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Traveling from Yakaitl-Wimak to Willapa Bay by canoe
Th ird Interlude: Tracing
the portage remnants
By DAVID CAMPICHE
Note: This is part three of a three-
part series.
After weeks of harvesting salmon
on the Columbia River, the Tsinuk
(Chinook) were ready to return to
their secure winter lodges on the
shore of Willapa Bay. They would
travel up one of the three water paths
and portage across the Willapa Hills.
A portage is a short overland route
that a person follows, carrying a boat
or supplies between two waterways.
The portage between the headwa-
ters of the Chinook and Bear Rivers
was longer and steeper than the
Wallicut portage to the west. Jimmy
Goulter and I started our explora-
tion at Brown’s Slough, a small
waterway sluicing just south of his
grandmother’s house, affectionately
called “Granny Goulter’s,” a local
landmark, and close to M’Carty’s
19th-century homestead. A decade
ago, Goulter was raking a spot in
front of his grandmother’s house
when he found square steel nails and
a burn area that indicated the remains
of the M’Carty residence, long gone
or disguised by age and impenetrable
mounds of blackberry bushes.
At the southern end of Brown’s
Slough, early chronicler James
Gilcrest Swan describes being fl oun-
dered in an Indian canoe containing
a few bottles of raw whiskey and his
meager supplies. Swan left the canoe
and walked ahead to the M’Carty
homestead. When the natives caught
up, Swan realized that his two Chi-
nook guides had polished off one of
the bottles of liquor. Goulter believes
his father found that empty bottle
buried in the mud. It was dated near
the time of Swan’s journey in 1855.
The relevance of this pioneer history
has etched the Goulter family for
decades. Jimmy carries the anthro-
pologist’s mantle. In fairness, he is
A
PHOTO BY DAVID CAMPICHE
Brown’s Slough, which feeds into the Chinook River. The Chinook peoples and fi rst
Euro-American pioneers followed the slough as a portage route up from the Co-
lumbia River, overland and into Willapa Bay.
the caretaker of many acres of fertile
fi elds that cover the Chinook valley, a
landscape rich in history.
From the north end of that slough,
the portage rolls over the Willapa
Hills near what is now the water treat-
ment plant for Ilwaco, and then push-
es northward before rolling into the
southerly edge of Indian Creek below
Dick and Ellen Wallace’s place, a
home with a spectacular vista.
Big thanks to Dick for pulling my
two-wheel-drive pickup back from
a steep abyss below a rugged road
sheaved in ice after a winter freeze.
Even today, there are consequences
when traveling back roads in severe
weather, a fact not lost on the Chinook
or early pioneers. Indeed, this was the
ultimate reason for the Chinook to
portage from the Columbia into the
Willapa: The climate and availability
of shellfi sh was far more accommodat-
ing on Willapa Bay than residing in the
reed shelters they pitched during mild
summer days on the Columbia.
Only yards from my near accident,
Indian Creek bleeds into Bear River,
near where the Wilson homestead
stood, a stopover for wet and weary
pioneers as the night skies turned gray
and sullen. Bear River then fl ows
into the Willapa, not far from Baby
Island, where it is said by some to be
the ancient burial place of at least fi ve
Chinook chiefs.
A third portage trek from Black
Lake in Ilwaco along the small water-
way known as Tarlatt Slough appears
today to be mostly vanquished by
time and the dozens of cranberry bogs
that lace the landscape. As kids grow-
ing up in Seaview, we would travel
that slough and watch the annual
migration of native salmon struggling
up the small watercourse into Black
Lake. Ultimately, the slough was
so badly diverted that the salmon
succumbed. Unfortunately, this is an
all-too-common story.
At the north end of Willapa Bay
was a portage that ran into the Chehalis
River. There were many of these ave-
nues. Long before white contact, Native
Americans had mapped out the easiest
travel routes. Mostly, they traveled by
water. To quote my friend, Jim Sayce,
a fi ne historian, “Travel was by canoe
and by water, and little else.” Other
opportunities were generally laborious
and circuitous. Swan recounts the
travails of the trail: “A mere cart-path,
full of stumps and logs, over high hills,
and down deep valleys, soft from the
rain and nearly knee-deep with mud
and water. Over this trail, we climbed,
and slipped, and splashed, and jumped,
till fi nally we emerged.”
In 1855, Swan counts the “Che-
nook” living around Chinook Village
to be a measly hundred. He thought
he was seeing the end of a way of
life that included the well-traveled
portages of these proud traders. He
was defi ning the demise of an ancient
culture that was vanishing from the
Columbia-Pacifi c landscape (and
across America) like campfi re smoke.
I am glad to report that the tribe has
been growing in stature and relevance
in recent years. The challenges are
great, but they are a dignifi ed and
persistent people, proud of their
heritage and their culture. Facing
them squarely, the obstacles were and
remain daunting.
In the 1850s, the entire village
turned out to gather the salmon. The
population was evenly split between
the remnants of the Tsinuk, and these
fi rst white settlers. They fi shed to-
gether, the Tsinuk helping themselves
to the Tyee with their homemade nets
of spruce root and cedar rope. These
seine nets could be two football fi elds
in length. Among the Chinook, salm-
on were dried and smoked and often
ground into a pulp that was mixed
with eulachon (smelt) grease and
then stored in hand-crafted baskets
containing 10 or 12 pounds of the
fi sh cakes. The preserved concoction
might last for many moons. Back on
the Willapa, it remained a security
blanket for leaner times.
Much is lost over time. Today,
we scratch our heads and ponder our
forefathers, their pleasantries and trib-
ulations. But Bear River rolls on, and
the paths that crossed the Willapa Hills
recede into the harvest of third-growth
tree farms. One can’t help but wonder,
if somehow, we have been diminished.
And doesn’t it remain a pleasure
to imagine bushwhacking across
ancient trails that snaked around and
through monstrous evergreen groves,
through rich fl ora and fauna now-
adays delegated to a few parks and
refuges? All this natural splendor is of
another time and place that can only
be imagined.