Tent of Many Voices: 11120503TMB

instrument two times and and if out any number say you have to be in the state um you know coming 5% of the time you have to be within a small uh then eventually we come up with very active measure andul probably good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the tent of many voices I see some familiar faces who here has not been in the 10 of many voices yet oh good a few newbies good I to welcome you here we've been traveling for a couple years just to see you actually we came for the ocean don't tell sorry sorry but we have been traveling for 2 years along the Louis and Clark Trail stopping in every other city or so or town like this one one and bringing presenters from all over the country and all over your community to share their perspective of something related to the lisis and Clark expedition the cultures they met and saw along the way um with us at this hour is Ray Gardner the chief sorry Vice chair of the Chinook tribe and Bob Kennedy from the Haida tribe so let's give them a nice warm welcome El I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome all of you to chinuk Country and I always have the need to point that out is for thousands of years we have been here we're still here we have not gone away and I can't understand why as such a beautiful day like today the Louis and clar had problems 200 years ago so it took them 200 years to make it back we'll see if they can keep their canoes upright this time around I have my doubts I'd like to point out before we get started since we're going to be talking about trade this paddle the chuks are the only ones to have a paddle that's designed like this this is made out of organ Ash for strength can anybody tell me why this design might be this way okay hearing no answers the reason for the design of this paddle was we use these paddles in the river as you well know there's always rocks and Roots when you get into the shallow water and if you have a point on your paddle it's almost impossible to hook on to something and pull yourself through that's one of the reasons for this design the other design reason for this design is to harvest WAP ruts which is one of the Staples for our food sources and this could be put into the ground and worked back and forth to work up the roots this was also one of the tools of our trade or trading as the Chinooks were known for their canans ship we traveled up the river to as far as cilo Falls we traveled into the ocean and up and down down the coast up into Canada and Southern Alaska and down the coast into about middle California in our quest for trade always like to get the opportunity to show this this is actually one that I carved and this has many miles on it now in a canoe I use this every time I'm out there and this will be in the water tomorrow during a reenactment of trade that we will be having and this will be being used in our tribal canoe again on the 15th when we have a reenactment of meeting Louis and Clark so we're going to be out there to pick them up when they tip over with that one of the tribes that we did historically trade with was the Haida tribe we interacted with each other not only off the coast but also in our own area area now Bob being a hia I always have to put this out first before he gets a chance which is why I always get talked first the reason they weren't down here more often is because they were afraid of the chucks with that I have a lot of time not true uh greetings I'm a member of the H tribe uh our presentation again is a um pre LS and Clark trade uh um like to take you back about the 300 years uh to the great trading nations up and down the northwest coast um at the heida the tanuk every tribe had a tremendous trading Network going on as a matter of fact we standing on one of the uh very close to one of the trading Trails um there there was a lot of wealth on the West Northwest Coast a lot of wealth in food a lot of wealth in Wood a lot of wealth in in trade goods pre contact trade goods uh Abalone uh came up north um Cedar went down south uh dentalium went further Inland went from uh the shore as far in U as the Anastasia they they found dentalium a species that's only found in uh off in the waters off of uh Vancouver Island they found uh they found those in Anastasia ruins down in uh New Mexico Colorado Arizona so there was there was a tremendous Trade Network going on so you usually hear about the trade from the white guys uh standpoint you hear how they came in and started trading they did not come in and start trading the trading was going on all along um uh like I say the Abalone was coming out from California uh the haido the tribe that uh that I am were on what you call the Queen Charlotte Island what I call heida Guai we were in 70 foot long canoes uh oceangoing canoes we were in canoe culture we went all the way down to what is now known as the Russian River uh we sailed all the way out to I have stories of us going to uh Hawaii so um uh we were a very mobile the whole northwest coast was a very very mobile very rich culture uh Rich economically um we would come uh the hi in particular would come down to the mouthes of the Columbia um and would trade with the Cho um the chin would uh take those goods and uh move them up the river there was plenty of trade going on it is one of the things that I like to point out as Bob said we did interact with each other a lot over time and for thousands of years this isn't anything that happened just recently by any stretch of imagination one of the things about the Chinooks that they were known for was not only their canans ship but also the fact of their trading they did control the trade on the Columbia River any trade goods that came down the river or any trade goods that went up the river went through the chin Nations that was very important to the chinups to control that trade because in controlling the trade that went up and down the river is what established their wealth prior to Euro Americans coming into the area the chinuk nation was for this area the biggest and richest tribe anywhere around that was because of the control of trade it was one of the things like Bob said our our Goods inter miixed back and forth there was you go further east you go into the Mandan area some of those areas over there they were trade hubs that were more up into the plateaus a lot of our Goods ended up there and then went from there over of Missouri as time went on and trade language came into effect which was the Jaron we had we were one of the few tribes that actually had two complete languages we had chinuk Wawa which is our traditional language and we had chinuk Jaron which was our trade language the reason we had the trade language was so we could control that trade that trade language was comprised of not only our language language of other tribes and later even bits of euroamerican influence went into that to show how far reaching the impact of the trade that the chinups held on the Columbia River on areas in the Mississippi there are tribes over there that know chin Jaron that's how far reaching that trade line language went not counting the goods that we sent that way so um uh the CH jargon was a linga franka of the northwest coast and most and most of the West uh if there were any significant training going on they usually knew at least a few words of of jaring um you have to remember there were five over 500 Nations on this continent um pre contact and each and every one of them was basically divided with a uh language so if they had a u a universal language like the J jargon they used it to trade in and U and it's no no accident that that a trade language is known as Chino jargon the Chinooks were very good Traders theyve been trading at the mouth of the Columbia and up the Columbia for thousands years so these there were um so we talked about the trade we talked about the scope of the trade um you want to start talking about the details yes one of the things I'd like to kind of take us to is trade for tribes when tribes got together and would trade with each other we think of trade today we look at the way things are trade goes through Commerce of all different stages courts through different areas trade with the tribes was done person to person family to family tribe to tribe trade was a big thing in that time say a hidea canoe would have come down in the coast they would have stood off of the coast of the Great River and they would have waited for the Chinooks to welcome them to come into our River we would have done that they would have come in we would have invited them into one of our camps once they came into our camps we would have looked to see what kind of goods did they have to see if they had things that we wanted they would look at what we had in exchange and it would actually at some point become kind of a party atmosphere the families would not only be trading back and forth they would be sharing food they would be staring sharing stories of their tribes of their culture and this trade might go on for days or sometimes even weeks until it was completed it was a very intricate system of trade but by the time they were all done there would be a big feast and everyone would go their own way and everyone would be at least relatively happy with their trade yeah um there were uh on the on the west coast uh and especially in the northwest coast status Prestige meant everything um on the northwest coast uh almost from tilm Bay North uh one of the more interesting statistics I've read is it only took 3 hours a day to survive 3 hours of work a day to meet your minimum living requirements the rest of the day was used to build culture to tell stories to do art to do dancing so um as opposed to now which is 8 hours to 12 hours to uh longer um um so the um culture was very intricate status Prestige meant everything um everything was intertwined the trading was intertwined with the status and Prestige if you made a good trade it was uh um your your status would go up U um if you threw a good party during a trade your status would go up trading was was a social event it wasn't an economic event it was a social event uh to help meet your needs and it was one of the things that that four tribes it's one of the things that all tribes had this portion it's one of the things it's not talked about that much but tribes also had slaves some of our slaves were acquired oh through raids to other Villages and I have to say even in my own family my great great grandmother was abducted in a slave raid from the Shahala tribe she was a chahalis princess so she was abducted because of her status in that tribe was brought back down the river down to the Lower Columbia and into the willipie area as we did travel back and forth when she married into the family she lost her slave status and became a chuna now one of the things even in the trade among tribes they would have slaves with them on these trade trips one they did a lot of the the work we' kind of sit back and let them do all the packing major paddling in some aspects but during the course of a trade it wouldn't be uncommon for slaves to also change hands absolutely yep um the slaves uh slave raiding uh the slave raids were rarely um a big production they were usually just someone going out in a canoe down the coast and uh uh settling a score or picking up a a slave it was not uh it was not a large harvesting uh like the Europeans did to the Africans was a u it was primarily just ones and twos um but it was always remembered Remembered in stories um um I many of the stories of the Haida tribe are of um slave rapes that have gone bad or slave rapes that were successful it's one of the things that the Chinooks looked for people that they felt would be good slaves when they went on these raids or during these trades but it was also very interesting to the chinuk nation as we were noted for being a tribe that flatten the foreheads the flattening of the forehead was a level of status within the tribe the steeper the slope the higher your status was within the tribe so it was very interesting to us when we would go to other villages in either a trade situation or whatever that we were noted so much for our trading capabilities and our wealth that members of other tribes would actually flatten the foreheads of their daughters in hopes that the Chinooks would find them attractive and marry them back into the chinuk tribe the reason that that would be important is because of extended family values extended family values within a tribe if you married a woman from another tribe can I uh must remember that northwest coast natives were were matenal patriarchal so uh which means everything passed through the women names property so when a marriage like that would take place what would normally happen is the husband would go live with the wife's tribe for a year during the course of that year they would learn everything there was to learn of that tribe's culture beliefs how they raised their young after that year they would move back to the husband's tribe during that year it was the wife's responsibility to learn all of the cultures of that tribe after the 2-year period Then the husband and wife would get together and they would decide which of those cultures which of those values were the values that they wanted to raise their children in then they would move to that tribe whichever got there would be adopted into the other tribe so we've talked about scope we've talked about the uh the social part of uh of of trading um we get down to some particulars um again trade have been going on for thousands of years so there was a very set very oh boiler PL manner that that trade would go on up and down the coast um you would uh R all alluded to it earlier you would uh come down with your trade goods you would stand off off the village you would wait to be invited on you would uh there would be songs on welcoming songs uh training songs um you would be uh carried back on up the beach usually still in your canoe um and uh laid or set on the beach and then you could get out of the canoe um that's for the higher status people um then the trading would go on and um uh again it was a social event you would you would bring your trade goods out and and set them down one of the things that had you been there during that time you would have noticed different ways that people would have come in even in their canoes now as he was talking once a tribe would be invited in they could come up they could bring their canoe up onto your beach if they came in in a friendly manner coming in for trade very often they would go ahead and come in and land bow first if in fact you were going into another tribe to either have a slave raid or to abduct things that they had or take things from them you would turn your canoe around in the river and you would come in Stern first the reason being was obviously once you got what you wanted and wanted to leave you didn't want to have to take time to get out the river and turn around that was kind of the first getaway cars you were already pointed in the right direction so um uh now the the tribe that uh came in to do the trading um if the other tribe didn't find anything that they wanted in in amongst those trade goods they lost Prestige they lost a little face um and it wasn't uncommon for them to happen but um uh the uh the the trade goods would be brought out uh they would be uh basically set in a pile in in uh in the center of the city or in in head in the leader louse and they would be set out and uh they can take the uh trade goods U they were kind of freely distributed amongst the the tribe and uh if the tribe the tribe members were invited to to handle check out the trade goods uh they could take it back to their long house their house and decide what uh if they had anything of equal or greater value that they would uh would like to trade then they would bring it back and and show it to the uh um to the people who brought it and it would be up to them to decide whether they they accepted that value that product's value or not but kind of knowing that really brings it to the thing one of the things that we like to point out in tribal talk about trade is there was a very wellestablished trade mechanism in place that had been there for thousands of years prior to any contact with Euro Americans I'm going to go ahead and move us forward a little bit one of the things with the with the chinuk tribe is we don't know exactly who the first Euro Americans or other countries were that came here here but we do know that the earliest artifacts that we have that show that we had been trading with the outside world were Chinese so those are the oldest artifacts that we know of for trade with that I'd like to go ahead and jump ahead to 1792 let's go to 17 8 okay okay um I and just just to step back a little uh again I have stories the heida have stories of uh strange folks uh watching up on their on their uh on hide r on their land uh and there are many Chinese Pottery uh shards on the beaches in hied W so yes uh China was was trading whether they were drifting ships or whether they were full training ships um L and miss the history um all right uh so we've got the scope we've got uh uh the society that it was a social event we've got um um practices uh longstanding practices of trade let's jump to 1788 1788 was uh when the the first American Flagship came up the West Coast uh that was the lady Washington and the Columbia rabba um these were Boston men these were Puritans these were businessmen they were very European business they came up uh they were also young remember that most of these guys were um below the age of 25 most of the crew members um and just to give you a little background on myself not only am I a heida I am also a crew member of the tall ship lady Washington the reproduction is the Washington State call ship that's why I'm dressed in these clothes um the uh the lady Washington uh came up here specifically for the fur trade um they came up looking to get seaer uh SE at that time uh let's jump back another 20 years back to Captain Cook Captain Cook in his third voyage uh uh wintered or wintered over in Hawaii came back on to the West Coast uh they had traded most of their trade goods in Hawaii they came back up and uh uh they stayed a little late into the season it was starting to get cold they had traded all their clothes in Hawaii they they were getting cold the uh null the uh nkin uh traded da cook and his crew SE under pelts kind of the castoffs of the tribe well they uh took these uh cook took these pelts uh because they were the only warm clothes they had the only warm things that they had after trading everything in Hawaii uh took them across the Pacific and just by accident found out that they were very very valuable in China and in Russia in Russia they stopped in Russia they they did some trading with the Russians Russian came aboard and said I'll give you I'll give you 200 bucks for the the sea otter pill um they were the uh the journalist say they were alive the SE pelts were alive imagine when it would the the SE pelts would have been like after being on a boat for 6 months and humid uh condition being used as bedding by crew so there were fleas and pcks and lights and uh all these wonderful things but even at that they were getting $200 of help this is a time when you can buy a meal for uh 10 cents a fairly good meal for 10 cents um so the crew members started uh uh stripping the boat of all the sea pells that they could get uh cook held on to a few they sailed into China uh cook mentioned him to the Chinese the Chinese said oh we'll give you $600 for the pels that you have so um U he basically described that in about two pages of his journal uh the journals were um the journals were when he got back to England they were printed uh they the journals made it over to Boston Five Guys in Boston started reading the journals they saw those the the references to the incredible prophets they basically tore those two pages out of the journal and uh outfitted two ships the Columbia raviva and the lady Washington outfitted them with trade goods and sent them around the horn uh it took them a year to uh sail all the way around um their first stop was uh murderers what they call murderers Bay uh now known as Kil uh they went further up north because Captain Cook had based his ships out of nasan so he sailed into NCAP uh and found that they were not the first ones there and that they weren't the only ones there there were the Spanish there uh Fernandez and mirors was there um so they came in kind of late the game they uh and they were like I say they were Boston European Puritan blood businessman kendri had been a private peersman kendri was the captain of the lady of the uh lady Washington um he was a uh ex- private Hersman he was an ex- Whaler he was Yankee through and through and that for buck uh he went sailing up the coast went into Nikos sound uh anchored n Sound s Robert gray second in command in the Columbia Riva um out to do trading well again these are very young guys they've been at sea for over a year uh Close Quarters they uh and they did not take any time to learn the customs of what was already a wellestablished trading uh system uh it came up to fight them uh when kendri in 1791 um sailed into a village uh which is now called uh nin which was then called SKU it's a hea village um he came in he came sailing in uh on laundry day so the laundry was in the rigging drying so after everything that we've told you about uh Native trading what do you think they saw thought when they saw all the clothes hanging in the rigging they thought they were there for a trading exhibition for a trading uh seminar um so the natives paddled out in their the the high paddled out in their canoes and they started taking the cloth taking the shirts uh out of the rigging and peddling back to the Village to see if they can find full value uh to trade well again being Yankees and being a a puran blood they thought they were stealing them um and parenthetically he didn't get too worried about it until or kendri Captain kendri didn't get too worried about it until two of his best shirts went overboard um with the natives he um uh kendri went into a fit uh he he stormed into the center of SK uh he abducted the chief chief Co and the Highborn skulan ay um basically kidnapped him brought them back on the boat demanded that he get his shirts and all all clo back um lashed skan and Qui to the guns to the gun carriages he um tarred them and he cut their hair and uh her the northwest coast native and especially in the heida is very important um the only time you CET your hair is uh when you're in morning um or if you're a slave and Prestige means everything from Northwest go so what would happen if let's say Abraham Lincoln uh was uh abducted by someone um and he had his haircut uh there would be uh there would be U he um well I do have to give it to Kendra though he could have held them Ransom and uh demanded all the Furs uh what he didn't uh he what he did was um uh continued trading but he continued trading at his prices not at at going prices uh he let skulan and Coya go uh they lost face uh they were covered in tar and had short hair they lost tremendous amounts of prestige uh they um kendri uh sailed off fat dumb and happy uh he sailed off for the ship full of uh sea Ur um he came back a year later because he got such good prices for uh the seaotter pills uh well um there were so many pelts and the pelts that he got were such good quality that he gave had uh he was fat dumb and happy apparently he had been counting his chickens before they hatched because as he sailed in he sailed in uh either drunk or hung over we're not quite the the logs are a little uh um sketchy about about the condition he was in um um he sent the crew down below deck uh only he and the master gunner were on Deck all of a sudden um u a couple of canoes showed up on the fort side a couple of canoes showed up on the starboard side uh the canoes the hea canoes at that time were uh up to 70 ft long uh paddled by a crew of 30 or more uh the lady Washington is 68 ft on Deck so these canoes were larger than the lady Washington um eventually they got between um 60 and 80 height on the deck and uh by that time the master gunner was getting a little anany he basically had elbowed T Dr and said uh this is getting a little u a little too much to handle uh by that time um the crowd parted and up blocked POA uh the leader the the chief who had been uh disgrace um he walked up to Kendrick and started berating him in heida um kendri noticed what trouble he was in and started screaming orders to the crew down below decks to prepare because this this uh this Heen chief on Deck was uh beginning to threaten them get get everything ready Kya took out a dger um took a swipe at kendri uh wounded him very slightly and kendri went down into the a cabin and the master gunner went up in the riggy so the heida had the boat um the heida had the boat for about 3 hours uh if they' had it longer they would have uh run into ground and and taken the trade goods they were happy just having possession of the boat Kya got most of his Prestige back by just getting the vot um Kendrick uh basically was still yelling orders to the crew from the AF cabin he broke through the wall with the AF cabin uh he had found a brace of pistols uh broke through the uh ball of the app cabin into the whole rally the crew in the whole the crew was about to give up the ship to the Haida um and they burst out through the main hole hatch of the uh lady and came up on deck and slaughtered between 40 and 60 is a hia um up anchor and and U sailed in front of the village for another 3 or 4 hours shelling The Village um that's one of the that that is just one instance of uh what happened the misunderstandings that happened in during the trading and a bit of the background as to why the northwest coast natives were thought of as as um vicious because this was just the first it had happened in several different places pits it uh up in the tan um uh Nation uh basically the same thing happened with the uh tra uh with Robert graay in command of the Columbia Raba at the time it was uh it was all too familiar now we'll go ahead and go to 1792 Robert gray comes down to the Great River he sits offshore he can't quite bring himself to come across the bar on the Columbia River he sends I believe two of his longboats in and lost them yep finally as he he was sitting offshore and Chinooks were watching all of this and again you need to remember the Chinooks always had a need to establish trade with anyone that came into our River we had to control that tra so we took our canoes and we paddled out across the bar and met GR in the ocean and actually led him back into the River I like to point that out one because of one thing we were obviously the first Columbia River Bar Pilots and the best we brought them in they came into Baker Bay those of you that were from around here in old baker Bay it's right down here in elaco trade started with gray the canoes were coming and going all day long trying to get this trade system going with gray it started becoming DUS gray with his interactions and other people that he associated with were very reluctant to have tribes around their ships at dark so they fired shots over the camp over the canoes of the Chinooks to scare off well we didn't scare very easy we backed off for a little a little bit and we turned around and came right back it was getting darker gray was getting more concerned so in his journals he talks about how he had his crew loaded the 9 lb cannon full of shrapnel and when one of our large canoes with 20 plus people came alongside he blew that canoe out of the water killing everyone of Bo I think that's an important piece of History for us to acknowledge that it took place but I also think it's important because it shows the need for the Chinooks to control the trade on this River tribal culture if you lose someone in your tribe if you lose an elder in your tribe everything ceases until you properly take care of your people that's very important but the need with this first major contact with Euro Americans was so great to the Chinooks to control that trade that the very next morning before they were even able to take care of their dead they were back out establishing trade with Robert Greg I think there's some real key lessons to be learned from that one is to the importance of that trade that the Chinooks knew they had to hold in this River and would not give up to anyone even at the cost of their own tribal members it also in some respects I think points out the arrogance of the Euro Americans that came into our country did not take the time to learn our culture and through their misunderstanding of us instead of trying to figure out what we were about who we were why we were there the easy way out for them was just to kill us I think can set a very poor example of things as they move forward and the establishing of trade with tribes not only here but Across the Nation the um the trading was very important on both sides both sides recognize how valuable uh uh the trade goods were again the a single well tanned sea otter Pelt could go for $600 in China $600 uh one of the more amazing statistics I heard is uh for the first 5 or 10 years of the sea otter trade it was not uncommon at all to turn a 3,000% profit uh 3,000% profit on your on your trade goods um the so it was important to the uh to the U Europeans to the Boston men um the the trade goods that the natives got the beads the U uh they got iron chisels the beads they'd used for money up and down the coast where uh in trading uh each bead had a value um the uh the iron toes what they were called it's a um um Polynesian word for a chisel small chisel um they would use those so that they could uh make canoes faster so they could make their artwork faster so that they can trade more up and down their Coast so okay so kind of with that we'll kind of go ahead and move forward to 200 years ago 1805 the chinuk canoes were out in the river as we always were leis and Clark for the lack of a better way of putting it was huddled behind a rock because they couldn't handle being out there in the storms they couldn't keep their canoes upright they were basically stuck there to their amazement they looked up and not only did it chinuk Cano come out of the river to greet them but maybe just to add insult to injury on our part our chief was standing up in the Val when we got there obviously as they had made their Journey West they had traded off everything they had that was of any real value to the tribe so when they got down with us they really didn't have anything left that we wanted so with that before we answer questions I would like to say as far as we were concerned by the time they got here it was Lewis and who with that if anybody has any questions we'd like to be able to answer them second sir I'm sorry I want to come around with the microphone so we can all hear your questions do the stories of either of your tribes talk about the the uh sea otter trade that would be coming from the Russians from the north and and what kinds of contrasts in work their way up to the uh qule uh just north of theida North and Mainland of theida but they were primarily dealing with the yic people um along the uans and what they would do is they would kidnap uh they would go into a village they would kidnap the family of a hunter and say you will not get your family back until you provide us with um this many Furs uh so a particularly heinous way of of trading um but it worked for them um right now we need to actually start setting up for the next presentation so let's give Mr Gardner and Mr Kennedy a nice big r appla quickly and if I could very quickly as he has anyone that would like to pick one of these up if you've seen it out here there's a Longboat it would be exactly the same as the longboats that Robert gray had when he came into the Columbia tomorrow morning down at Cape Disappointment in Baker Bay we will have two of the longboats and a chinuk tribal Nation canoe and we will be having a reenactment of how trade would have gone on between Robert gray and the chinuk tribe in 1792 thank you thank you all for coming e