Alsea

The Alsea are a Native American people of the central Oregon coast, whose villages lined the Alsea River and the shores of Alsea Bay; their neighbours the Yaquina shared their speech and, in origin tradition, belonged to one people. The name Alsea was given by their Tillamook and Coos neighbours.

Their language, Alsea or Yakonan, was close to Yaquina; the two may be dialects of one tongue. It is usually placed in the Coast Oregon Penutian group, though some linguists treat it as an isolate. An ethnographic estimate put Yakonan speakers at about six thousand in 1780.

The Alsea hunted seals and sea lions, took salmon in the estuaries and dug camas roots; they wove baskets and grass raincoats and shaped infants' foreheads by gentle pressure in the cradleboard. Shamans worked to secure good salmon runs, and the dead lay in canoes on points jutting into the estuaries.