Tansy Point Indian Village Bombarded by English Schooner
author: Calpine Resistance
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Proposed LNG site smack dab on Historical Indian Site Could it be designated Historical or reclaimed by Clatsop/Chinook Tribes? Does anyone know?
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A little more about the Tansy Point Indians
It does not pay to be peaceful citizens and mind your own business. (see the story)
Celiast, whose christian name is Helen, is the daughter of Coboway (incorrectly written Commowool by Bancroft), and dates her birth in the year 1804. Her father was the chief of the Clatsops, a tribe whose boundaries extended from the mouth of the Columbia river southward to Ecahni Mountain (Carni), eastward thence to Swallalahost or Saddle Mountain, and thence by Young's river back to the Columbia. The Clatsops were a quite and peaceable people, having the same language as the more numerous tribe of the Chinooks. They were possessed of many arts and accomplishments, which, although of a different order from our own, betrayed no less the inventive genius and predominance of the human mind. Their houses, often sixty feet in length, and made of split cedar planks sometimes twenty feet long and three feet wide, the canoes hollowed from cedar trees by means of chisels and mallets, and steamed and strained to a greater width by means of a fire kindled in the hollow after the process of chipping out was nearly completed; the salmon seines made of wild flax threaded and twisted into chords; and lastly the clothing made of the skins of wild animals and of frizzled cedar bark, with elaborate ornamentations of shells, pebbles, quills, feathers, and later of beads, - were all specimens of industry, and o f ingenuity which would tax the skill and patience of the European. For some years before the birth of Celiast, the Clatsop Indians had carried on a trade with the passing ships fro strap and scrap iron, of which they made their chisels and knives and for beads. The traders of Astoria still later supplied them with cloths, and to some extend with firearms.
Coboway, chief of this people, held his title as did the chiefs of the most of the native races, - by virtue of his intelligence and activity. He was a faithful and honest man, of much service to Lewis and Clarke, and was intrusted by them with the certificate announcing their arrival and wintering at the mouth of the Columbia; and this document, as by request the chief delivered to the captain of the first vessel entering the harbor. Among other duties of the Indian chief was the delivering of the stories, legends and beliefs of the tribe to his successors; and from her father the young Indian girl learned all the myths of Ecahni, Tallapus and Old Thunder with the faiths and maxims of the tribe delivered as they were in rhythmic language with vivid narratives. From the regular and clearly carved features, the lofty brow and large expressive eyes of this now venerable woman of more than eighty years, we may suppose that in her youth she was of unusual beauty. Soon after reaching womanhood, in accordance with the custom of the Hudson's Bay Company, she was sought and married by one of the employés of the organization, a Frenchman by the name of Porier, the baker at Fort George or Astoria. She bore him three children, and in the removal to Vancouver in 1824 accompanied him thither.
It was during her residence at the latter point that there occurred an event which must have been exceedingly distressing to her feelings. This was the bombardment of the Indian village at Tansy Point by a British schooner. The sanguinary affair was brought about as a result of the wreck of the bark William and Ann at the Columbia bar, and a difficulty in obtaining the wreckage. This was one of the few occasions upon which McLoughlin showed severity; and his course has been justified on the ground that the Indians had murdered the crews of the vessel. This charge has, however, ever been earnestly denied by the remnants of the Clatsop Indians; and it seems hardly just to let it stand without their protest and explanation. By their account, and indeed by all authentic records, the William and Ann, in company with the American schooner Convoy, Captain Thompson, sought to enter the river late in the day, in the month of February or early in March (the month of smelt). The schooner was in the lead, and passed safely into Baker's Bay; but the bark missed the channel and struck on the middle sands, holding fast. A boat from the schooner, as appears from the accounts of a sailor of the Convoy, attempted to go to the relief of the unfortunate crew; but the wind rising brought them into peril, and compelled them to return without reaching the bark. During the night the William and Ann went to pieces; and, as the Indians said, the crew were drowned. The Convoy went up the river bearing the tidings; and in due time a boat party came from Vancouver to investigate the wreck. They found no trace of the crew; but much of the cargo was in possession of the Indians. among other effects of the ship was a boat with the oars, found in the hands of a sub-chief of the Clatsops. This Indian declared that he found it floating in Young Bay. He moreover incited the others, and confirmed them in their intention to retain the wreckage which they had gathered, all but one of the Indians refusing to give up any of the property. Upon pressure and threats from the English, the saucy chief produced a small, decrepit, bail dipper, and said that he would send it (with his respects) to the chief factor. This ultimatum carried back to Vancouver brought as a response an armed schooner, which shelled the village, and from which an assault was made; and the recalcitrant chief, with two of his men, was killed. The village was also ransacked for the lost goods, and generally pillaged. The bombardment, which occurred, not upon the loss of the crew, but two months later upon the refusal of the Indians to give up the plunder, seems to have had an adequate cause, not in the belief of the English that the crew had been murdered, but that it was dangerous to allow any Indians to hold their old view that they might call their own anything that they found or that came from the ocean; but that the property of the English was everywhere sacred, and must be given up on demand.
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add a comment on this article
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If you have to ask if someone of that clan or if the Clatsops or if the Chinook can reclaim it or should reclaim it then you obviously haven't been interested enough in the Indian's problems or concerns for the last quarter of a century and using them now that YOU are loosing YOUR land (or its value or your way of life) is disgusting. Do you even know if the village was located at the same site where LNG terminals are proposing to be? Do you even know what a Clatsop villiage looked like or consisted of? Of course not, nor do you care.
This is just so pathetic. Clatsop County hasn't cared for its indigenous people in the least until their comfortable middle class way of life is threatened and then suddenly its, "Oh, don't the Indians have a right to this land before an LNG company does?" Yeah, when it was Aunt Fanny's back yard then the Indians sure weren't invited to see if they have a claim to it! If the Indians started the process of fighting for it and tied the land up in courts for years until the LNG "pirates" went away, you all would be cheering for the Indians to lose and let the land revert, once again, back to the "people" to be rented out by the government until someone you didn't want tried to rent it and then you could just whip out the Indian card.
YOU ARE PATHETIC! Trying to play on the Clatsop's despair is about as low as you can get. GO PIRATES, put in the LNGs.
If a Clatsop canoe paddle was found in your backyard would you give up your home? Are you willing to allow it to be excavated to look for a tribal or clan site? ALL of the land belonged to the Clatsops, and other tribes of the Chinook Nation for that matter, from Tillamook to The Dalles. ALL OF IT, not just the pieces YOU don't want or don't want to fall into "undesirable" hands, (weren't Indians once considered "undesirable"?). Are you willing to give it all up, or are you just helping the Indians to another public screwing?