History Minutes: Tualatin

   Costume of a Callapuya Indian // OrHi 104921

This Sesquicentennial History Minute is from the Oregon Encyclopedia, a state-wide project supported by Portland State University, Oregon Historical Society, and Oregon Council of Teachers of English, with generous support from the Oregon Cultural Trust.  This History Minute is written by Henry Zenk.

Tualatin was the name of a collection of independent villages whose residents spoke a dialect of Northern Kalapuya.  They are also known as Atfalati (at-fah-laht-ee).

Sixteen known Tualatin villages stretched across the Tualatin Plains (modern-day Beaverton, Hillsboro, Mountaindale, Forest Grove), the Wapato Valley (Gaston), and the Chehalem and North Yamhill Valleys (Newberg, Carlton, Yamhill).  Eight villages were clustered around a former marshy lake at Gaston noted for its abundance of wapato, the tubers of which were an important Native staple food.

Tualatins lived half the year in plank houses—semi-excavated winter houses, built of cedar-bark slabs or cedar planks lashed to a rectangular framework.  They spent the drier part of the year in pursuit of the seeds, roots, berries, fish, and game.  These stored provisions permitted time during the winter months for storytelling and religious ceremonialism, as well as tasks such as basket weaving. 

Tualatin religion revolved around the individuals' relationship with one or more helpful spirits, first sought on pre-adolescent quests and expressed in later life through songs performed at winter spirit-dances.  Individuals with particularly strong spirits might become shamans, called on to treat serious illnesses.

Tualatins suffered greatly from introduced diseases.  Only about sixty-five still survived in 1856, when the tribe was removed to Grand Ronde Reservation, some sixty miles southwest of their original homeland.