Chinookan Devastation: "Marsh Miasms"

   Below. A Chinookan burial canoe, drawn by
George Gibbs in 1850. Courtesy of the Smithsonian

 The lifeways of the Chinookan Indians along the Columbia Slough changed rapidly and unalterably with the coming of white people who brought new diseases to the Columbia. By the late 1700s smallpox was transmitted by traders to regional Indians. Fort Vancouver, established by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 1824 on the north bank of the Columbia, became a central trading post for Indians. Scottish, French, and British fur traders and Hawaiian workers interacted, many marrying native women.

The intermittent fever is making a dreadful havoc among the Indians. Dr. John McLoughlin, Chief Factor, Hudson's Bay Company, September 1830

  In 1830 disaster struck. A violent disease called "fever and ague," "intermittent fever" or the "cold sick" devastated Chinookan peoples up and down the Columbia. From Oak Point (between Cathlamet and Longview) to the Dalles mortality among Indians was as high as 90%. Within weeks, villages were abandoned as Indians fled looking for assistance. HBC officials collected the bodies of as many as sixty families in two villages near Vancouver and what remained of the population of Cathlanaquiah on Sauvie's Island, and burned them, setting the towns on fire. Historical epidemiology has potentially identified the disease as malaria. Few whites died from the "fever and ague" because they had access to quinine, and the illness returned annually until 1834. The disease, probably imported during early white occupancy, disappeared by 1900 when local swamps and lakes were drained.