"Our ancestors began at the river's source... the tribes gathered by the river... we followed the river and carried on our inheritance!... Rivers great and small... people great and small... and in the end, we reached the sea!..."
In the Clatsop village by the river, the tribe's old grandmother, River Water, was singing before the fire pit at the center of the tribe. This was a very small tribe, called the Marsh Tribe; even counting all the old and young gathered around the fire pit, there were only a little over a hundred people. On the other side, the armored warriors and Sailors of the exploration fleet numbered almost twice as many.
The appearance of the exploration Longships brought tremendous shock and terror to this small tribe that had migrated down from upriver. Especially when one or two hundred armored warriors carrying bows came ashore "with ill intent" and "surrounded" the Marsh Tribe, fear appeared on the faces of many tribespeople.
The tribe's old grandmother, River Water, stepped forward trembling. She personally lit the tribe's bonfire to welcome this tribal army that had come from the sea. The Clatsop were a matrilineal clan who had migrated along the river; one tribe was one large family. And the tribe's old grandmother was also the tribe's chief.
As the tribe's chief, old grandmother River Water had led the Marsh Tribe more than two hundred li from the upper reaches of the Columbia River to the estuary downstream, and it had only been a little over two years.
Over the past several decades, in the upper Willamette Valley region, the later Portland area, the "powerful" Kalapuya were gradually rising, expanding and growing stronger step by step. They occupied the warm river valleys where crops could be planted, annexing many small tribes of one