The Vancouver, Washington, area was
inhabited by a variety of Native American tribes, most recently the Chinook and
Klickitat nations, with permanent settlements of timber longhouses. The Chinookan
and Klickitat names for the area were reportedly Skit-so-to-ho and Ala-si-kas,
respectively, meaning "land of the mud-turtles." First European
contact was in 1775, with approximately half of the indigenous population dead
from smallpox before the Lewis and Clark expedition camped in the area in 1806.
Within another fifty years, other actions and diseases such as measles, malaria
and influenza had
