Lower Chinookan Disease and Demography

This chapter, included in Chinookan Peoples of the Lower Columbia, published by the University of Washington Press in 2013, explores disease and demography of the Lower Columbia River Chinookan peoples. In the first century of contact, the Lower Columbia Chinookans suffered more from the effects of introduced diseases and depopulation than almost any other Native peoples in the Northwest. Yet they survived, and their numbers are increasing. This chapter is a history of Lower Chinookan disease and population, from the aboriginal state, through the disruptive early contact years, up to the rebound and revitalization of the last century