2. Houses
Chinook Indian's lived in plank houses built
by thin pieces of red cedar wood. They did a
lot of projects or crafts built of wood because
they were very good at wood carving. At
least 50 people lived in a house. They had
the largest houses of any native tribe in
North America.
3. Food
Chinook indians eat a lot of different
foods because they lived next to the
ocean and wooded areas. They ate
things including fish, deer, fruit, nuts, elk,
bears, roots and geese. They loved
salmon especially. It was good that they
liked fish because they lived in Oregon
& Washington right next to the ocean so
they eat fish and under water animals.
4. Clothes
Chinook indians made a lot of clothes
out of cedar wood. I thought that
personally was a really cool fact. They
wove it into fabrics and cloth. They
made pants, shirts, capes, and hats.
They just look like regular clothing. You
cant tell at all that they are made out of
wood!
5. Hunting
Like we mentioned earlier, Chinooks did
a lot of fishing. They ate fish at least
once a day. Their favorite fish was
salmon. The areas where the Chinooks
lived were full of fish. They also hunted
deer, elk, bear, duck, and geese.
Chinooks hunted multiple marine
mammals too. They had food every year
24/7 because of the wide variety of the
Chinooks diet.
6. Ritual Ceremonies
The Chinook ceremonies are called
potlatches. Tribe Chiefs would give
away foods and gifts to show that they
were kind and helpful people. They
would dance wearing headdresses and
masks.
7. Arts and Crafts
Chinook indians were great wood
carvers. This included canoes, vast
houses, & totem poles. They also loved
making masks for ceremonies. Chiefs of
tribes wore special headdresses instead
of the masks worn by the rest of the
clan.
8. Interesting Facts
Sometimes, Chinooks made totem poles
to make fun of someone.
For cooking, they would drop rocks into
a basket of boiling water, put the lid on
then put the food on top of the basket.
They used different animal shaped
rattles for healing sick people.
The Chinook were discovered first by
Lewis & Clark.
9. Thank you
Thank you for watching our presentation
on Chinook Indians. We hope you
learned a lot. Or just something that you
did not already know. We were even
surprised with facts like Lewis & Clark
discovered our clan first and that they
wove cedar bark into their clothing!
Sincerely,
Kaylee & Lauren
