The myth of 19th century America was the claim that Western lands were “empty” or occupied by uncivilized, savage peoples. In reality, Chinook and other Native Americans lived for thousands of years in Southwest Washington, their communities thriving long before white settlers arrived. A 1982 Vancouver Lake study dates one local encampment to 6,000 or more years ago.

As settlers arrived, staking claims, they summoned the U.S. Army in 1849 to protect their farms, setting the stage for the continued destruction of this land’s first inhabitants. Land ownership was incomprehensible to Native people.

The British claimed land from California to British Columbia, but its Hudson’s Bay Company only occupied the space needed for trading posts, sawmills and farms, which the Native Americans saw as

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