NeCus’ Village: Spirit Upon the Land
It’s January 8, 1806, and Captain William Clark, along with a small party from the Corps of Discovery, is standing atop a steep, rocky headland jutting into the Pacific Ocean. The party is a day’s-plus walk south of their winter encampment near the mouth of the Columbia River. Gazing at the scene below, Clark later writes in his diary: We set out early and proceeded to the top of the mountain facing the open sea. A boundless ocean lay before me. I beheld the grandest and most pleasing view my eyes ever surveyed. As far as I could see, the seas were raging with immense waves breaking with great force upon the rocks north. Villages of Nehalem and Clatsop can be seen below. One is a village at the mouth of a small river near the place the whale is said to be.
Reports of a dead whale having washed ashore just south of the headland had reached Clark at the encampment he and Captain Meriwether Lewis had established a month ago. During the past year and a half, the co-captains had led a disciplined corps of explorers west from St. Louis, up the Missouri River, across the Rocky Mountains, and down the great Columbia River to their winter encampment a few miles in from the river’s mouth. They are exploring lands newly purchased under President Thomas Jefferson from the French government of Napoleon Bonaparte. They need provisions during this wettest of winters while they wait to start home in the spring. Clark is eager to bargain for a portion of the butchered whale. He had tasted whale earlier and had found it very palatable and tender.
The whale is beached near a Nehalem village along the estuary of a large creek. People from several villages up and down the coast are already butchering and parceling out the meat and blubber among themselves. Clark is in for some hard bargaining to get the meat he wants. After taking in the scene from the mountain, the party continues down the south slope on a well-established trail they have been following all day. The trail connects several Native villages along this abundant Pacific coastal land.
I am almost five. My father calls me Little Bird. I am the youngest and his favorite. He is Clatsop. Mother is Nehalem. Our family lives beside the ocean in a village of longhouses where the creek flows down from the forested hills of giant spruce trees. I delight in how the creek spreads across the sandy beach enjoying its rambles before entering the sea. It plays upon the sands like I do, running up and down, not ready to leave when the time comes. But right now, I am watching strange men emerging from the edge of the forest. They are coming out where the trail hugs the creek waters. They are not us. I have heard villagers talking about those who canoed from the east down the big river up north. They are wintered on the other side of the mountain. My father says they have come for some of the whale. He will bargain with them, for our people are long-time traders, but villagers from south and north are here to share in this great beast. Like the sea, the forests also feed us well and so we prosper. For generations, people from many lands have come to bargain for our goods. We trade what we can for things that we need. Everybody benefits.
Clark did not get the meat he wanted. After spending the night on the north side of the creek away from the village, the party departs, hauling a few hundred pounds of whale blubber and rendered oil. The Corps spends the rest of the winter encamped in a stockade enduring soaking rains. On March 23, they break camp for the long trek home, leaving a coastal area of thriving communities that have been trading goods throughout the Columbia-Pacific region for centuries.
The Clatsops and Nehalems welcomed Lewis and Clark, much like they had done with Europeans who had come to their shores earlier. They were part of a prosperous network of villages, from Tillamook Bay south to Willapa Bay north, who traded along the coast and up the river to The Dalles. Theirs was a thriving society of commerce. They bartered with each other and with the foreign traders who regularly anchored ships in the lower Columbia to exchange goods with the villagers. Hence, the Clatsops and Nehalems found it curious that Lewis and Clark had not come to trade. They were not sure what to make of them.
The Americans who followed Lewis and Clark by land were different from the men who came by sea to conduct business. Those who came overland wanted more than bartered goods. They wanted territory. They had no intention of bargaining with those whose ancestors had lived on the land for thousands of years. Theirs was a culture of farming and enterprise. In their pursuit of land and natural resources, they saw the conquest of nature and local inhabitants as their manifest destiny.
The network of established coastal villages left behind by Lewis and Clark was already becoming decimated both by diseases from European and American visitors and by hostilities that occurred between the tribes and American settlers. Early settlers included American fur trappers who built a fort at the mouth of the Columbia River that became the modern city of Astoria. American and British trappers alike were meeting a huge demand for beaver pelts back home. The popularity of pelts rapidly led to the beaver’s decline and by mid-19th century the era of fur trapping was mostly over.
In the 1830s, American pioneer families were arriving. These settlers wanted the land for homesteads and towns and the natural resources for wealth. Those who settled in the lower Columbia region cut away the giant, old-growth trees and fished out the abundant runs of salmon within decades. The Native populations had dwindled during the encroachment of earlier British and Americans. The remaining Clatsops and Nehalems were forced by the settlers into makeshift, small villages out of the way of the American intruders.
In today’s Astoria, high atop Coxcomb Hill, a column pokes skyward. Tall and monumental, it honors the settlers’ bravery and triumph over hardship, their defeat of those in the path of destiny, and their occupation of lands that once were home to others. The monument is modeled after Emperor Trajan’s victory column on Quirinal Hill in Rome. Trajan built his column to honor his defeat of the Kingdom of Dacia, which extended Rome’s empire to the Black Sea, much as the American doctrine of manifest destiny extended its territory to the Pacific Ocean. Trajan’s column and the Astoria column are practically twins. The Roman defeat of Dacia was almost two-thousand years ago. The devastation of the Clatsop and Nehalem peoples is still fresh.
My father called me Little Bird. When I was barely five, playing alongside the creek that ran by our village, I watched the men who were not us walk off into the forest with the whale blubber and oil that my father had sold to them. They did not get the meat they wanted. They were not as skilled at bartering as the artful traders from the big ships. Soon after, others like them came to trap the beaver. They built a fort they called Astoria near the mouth of the great river. When I was older, my parents died in a skirmish that was part of a great conflict that I did not understand. No one ever told me what had happened, but I was taken to a convent in the valley over the mountains. Much later, my tribe found me and brought me home. My people were surprised by the new ways in which I dressed and had learned to cook, but I did not mind. I am still proud to say that I am Clatsop. My father was Clatsop. My mother was Nehalem. I married a Nehalem man, who is now dead. We lived together for many years in a village on the north shore of Tillamook Bay. Our children are now old or dead. Our grandchildren are more like those who are not us than they are like the people we once were. And I am old, almost one hundred years. The village I knew as a child is gone. The winds shifted after those who are not us wintered nearby. No one saw the storm approaching. Those who came in their wagons finally destroyed all that we were. They pushed us out of our homes and off our land, leaving us in poverty. Few of us remain. We live now as refugees, relocated to small villages, set aside out of their way. They do not want us here. But here we remain until we are no more. Our spirit lies upon the land.
Stretched along white sand shores of the Pacific Ocean just south of Tillamook Head, the town of Cannon Beach is bisected by Ecola Creek. Captain William Clark named the creek Ecola, which means whale in the Native language. The buildings of the former Cannon Beach grade school sit atop the grounds of the once spirited village where Clark had bartered for whale meat but left with only blubber and some rendered oil. He got the worst of the deal, but in the end those who followed his path stripped the Clatsops and Nehalems of everything. The Nehalems largely lived south of the headland and the Clatsops north. They intermarried and were culturally and economically entwined. Almost annihilated, their few heirs have formed the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes of Oregon, though still unrecognized and ignored by the United States government.
Entering the town of Cannon Beach from the north, you come face-to-face with its former school as you cross the bridge at Ecola Creek. The 1950s-era buildings, vacated in 2013, are dominated by an imposing Quonset-hut-styled gymnasium covered in cedar shingles, reminiscent of the old longhouses occupied by Nehalem and Clatsop families. Now owned by the town, a process is underway to repurpose the property as a community center that honors its Native heritage. The grounds include a great swath of green space identified by a canoe-shaped sign as NeCus’ Park, in recognition of the village that was once visited by Clark and company. NeCus’ was a vibrant community of about one hundred people living in several longhouses. In its day, there were many visitors to NeCus’ traveling the coastline on foot or by canoe. The village was a natural place to stop before confronting Tillamook Head by water or land. It was a welcoming place for all.
As the former school undergoes renovation as a community center, the common desire is to recognize the property for its Clatsop and Nehalem heritage. The Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes are deeply involved in this effort. The goal is to have these hallowed grounds faithfully tell their tribal story. A start was made in 2016 when the town and the tribes joined in erecting a ten-foot pole to commemorate the site as a welcoming place. The pole is a wooden carving representing a tribal member awaiting visitors along the creek. It represents NeCus’ Village as a place for all to gather and is a reminder to never forget the importance of place and its use for the common good.
America struggles with its bitter history of vanquishing native populations. As the young country expanded westward in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, it wiped out the people and cultures of indigenous nations who had been on the land for countless generations. NeCus’ Village was a small part of this conquest. The country now wrestles with knowing that it falls far short of the ideals inscribed in its founding documents to support the right of all people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness under the constitutional banner of equality and justice. There is momentum afoot in the American ethos to be a more humane nation. Corrections to its harsh past are being made nationally and locally. For the first time, a Native American, Deb Haaland, is now overseeing the lands that once were her ancestors’ as she fulfills her role as Secretary of the Interior.
Locally, Cannon Beach is reviving a Native heritage site once trashed by empire building. NeCus’ Village was a victim of a young nation’s expansionist doctrine. Awakening the spirit of NeCus’ can be a small step in helping America brighten its light as a beacon for the common good in a global world. The NeCus’ Park welcoming pole stands ready as a testament to a new time, watching for the moment to arrive when everyone on American soil can live freely and equally. Reviving the spirit of the welcoming pole and the place on which it stands is a small contribution to America’s larger effort. On these ancient grounds along a wandering creek at the base of a headland where a dead whale once floated ashore there is hope that some progress can be made toward reviving a spirit of goodwill that cares for the land and its people. A burgeoning American heritage of cultural diversity and respect for nature is sprouting. It is being nurtured in villages such as Cannon Beach where the spirit of NeCus’ lies upon the land.
What is happening in a small town on the upper left edge of Oregon to promote the history of a former Native village and its people will help make a difference in America’s struggle to mend its ways. Repairing a local rip in history helps mend the whole fabric. The repair will be but a patch on an ancient garment, but when visitors arrive at this site, as they once did years ago, they will be greeted in the spirit of kind consideration for who they are and what they offer. It will not matter where they came from or how they got here. All will join in celebration of a place that holds dear what it means to be welcomed. That is the spirit of NeCus’. That is the celebration of life for the common good. The ancient garment torn by conquest many years ago will never be the same, but it can be patched. The spirit of NeCus’ is inspiration for what is coming soon to this ancient place along a wandering creek where a little girl once ran up and down along its rambling waters.