If you don’t live in Portland Oregon the term “Multnomah” may be unfamiliar. It’s the name of the county where Portland is located. Many local agencies, businesses and even natural landmarks include “Multnomah” in their name.
Where does the word come from?
The Multnomahs are an indigenous people who lived for thousands of years in this area that we now call Portland. Sauvie Island was particularly known as home to the Multnomah people. The Multnomahs are a Chinookan people, some of whom keep carved figures that represent their guardian spirits (see owl sculpture above).
For thousands of years before Euro Americans arrived in the Pacific Northwest, the Multnomah Indians lived on Sauvie Island on the lower Columbia River. By the mid-1830s, malaria and smallpox had decimated their population.
- Oregon History Project | read full article here
The Multnomah people are one of more than 30 tribes identified as part of the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde Community of Oregon. In the early 1800’s epidemics of smallpox and malaria wiped out almost all of the indigenous peoples of this Portland Basin area. In 1856 the U.S. government forced the remaining survivors, people from more than 30 tribes, to leave their homelands and live in the Grande Ronde Reservation.
Learn more about this history:
Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde: https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/confederated_tribes_of_grand_ronde/#.YaGMhvHMLIF
Portland Basin Chinookan Villages: https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/wappato_valley_villages/#.YaGGX_HMLIE
The name “Multnomah” is from the Chinookan word máɬnumax̣ (also nímaɬnumax̣) ‘those toward water’ (Oregon encyclopedia).
Our dojo, Multnomah Aikikai, is certainly located “toward the water.” Our building is almost a stone’s throw away from the Willamette River.
Who lived along this river?
There is evidence of human presence in the Willamette Valley as long as 10,000 years ago, several thousand years after the close of the Ice Age, when Asiatics from what is now Siberia crossed over an Alaskan land bridge into North America. Most of the Willamette Valley Native American inhabitants were Kalapuyans – a collection of bands that shared the same dialect.
November is Native American Heritage Month, and November 26 is Native American Heritage Day. Read the October 2021 proclamation by President Biden here. If you would like to learn more about local indigenous organizations and support their current initiatives here are just two websites where you can start your journey:
Native American Youth and Family Center:
https://nayapdx.org/support-us/ways-to-give/
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon:
This map is from https://native-land.ca/maps/territories/multnomah/
Article content compiled from multiple sources (cited within) by Suzane Van Amburgh, Chief Instructor, Multnomah Aikikai, Portland OR 97239