Albany street sign: It’s not the only way to spell that name.
When Benton County moved some of its offices to the Kalapuya Building on Research Way last month, the spelling caught my eye. Why not Calapooia, which is how it’s spelled in Linn County?
As it turns out, the Benton commissioners decided early on, after buying the building in February 2020 and getting name suggestions from employees, to try for a way to commemorate the indigenous peoples of this valley. The county got in touch with the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. After a review of various possibilities, Kalapuya came out on top, and the board of commissioners adopted the name in August 2021.
“Kalapuya with this spelling was chosen to honor the original caretakers of the land,” JonnaVe Stokes of the county staff told me. “While there are various other spellings, including Calapooia, these spellings are generally used for the river.”
The variety of spellings occupied the late Wally Eakins as early as 60 years ago. He was one of my predecessors in writing editorials for the Albany Democrat-Herald, signing his pieces “wce.” He wrote about the inconsistency of Calapooia versus Calapooya on various maps in 1960 and ’61 and urged that something be done, if not by the United Nations then maybe by local counties.
For a long time this was a point of contention between the paper and students and teachers at Calapooya Junior High School. They complained that the paper, insisting on the i, was misspelling their school name. This changed in 1982, when Albany’s junior highs became middle schools and the school board agreed to substitute an i for the y in Calapooia.
Does the spelling matter? Not as far as history is concerned. Early sources give various versions for the indigenous peoples of the Willamette Valley, such as Calapoosie, Call-law-poh-yee-as, Kalapouyhas, and Collapoewah. Later they were sometimes referred to as members of the Kalapooian family.
In Linn County, it’s been the Calapooia River since the territorial county court settled on that spelling in 1850. The Oregon Geographic Names Board confirmed the spelling in 1962.
More recently, though, in Lane County and elsewhere, Kalapuya has come into use. And now in Benton County too.
You want to forget about the spelling and learn more about these people? I came across a YouTube lecture that Tom Connolly, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon, gave in 2018 on the history of “Kalapuya tribes.” I watched the whole thing and learned a lot. (hh)
Of the more than 20-50 spelling versions, Kalapuya is the most commonly used and ascribed by mostly non-indigenous white scholars and politicians.
And as evidenced by your article, several hundred years later mostly non-indigenous white people continue to debate what spelling version least offends.
And you identify the Kalapuyans as “indigenous”. Please brush up on your history.
The Kalapuyans were not the original inhabitants of the Willamette Valley. The Kalapuyan tribes’ were migrants from the south and forced out the valley’s earlier inhabitants.
Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992): 10.
Noah Lott,
‘The Kalapuyans were not the original inhabitants of the Willamette Valley. The Kalapuyan tribes’ were migrants from the south and forced out the valley’s earlier inhabitants.’
The Kalapuyan people are very much indigenous of the Willamette and Umpqua Valleys. Suggesting otherwise is disrespectful and disingenuous and dishonors their fourteen thousand year old history and legacy in this valley.
“The Kalapuyans originally occupied over a million acres in the Willamette and the Umpqua valleys. They have lived here for over 14,000 years and have endured enormous changes to their traditional life-ways during the past 200 years.”
Dr. David G. Lewis, Anthropologist and Tribal member of The Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde
https://ndnhistoryresearch.com/tribal-regions/kalapuyan-ethnohistory/
“Kalapuya people were dispossessed of their indigenous homeland by the United States government and forcibly removed to the Coast Reservation in Western Oregon.”
University of Oregon
https://library.uoregon.edu/honoring-native-peoples-and-lands
“The name Kalapuya (kǎlə poo´ yu), also appearing in the modern geographic spellings Calapooia (for a river in Linn Country) and Calapooya (for a mountain range and creek in Douglas County), goes back to a term of uncertain origin and significance. It was applied by Chinookans of the lower Columbia River to speakers of the three Indigenous languages that are today termed Kalapuyan: Northern Kalapuya, spoken on the west side of the Willamette River from modern Washington County south to about Monmouth; Central Kalapuya, spoken on the east side of the Willamette River from Champoeg south to Salem and on both sides of Willamette River south at least to Eugene; and Southern Kalapuya, spoken on Elk Creek and perhaps also Calapooya Creek, both tributaries of Umpqua River.”
Oregon Encyclopedia
https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/kalapuyan_peoples/
Thanks Hasso,
I always wondered about the different spellings. As a young kid 55 years ago I’d walk up and down the fields flanking the river, hunting ducks. One summer, took a canoe from Tangent to Bryant Park. Took all day as the river snakes a lot. Had to carry the canoe over the gravel bars!
A further explanation of the change of spelling for Calapooya Junior High, I was the Asst. Supt of the district at the time of the fire in the front of the school in 1975-76. WCE had nagged us for years about the spelling. When the sign at the school needed to be replaced due to fire damage, I contacted Wally and challenged him to cover the costs of the new sign. The DH did so, and he made sure the name was spelled “correctly.”
It’s funny how memory can play tricks on a person. That’s why I looked it up. According to the clippings, the change in spelling took place in 1982, when the school board chose the names for the middle schools at the time of the conversion from junior highs.
Perhaps the name change on the sign occurred per Mr. Stalick’s memory and the school board declined to look a gift horse in the mouth. Then they made the spelling change official when the building’s purpose also changed as the record Mr. Hering references reflects ?
OK. Memory is off a bit. I do know that the DH was asked to help pay for the “correct spelling,” and I’m certain they did. I believe WCE even wrote column about it.
Thanks, Bob. Here’s the column: https://www.newspapers.com/image/442302828/?terms=Hering%20Calapooya%20Calapooia&match=1
It appeared Jan. 14, 1982. Note who wrote it.
Thank you for this article Hasso.