While the Northwest Coast Culture Area is primarilya coastal area in which the Indian nations utilized the resources of the Pacific Ocean, the Kalapuyan bands were located entirely inland and relied more on gathering plant foods than on fishing and hunting. There were about 13-19 autonomous and distinct Kalapuyan bands or tribes.
Henry Zenk, in his chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians, reports:
“Their territory included the greater portion of the Willamette Valley along with a portion of the Umpqua River drainage immediately south of the upper Willamette Valley.”
According to a display in the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem, Oregon:
“The Kalapuya originally occupied over a million acres in the Valley. They have lived here for over 10,000 years and endured enormous changes to their traditional life-ways in the past 200 years.”
The Kalapuyan bands spoke three closely relatedbut mutually unintelligible languages: (1) a northern language with at least two dialects, (2) a central language with 6-10 dialects, and (3) a southern language.
The pre-contact population of the Kalapuyan groups is estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 and by 1830 this had dropped to 8,000 to 9,000. European diseases, such as smallpox, reached the Kalapuyans and decimated their population before the first European explorers arrived in their area.
Subsistence
The most important plant food for the Kalapuya was camas (Camassia quamash). Camas is a lily-like plant whose bulb can be fire-baked to make a sweet and nutritious staple. According to a display in the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem, Oregon:
“It was widespread in the Valley, and the tribes managed and harvested fields of the blue lily for their own use. They established a form of agriculture where camas was dug annually once flowering was finished, and the energy of the plant had gone back into the bulbs. They collected only larger bulbs, throwing smaller ones back into the holes to grow for the next year.”
Camas was harvested by the women using slightly curved digging sticks made from hardwood. In digging the camas, the digging stick would be stabbed into the ground six to eight inches away from the plant, then worked back and forth to loosen the soil. A woman could dig up about a bushel of roots in a day from a site that was about half an acre in size.
The Kalapuya used fire as a central aspect of their seasonal hunting and gathering practices. Each year fire would be used to clear away the thick underbrush. In looking at the reasons for the lush, open character of the Willamette Valley in Oregon, Mathias Bergmann, in an article in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, writes:
“Regular burning also provided the valley’s soil with its high fertility and maintained the landscape’s open character.”
According to a display in the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem, Oregon:
“The Kalapuya practice of setting fire to the Valley, which deposited nutrients in the soil, created the area’s noted fertility.”
According to another display:
“The fires cleared the Valley floor, and allowed for long-range sightings of other people and camps.”
Other benefits of burning included control of insect populations, improving browsing for the deer, and improving vegetation.
Living in the Willamette Valley, the Kalapuya did not need to have a nomadic lifestyle to obtain food. According to a display in the According to a display in the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem, Oregon:
“The truth is the Kalapuya lived in a resource rich area, where the work required to gather, hunt and trade for their annual needs took very little time. Camas fields were extensive, with families holding claims to specific fields. With fire, they enhanced the yield of specific plants.”
The Kalapuyans hunted deer (both white-tailed and black-tailed), elk, black bear, and small mammals. In 1814, Alexander Henry described the Kalapuyan deer hunt:
“Their method of hunting deer is to wear a deer’s head with horns complete, which they occasionally rub with a stick they carry. In imitation of the animal’s motions, why they keep their bodies concealed, and thus decoy the game.”
While the Kalapuyans are considered a hunting and gathering people, they did cultivate tobacco (Nicotiana multivalvus). They planted tobacco seeds in small plots which were fertilized with ash.
Trade
The Kalapuyan tribes, living in the camas-rich area of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, used camas as one of their major trade items. According to a display in the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem, Oregon:
“They packed cooked camas in cylindrical ‘camas wheels,’ and transported them to trading villages to the north or south to trade for items and food that were rare in the Valley. With the Chinook tribes, they traded for salmon, usually smoked or dried, and for canoes. The Chinookan tribes were known for their carving and Chinook canoes fetched a high price.”
From the tribes to the south, the Kalapuya obtained pine nuts,
Housing and villages
The Kalapuyans lived in permanent villages during the winter months and then moved into summer camps. In general, people would move to the summer camps in April or May, returning to the villages by November.
Kalapuyan village multifamily houses were rectangular with walls of planks and/or bark. Henry Zenk reports:
“The walls were banked outside with dirt, and the house floor was excavated to a depth of two or three feet. Each family was partitioned off, mats lined walls and served as mattresses, and there was a single central fireplace.”
Clothing and adornment
Women would wear a skirt made of dressed skin, grass, or shredded cedar bark. Henry Zenk reports:
“Summer and winter dress was notably distinct. In the summer, men often wore little or no clothing. Men’s apparel for travel and chilly weather included leggings and moccasins, cloaks, and fur caps made from the intact skins of small animals or from the head-skins of larger animals such as deer, cougar, and a gray fox.”
Decoration on Kalapuyan clothing often indicated social status. Henry Zenk reports:
“Wealthy persons’ attire was typically ornamented with dentalium shells, porcupine quills, trade and bone beads, and shells and feathers.”
Tattoos decorated the arms and legs of both men and women. In the central area, women also had facial tattoos. Cranial deformation was also practiced by some Kalapuyan groups, particularly among the Tualatins.
Government
Each Kalapuyan village was politically autonomous and had its own chief. Henry Zenk reports:
“A chief adjudicated intravillage disputes and was expected to assist fellow villagers in need. He was invariably wealthy in comparison to his fellow villagers (indeed, the word for ‘chief’ also strongly connotes ‘wealthy’).”
Religion
As with other Northwest Coast peoples, guardian spirits were important. Success in life depended on powers granted by a personal guardian spirit. Henry Zenk writes:
“Evidently, Kalapuyans considered socially significant achievement of any kind to be intimately tied to the possession of such powers.”
All individuals, both males and females, would undergo a vision quest seeking a guardian spirit. A young person’s vision quest would take five nights, during which time the individual would fast and work all night. The vision quest site was usually a place known to have special power. Power could come to the individual during a dream after the quest in which a spirit would appear in human form.
Historic Photographs
Below are some of the photographs displayed in the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem, Oregon.
More tribal profiles
Indians 101: A very short overview of California's Chumash Indians
Indians 201: A short overview of the Coeur d'Alene Indians
Indians 101: A Brief Overview of the Creek Indians
Indians 201: A short overview of the Duwamish Indians
Indians 101: A very short overview of the Havasupai Indians
Indians 101: A very short overview of the Hualapai Indians
Indians 101: A short overview of the Makah Indians
Indians 201: A very short overview of the Tututni Indians