NOVEMBER 16, 2017 // 21
N W
word
nerd
By RYAN HUME
FOR COAST WEEKEND
CHENAMUS
[TƩI• NƏ • MɅS]
noun
COURTESY BILLIE O’BRYANT
Kara
Dowaliby,
Miss
Sweden and the 2017
Lucia Bride
Sankta
Lucia
Festival of
Lights held
Nov. 24
ASTORIA — The Sankta
Lucia Festival of Lights
will take place Friday,
Nov. 24, at the Astoria
High School auditorium.
This year’s Lucia Bride is
2017 Miss Sweden Kara
Dowaliby. The cost is $1,
or $5 for a family.
A sing-a-long with
ChrisLynn Taylor begins
at 6:30 p.m., the program
at 7 p.m.
After the introduction
to the 2018 Court, the en-
tertainment includes: the
North Coast Chorale, the
Dowaliby sisters, Nordic/
Viking Dancers, Squeezer
and the Geezer, Coreen
Bergholm and Ken Pres-
thus for dance and enter-
tainment. Refreshments
will be provided by the
Sons of Norway.
1. Successor to Chief
Comcomly, Chenamus
reigned over a band of rough-
ly 160 Chinook between the
time of Comcomly’s death in
1830 until his own demise in
1845. He lived with his many
wives in a large house built
of fir in Qwatsamuts village
at the mouth of Wallacut
River on Baker Bay near pres-
ent-day Ilwaco.
Like Comcomly before
him, Chenamus welcomed
trade with British and Amer-
ican ships and settlers. In
1840, he arrived with 20 war-
riors at Fort George to help
guard the post from a Clatsop
uprising. His fondness for
rum and fine garments helped
establish the Chinook Jargon
trade language.
2. Chenamus Street:
Former name of the historic
main drag through down-
town Astoria until around
the turn of the 20th century.
Chenamus Street, which had
boarding houses and saloons
and ran through Chinatown,
known then for its opium
dens and prostitutes, ran the
straight length of what is
currently Marine Drive into
Bond Street.
3. Brig Chenamus: a
two-masted sailing ship run
by Captain John H. Couch.
On his second trip to the Ore-
gon Territory, Couch rounded
Cape Horn, stopped by the
Hawaiian Islands before
slipping down the Columbia
River and into the Willamette
to establish the first American
trading post in the Willamette
Valley, near what is now
Oregon City, in 1842.
4. Chenamus Lake: a
DEANMYERSON.ORG
Chenamus Lake
small, freshwater lake in the
Indian Heaven Wilderness of
Gifford Pinchot National For-
est near Mt. Adams in central
Washington.
Origin:
From the Chinook, mean-
ing unknown. Chenamus took
the name upon his ascension
to chiefdom, and there is
some debate about who exact-
ly he was before he became
ruler.
Some years after his death,
another lesser-known chief
took the name Chenamus
and presided over a smaller
band of Chinook. He was
murdered by a white settler
in 1865. There are conflicting
reports on whether the chief
was stabbed in the heart or
shot, but it is agreed that his
tribe dispatched of his killer
quickly.
“White traffic, especially
American, at that place was
heavier now than ever before.
One of the few concessions
these whites made to its
Indians for their takeover was
the naming of the ship after
Chenamus.”
— Robert H. Ruby and
John A. Brown, “The Chi-
nook Indians: Traders of the
Lower Columbia River, Uni-
versity of Oklahoma Press,”
1976, P. 211
“The Weekly Astorian not-
ed in 1879 that one Chinese
woman ‘stood in the doorway
of a den on Chenamus street
soliciting patronage.’”
— Chris Friday, Organizing
Asian-American Labor: The
Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon
Industry, 1870-1942, Temple
University Press, 2010, P. 60
“Now that the business
of Astoria has assumed the
proportions of a city and
many places of business
are so located as to make
Squemocqha, Concomly and
Chenamus streets a business
center, the annoyance of
speaking the names of those
streets correctly, to say noth-
ing as to the pronunciation
(particularly of Squemoc-
qha), compel business men to
petition for a change of no-
menclature. This petition asks
that the name of Concomly
be changed to First street;
that Chenamus be changed to
Second street, and so on until
Court street is reached passing
south from the river front,
when after passing Court
street the name of the next
is Seventh, and so on to the
summit. There may be valid
objections to the alteration of
the names of Jefferson and
Astor streets, as those are
proper and popular names, but
as to the three streets bearing
the unpronunciable indian
names that these do, none can
object to alteration.”
— D.C. Ireland, “The
Names of Astoria Streets,”
The Daily Astorian, Wednes-
day, Nov. 14, 1877, P. 1 CW
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