Kalapuya
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The Kalapuya (also spelled Calapooya or Calapooia) are a Native American ethnic group that once inhabited the area present-day western Oregon in the United States. The Kalapuya comprised eight related groups speaking three different languages of the Oregon Penutian family. Northern Kalapuyan, Central Kalapuyan, and Yoncalla (also called Southern Kalapuya). Their territory comprised the Willamette Valley, as well as the valley of the Umpqua River in Douglas County.
Thought to number under 4,000 individuals before contact with whites, the introduction of the diseases of the whites were catastrophic to the Kalapuya people. The smallpox epidemic that raged through the Pacific Northwest in 1782-3 may have caused the death of half the bands' population. A deadly fever likewise swept the region between 1830 and 1833. There is no record of the number of fatalities from these illnesses, but it is sufficient to say that the Kalapuya were greatly weakened by the time whites began to show up in numbers the Willamette valley in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The Kalapuyan groups (identified by language) were:
- Tualatin, also known as the Atfalati, who lived along the Tualatin River (Northern Kalapuya)
- Yamhill, who lived along the Yamhill River (Northern Kalapuya)
- Pudding River (Ahantchuyuk), who lived along the Pudding River (Central Kalapuya)
- Luckiamute, who lived along the Luckiamute River (Central Kalapuya)
- Santiam, who lived along the lower Santiam River near present-day Lebanon (Central Kalapuya)
- Mary's River (Chepenefa), who lived along the Mary's River near present-day Corvallis (Central Kalapuya)
- Muddy Creek (Chemapho), who lived along Muddy Creek (Central Kalapuya)
- Tsankupi, who lived along the Calapooia River (Central Kalapuya)
- Mohawk, who lived along the Mohawk River (Central Kalapuya)
- Chafan
- Long Tom (Chelamela), who lived along the Long Tom River (Central Kalapuya)
- Winefelly, who lived along the Mohawk, McKenzie, and Coast Fork Willamette rivers. (Central Kalapuya)
- Yoncalla, who lived along the Umpqua River. (Yoncalla)
In his description of the Indians of the Willamette Valley in 1849, Governor Joseph Lane (after whom Lane County is named gave the following estimates for the tribes' populations: "Calipoa": 60 "Tualatine": 60 "Yam Hill": 90 "Lucka-mues": 15
In 1854 they ceded many of their lands to the United States under the Kalapuya Treaty in exchange primarily for money. The Calapooia River is named for the tribe.
External link
- Univ. of Oregon: the Kalapuyans (http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/oregon/kalapuyan.html)