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The Broken Tribes
One of the effects of this earlier decimation of the people was a scattering of all of the Indians of the Lower Columbia River Valley. They fled from their homes and temporarily settled in any place that provided them with the means of livelihood or that promised exemption from the plague that afflicted them. Inthis way the Cathlamets, whose home was originally upon the Oregon side of the Columbia River, below Puget Island, after wanderings that are not recorded, finally settled upon the present site of Cathlamet and near the place of the ancient Indian town, and from this people the modern town derives its name.
The Wahkiakums, who lived in the ancient
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