Tillamook Indians of the Oregon Coast

This book is the first to explore the prehistory of the Tillamook Indians of the Oregon Coast. Their life style, with all the attendant rituals of birth, marriage, spirit power and death, is authentically revealed through carefully researched text, supplemented by a series of some 150 photographs of bone and stone artifacts. These represent close to a quarter of a century of collecting, and later on, extensive excavations. Included is a wealth of information hitherto hidden in local and regional archives. Early diaries, archaeological reports, and original journals of explorers of the Pacific Northwest have been tapped for first-hand observations on the eighteenth and the nineteenth century Tillamooks; and many interviews have been held with native descendants. Charts and drawings present on-the-spot geographical data and identification of village sites which the authors have excavated, as well as those that have been researched by others. The result is a full view of exactly where the villages were located, and the approximate number for which there is evidence. All is now changed in the land of the Tillamooks. Their canoes no longer cut the breakers of the Pacific that lapped their western boundary. No longer do their traders travel north to the Columbia River to barter their wares. They have been replaced by a new civilization - but, here for those interested, is a wonderfully real and revealing picture of what those coastal natives were like before, and after, the dawn of history.