Tillamook

The Tillamook lived on the forested coast south of the Columbia, around bays and rivers opening onto the Pacific. These Salish-speaking communities traded with their neighbors and built canoes admired by early visitors. Salmon and other coastal foods sustained their villages, while a stranded whale could bring an exceptional abundance of meat and oil. Among their neighbors were the Nehalem and Clatsop peoples.

In 1788 Robert Gray reached Tillamook Bay aboard the #italic Lady Washington#!. Eighteen years later William Clark led a party to NeCus', a northern Tillamook village near a beached whale. The villagers had already stripped the carcass and were rendering its oil; Clark's account suggests that some of the whale products were intended for exchange with communities farther inland.