Molalla

The Molalla are the mountain people of Oregon's Western Cascades, their territory running from Mount Hood and the Molalla River to the headwaters of the Rogue. They used controlled fire to open clearings for food plants. Their name comes from the Clackamas Chinook word muláliš, while the Klamath knew them as the kúikni.

Three divisions are recorded: the Northern, Upper Santiam and Southern Molalla, each with its own dialect of Molalla, a Plateau Penutian tongue. Winter villages were semisubterranean plank houses of cedar and hemlock holding a single extended family, and summer camps moved after seasonal foods. Leadership rested with local headmen called yaʔqánt.

Tenino informants told later ethnographers that in the early 1800s their warriors had driven a Molalla winter band out of Tygh Valley on the Deschutes, a tradition other linguists later disputed.