married Illchee, Chief Concomly’s daughter, after her husband, fur trader Duncan McDougall, left her. Intermarriage connected him closely with peoples from the mouth of the Columbia to the Cascades and up the Willamette River, as well as to fur traders.
In January 1814, Kiesno accompanied fur trader Alexander Henry on a recovery mission to the Cascades (Watlala) people. There, he kept the peace between Astorians and the Cascades people, who had recently killed some fur traders and stolen their guns and camping equipment. The fur traders stopped on Wapato Island, where they asked Kiesno, who had relatives at the Cascades, to help with the negotiations. Using threats and in heated discussions, Kiesno and the fur traders negotiated the return of most of the stolen implements. Kiesno also met secretly with his Cascades relatives who lived on the north bank of the Columbia. The wife of Chinook Chief Coalpo warned the Astorians of Kiesno’s double dealing; and while Henry kept Kiesno along for his position and diplomatic skills, he thereafter watched him closely and distrusted him with their safety.
From the 1780s to the 1850s, there were numerous epidemics in the region from introduced diseases, including smallpox, malaria, influenza, dysentery, and measles. Decimation of the Native population allowed for the nearly unopposed invasion and resettlement by explorers, traders, pioneers, and northern tribes (Klickitat and Cowlitz) on the Columbia River. After the malaria epidemics of the early 1830s, Kiesno became a regular visitor to Fort Vancouver. He died there on December 10, 1848, and is buried in a Fort Vancouver cemetery. The obituary in the Oregon City Free Press reported that “in the prime of life, few or none of his neighbors could equal him in rank and affluence.”
After Kiesno’s death, the Wapato Valley people joined with the area’s Willamette Valley tribes and signed the Treaty with the Kalapuya Etc. in 1855. In January 1856, those people who were represented by the treaty signers were removed to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation, including the surviving wife of Kiesno, Mary Ann Keosnose.
Kiesno was likely the inspiration for Chief Multnomah, a romantic figure who is at the center of Frederick Balch’s novel Bridge of the Gods (1890) and who was liberally reimagined in newspapers and theatrical performances into the twentieth century. The statue of Chief of the Multnomahs, by sculptor Herman McNeil, at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art can be considered a romanticized image of Kiesno.
Chief Comcomly
Also Concomly, Comcomally
(c.1780s-c.1830)
Comcomly was a Chinookan headman who traded with and befriended Anglo explorers who frequented his homeland, what is now Baker’s Bay at the mouth of the Columbia River. Though he had only one eye, Comcomly was an expert navigator, particularly knowledgeable about the treacherous waters of the Columbia. A skilled negotiator, he traded beaver pelts and salmon in exchange for Western merchandise. Comcomly first appears in the historic record in the journal of Captain Charles Bishop of the British ship Ruby which wintered in Baker’s Bay from December 1795 to January 1796. There is also some record of him in the Lewis and Clark journal during the time the expedition wintered at Fort Clatsop between 1805 and 1806.
In 1811, the Pacific Fur Company established a trading post at Fort Astoria. Comcomly immediately offered his friendship and expertise. He became one of its principal suppliers of beaver pelts and salmon. In order to solidify his trade with the Astorians, Comcomly apparently fabricated stories of attacks on fur traders by other tribes. Several of Comcomly’s daughters married fur traders, further elevating esteem among them.
In 1813, the Astorians surrendered their fort to the British of the North West Company as part of the War of 1812. Though he was disappointed that the Astorians abandoned their settlement, Comcomly established relations with the North West Company. After 1821, when the North West Company was absorbed by the Hudson’s Bay Company headquartered at Fort Vancouver, he worked as a navigator on the Columbia River. Often seen dining with John McLoughlin, Comcomly continued his work with the Hudson's Bay Company until his death in 1829 or 1830. He died of a disease that decimated the Chinooks, probably brought by the fur traders.