There was a network of numerous trans-mountain trails, kept open by the neighboring peoples for the purpose of inter-tribal trade, ceremonialism, gambling, and visiting. Most of the east-west trans-Cascadian traffic across the Gifford Pinchot area either went south of Mt. Adams or was funneled through the Cispus, White, Cowlitz, Tieton and other passes. The two main routes were the Klickitat trail to the south, and the Cowlitz trail to the north.
The ways of the Cowlitz and the Yakamas differed greatly. They constituted two quite separate cultural areas due to greatly contrasting environments. This was one of the attractions of travel: seeing another way of life, visiting a foreign country.
A major trail existed between the Cowlitz and the Yakamas. This trail followed the Cowlitz River through the Mossyrock-Packwood area to the LaWisWis campground. Here it branched: one route went north to Naches Pass; another went between the forks of the Clear Fork uphill to summit Creek below the mouth of Carlton Creek, following it to Carlton pass or soda springs and Cowlitz Pass; another went to White Pass; and still another followed the Clear Fork south to Tieton Pass.
There were numerous other trails, and these routes were interconnected so as to form a vast network of trails.
It might be said that the present U.S. Highway 12 “generally” follows the corridor of the old trail, because the Indian avoided the valley. It kept to the hillsides and higher ground of the ridges where the woods were less dense. Only when the hillsides were very steep and rocky would the trail run along the edge of the river bottoms. The main trail followed the north side of the river upstream from Randle.
About nine miles from Randle lies Kitchen Rock where the people would stop and spend the night before starting their trek over the Cascades. Other camp sites were at Muddy Fork and LaWisWis.
Ohanepecosh was a great Indian campground used by those who traveled this trail. The trail followed down the Tieton into eastern Washington. This route attracted early Euro-American interest in the 19th century. Hudson Bay Company traders used the route.
James Longmire and William Packwood explored the area in 1854 utilizing this trail. The Northern Pacific Railroad considered routes through this area between 1878 and 1880. Some remnants of the old trial are still visible on hillsides in the upper Cowlitz area today.
To the south of the Lewis River there were meadows and plateaus which served as camping and grazing places on a trail the Lewis River Cowlitz maintained to the Klickitat country.
Originally significant only in an economic sense, it played a social and ethnic role when, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the “roving Klickitats” started moving into the Lower Columbia Valley.
Most of these Klickitats were traders who were eager to get to Vancouver, the Willamette Valley, and other places where the goods brought by the whites were available. They not only wanted the goods for themselves, but even more so for the purpose of trade. These goods brought great riches to these Indians.
The Klickitats had long had a modest reputation as a tribe of “traders,” and with the coming of the white man they became quite famous as middlemen. They bought goods at the trading posts of the fur companies and from itinerant supply ships, and carried their purchases to the tribes selling them at a handsome profit. Eastbound trade included clams, fish, roots, berries, shells and baskets. In exchange for these items: pipes, tobacco, ornaments, Indian hemp, dressed skins, bows and horses were traded westward.
The greatest inter-tribal trading place was at The Dalles, while other places were at the mouth of the Cowlitz River, and the mouth of the Lewis River.
While the “roving Klickitat” left their homeland, south of Mt. Adams, on a venture, their first object was to get to a trading post as quickly as possible. This normally meant Fort Vancouver, and it normally meant traveling down the Columbia River in their canoes to that post. However, conditions sometimes made it hazardous to travel on the river.
The alternative was to take the overland trail through the Lewis River Cowlitz territory. The Klickitat were owners of great numbers of horses, which they traded more often to whites than to other Indians. Consequently, as long as the overland trail was open and passable, and as long as they maintained peaceful relations with the Lewis River Cowlitz, they had a dependable throughway to the commercial centers of the Lower Columbia Valley.
In time this trail became unusable, partly because of the Lewis River Cowlitz unwillingness to continue to maintain a trail which served largely the purposes of another tribe.
The Klickitat were always in too much of a hurry to stop and make repairs; besides, it wasn’t “their trail.” It wasn’t in their country. Another reason was the increased river traffic on the Columbia. In any event, the trail ceased to be an inter-tribal one and served only limited purposes as a hunting trail. Highway 14 generally follows this trail.
Those who traveled north through the Chehalis and Puyallup country would begin with a canoe at the mouth of the Cowlitz and travel upstream, which is generally north, to the big bend in the Cowlitz River near the present town of Toledo at the place which was known as Cowlitz Landing.
They would then travel overland to Chehalis, Puyallup, or to the Olympia area where they might take a canoe to Island tribes or to Vancouver Island.
In 1813, Alexander Ross observed that the portage between the Cowlitz and the Chehalis was considerable, but means of transportation was abundant, horses being everywhere plentiful. The horse contributed to the development of the well-established trail network that ran along the Cowlitz River, segments of which were later incorporated into the military road system; which in turn developed into the principal land corridor from the Columbia River to the Puget Sound. Today’s I-5 follows the general corridor of this ancient trail. This was also referred to as the Cowlitz Trail.
Those who traveled to the coast would either travel by canoe down the Columbia, or travel overland by means of a fine network of trails through the Willapa Hills country.
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Next week: Cowlitz Tribal housing
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Roy I. Rochon Wilson was an elected leader of the Cowlitz Tribe for three decades and is the author of more than 30 books, including several histories of the Cowlitz Tribe. He is a retired ordained Methodist minister and current spiritual leader of the tribe. Wilson lives near Winlock.
