The First People of This Shore
Near Cannon Beach, Oregon
Long before the town or its name, this shore belonged to the Clatsop, the Tillamook, and the Nehalem peoples. Their homelands overlapped right here around Cannon Beach and Seaside. The Clatsop lived north toward the Columbia River, and the Nehalem and Tillamook lived south past Tillamook Head.
They fished the surf and rivers, gathered from these tide pools, and traded with the Corps of Discovery in eighteen oh six. In August of eighteen fifty one, several of these tribes and bands met with Oregon's superintendent of Indian affairs at Tansy Point and signed treaties in good faith. Those treaties promised reservation land.
But when they were sent to Washington for approval, the Senate never ratified them. Left with no treaty and no reservation, and pushed off their land by settlers, many families scattered, joining relatives among the Siletz, the Grand Ronde, and other tribes to the south. The story is not over.
In May of two thousand twenty, the North Coast Land Conservancy transferred about eighteen acres near Seaside to the Clatsop Nehalem Confederated Tribes, the first land they had owned in nearly two centuries.
