Page:Willamette Landings.djvu/17

Rh banked waterway were known after the tribes dwelling with in them. Multnomah, as the lower river was first called, was the name of the resident Indian tribe, dwellers on Wappato Island and in scattered camps along the west bank of the river southward to Hyas Tyee Tumwater, or "the falls," twenty-five miles inland. In like fashion the red inhabitants dwelling along the stream known as the Clackamas and which debouched from the east just below the falls, were of that tribal name. Above this area of brawling waters lived the Clough-we-wallahs, along the Willamette's eastern shore; but no geographical feature retains their name.

Spreading over the wide Tualatin Plains, westward of the Willamette waters, wandered the Tuality Indians, or the Atfaliti Tribe, giving their name to the meandering river that drains this beautiful expanse, and sharing, not too willingly, their "good hunting" with visiting Klickitats and Snakes from east of the Cascades.

Southward in the valley dwelt other tribes, the Molallas and Santiams to the east, the Yamhills to the west, and centrally throughout the wide prairies and into the foothills and mountains of the south, dwelt the wandering Calapooyas. All of these tribes had central camps by principal streams. Thus, from native tribes, most of the river tributaries of the Willamette acquired names, usually of white bestowal but of red origin.

Of the name Willamette itself, at least one historian of an early day claims that the term was first used to designate a place on the river's west bank—"green waters"—just below the falls. Probably no tribe bore the name. Undergoing various spellings, it crystallized into the present accepted form with the visit in 1841 of Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition.

The native dwellers of the Willamette were greatly dwindled in numbers when the white settlers came. Historians attribute their rapid decline during the last of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries to epidemics directly or indirectly traceable to maritime traders into the Columbia, to smallpox and scarlet fever and other foreign ailments, and to the natives' usually fatal methods of combating illness by means of sweat-baths followed by cold