Middle Village

This sculpture of a Chinookan canoe is located at the site of Middle Camp, a Chinookan trading place.

NPS

Clark recorded everyone’s votes on where to spend the winter of 1805–1806 at the site of a Chinook village, later known as “Middle Village.”

Middle Village was one of many Chinook villages on the north side of the Columbia River. In late 1805, there were about thirty-six houses here.

Chinookan communities controlled trade along the Columbia River, and this village was a major Chinook trade center. People living here fished for sturgeon and traded with Europeans who came into the Columbia River on large, ocean-going ships.

No one was here in November 1805 when Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and crew visited it. Chinookan people only lived in this village in the summertime, when the weather was better and when European ships came to the river to trade.

Everyone else knew what Lewis and Clark were still learning: winter was a cold and wet time to be at the mouth of the Columbia River.