Mossback’s Northwest: Human bones illuminate Columbia River history

Let’s fast-forward to what we know. Native peoples claimed K-man as an ancestor, and they were right. In 2017 DNA testing revealed that the remains of the Ancient One were some 8,500 years old, and he had a direct ancestral connection to Indigenous people of the Columbia, specifically to the United Tribes of the Colville, who had supplied DNA samples for comparison. His human remains are thought to be among the oldest yet found in North America. He has since been buried in a secret location.

It is apt that his bones would be found along the Columbia. The river has been a major artery, a factor in both populating — and de-populating — the region. His antiquity speaks to the river’s long importance to trade and settlement. Along its banks were villages, gathering places and trade connections that linked tribes throughout western North America. A major trade center at Celilo Falls on the lower Columbia was flooded by a dam project in the 20th century, but before that it was a meeting place for thousands of people, Columbia Plateau nations and traders. It was no coincidence it was a source of abundant salmon. Trade was a lifeline. Dried fish, shells, whale bone and camas were commodities that traveled east while horses, buffalo robes and wapato flowed west. Fur trader Alexander Ross in 1811 described the Native gathering he saw as forming “the great emporium or mart of the Columbia.” By the late 18th century, Western trade impacted the region. Guns, blankets, glass beads and disease made their mark on Indigenous lifeways.

If Columbia peoples had flourished since time immemorial along the river, diseases brought by Euro-Americans — smallpox, measles, typhoid, influenza — swept through. With colonial trade came pestilence. Starting in the late 1770s, disease from outsiders swept the Northwest coast and traveled up and down the river. It radically reduced flourishing populations. In the 1830s and 1840s a malarial disease is believed to have killed 90% of the Columbia River’s remaining Indigenous population.

The Columbia acted as a gateway for newcomers. The fur trade employed English, French Canadian, Scottish, Iroquois, Metis, Hawaiian and mixed-race employees in exploring, trapping and establishing forts and trading posts. Shipwrecked Spaniards, Mexicans, Filipinos, Black sailors and Asian fishermen washed up on the coast, survivors sometimes blending into local tribes.