Remembering The Historic Battle Led By A Hawaiian-Chinook Man High Above Hillsboro, Oregon

Old-timers recalled when roads were few and almost impassable. There was an old Indian trail that went below the Ritter place [on Bishop Road] and came out near the top of Cornelius Pass and was clearly marked. Going down the steep trail, the horses had cut regular steps in the hillside and these steps remained for years until the land was cleared and broken to the plow. The skeleton of a horse, in the hollow just below the Korn Place, was of interest to the children of the pioneers.

“In the late 1830s, William Tolmie, the chief trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company, invited a band of Klikatats to settle near Fort Vancouver, where they began a productive relationship that provided material goods and guns for themselves and agricultural labor and hunters for the company. The 345 Klikatats who were counted for the census in the vicinity of the fort in 1838 were wealthy (with 67 horses and 58 guns) and prolific (45 percent were children). The acquisition of guns had a significant impact on game populations. According to ethnologist George Gibbs (using information from Nez Perce leader Hal-hal-tlos-tsot, also known as Lawyer), overhunting by Klikatats led to the disappearance of mountain goats and sheep from the southern Washington Cascades and to declines in elk and deer populations.

“By 1839, under Quatley and other leaders, Klikatat bands were visiting and settling in the Willamette Valley, where the Kalapuya population had been diminished by disease. They were attracted to the rich hunting grounds, pastures, and camas fields. Klikatats forded their horses over the Columbia River between Wakanasese, a village on the north bank below Fort Vancouver, and Multnomah, a former village on Sauvie Island, and ascended the Tualatin Mountains on trails to the Tualatin and Willamette Valleys. These trails became known as Klickatat trails.

“For the next dozen and more years, Klikatats lived on the Willamette Valley prairies, and some traveled to hunting grounds as far south as the Umpqua, Coos, and Rogue Valleys. The hunters met little resistance from the people who remained in the valleys, though there were some incidents with Mary’s River Kalapuya, Umpqua, and Siuslaw. Stories from western Oregon tribes suggest that the Klikatat were swift and efficient mounted infantry who were feared for their ferocity and who attacked Native villages.”

Roving bands of young Klickitats came down from the Washington Mountains and crossed the Columbia River, coming up over the old slave trails. They had been raiding the Atfalati encampments and white settlements in the Willamette Valley. Returning with loot, they made camp in a hollow west of present-day Bishop Road (Helvetia0. Here, they were surprised by local settlers led by Charles Cowaniah, a large Hawaiian/Chinook man whose homestead was at the southern end of Logie Trail.

Charles Cowaniah had rallied local people to repel the invaders. Facing opposition for the first time, the Klickitat raiders got some of their own medicine for once. The surprise encounter ended up in a “battle” [really a brief skirmish] located between Logie Trail and the present-day Bishop Road. “Not liking it much, they sprang to their horses and galloped on up the trail toward the Columbia.”

At Whitehead Gap, just inside Washington County on Logie Trail, the raiders stopped to bury their loot. As the final raider was escaping over the crested ridge line, the settlers caught up. Cowaniah had his horse shot out from under him, ending the pursuit.

Homesteaders reported seeing the bones of Cowaniah’s horse in the blackberry brambles for many years. Source: Robert L. Benson

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Parts of the story do not connect. If Cowaniah’s horse was shot out from under him at Whitehead Gap, how did the bones of the horse end up in the blackberries off Bishop Road near the battlefield?

Another mystery . . . .