Location: Oregon Length: 15 min
Two hundred years earlier than the Rivergate Industrial District in northwest Portland, Oregon, native Chinookan people of the lower Columbia River lived in huge plank houses at a settlement we now call the St. Johns Site. The site and much of the rich wetlands that supplied the people with a bounteous food supply now are buried beneath thick fill and urban facilities. This video describes this now vanished lifeway and takes you inside an archaeological excavation that is shedding new light on the complex society of the first Portlanders.
Copyright 2004 by Archaeological Legacy Institute
Videography, writing, production, direction, and 3D animation by Guy Prouty, Ph.D.
Web links:
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs
The Virtual Meier Site (Cameron Smith)