“Anyplace that there was flat land, place to land a canoe and fish, there was a Chinook village out here. Because it didn’t matter-they were here in the summer, then they hopped in their Winnebagos [large canoes] and went north… up to Willapa Harbor.“

— Charles Funk, Chinook Nation Tribal Liaison to the Middle Village National Park Site

 

The Columbia River was  a superhighway that carried the Lower Chinook throughout the region for economic (trade) and social (kinship) reasons. At Middle Village, Charles Funk is pictured on left. Anthropologist Richard Daugherty on the right. ; Charles Funk talks about his the Middle Village/Station Camp archaeological site on the Trail Tribes site. Perhaps he would describe how the Chinook moved by water along the tributaries that led from the river to the winter settlements on Willapa Bay. Or, maybe he would take the visitor back in time through his own experiences by describing how archaeology, history, and community memory come together in this place.

Verne Ray map of Chinook territory circa 1800. Ray mapped the area based on material culture remains and ethnographic interviews. Chinook Lower Ethnographic Notes, 1938