Ko Kwel

Ko Kwel belongs to the Coquille River country of southwestern Oregon, where coastal villages and inland communities were connected by water and forest paths. Camas bulbs, acorns and berries complemented clams, mussels and other foods gathered along the shore. Canoe travel connected these different harvesting places, making the river and coastal waters central to movement as well as food supplies.

In October 1826, Hudson's Bay Company trader Alexander Roderick McLeod travelled up the Coquille by canoe and traded with the Na-so-mah people. His journal recorded a transaction involving three sea otter pelts, twenty-seven beaver pelts and three river otter pelts. The exchange linked local hunting and bargaining with the expanding commercial demand for northwestern furs. It took place decades before the most destructive settler removals, when Indigenous communities still controlled the local knowledge and relationships necessary for outsiders to travel through their river country.