Over a three-year period the Chinook population declined to one-tenth its former size, and riverbanks were strewn with the unburied dead. The depopulation here has been truly fearful, observed the physician John Kirk Townsend in his eyewitness account of the lower Columbia River in 1834. A
Over a span of three years, the Chinook population dramatically decreased to just ten percent of its original size. This alarming decline left the riverbanks littered with unburied corpses, highlighting the severe impact on the community. The situation was so dire that physician John Kirk Townsend described it as "truly fearful" in his observations of the lower Columbia River in 1834.
Townsend's account reflects the devastating consequences faced by the Chinook people during this period, emphasizing the profound loss of life and the challenges associated with such a drastic depopulation. This historical moment illustrates the broader struggles faced by indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest, as chronicled in Carlos A. Schwantes' interpretive history of the region.
