Archaeological Investigations Northwest, Inc

Findings: (-) County: Clackamas Township: 2 South Range: 1 East Sections: 8, 9, 10, and 17 USGS Quadrangle: Lake Oswego, Oreg. ,7.5’; 1961, revised 1984 Type: Reconnaissance and Literature Review Field Notes Location: AINW AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECONNAISSANCE SURVEY AND LITERATURE REVIEW FOR THE OSWEGO LAKE INTERCEPTOR SEWER REPLACEMENT PROJECT LAKE OSWEGO, CLACKAMAS COUNTY, OREGON Prepared for Anchor Environmental, L.L.C. Portland, Oregon March 19, 2008 Revised April 10, 2008 REPORT NO. 2102 Archaeological Investigations Northwest, Inc. 2632 SE 162 nd Ave. • Portland, OR • 97236 Phone 503 761-6605 • Fax 503 761-6620 AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECONNAISSANCE SURVEY AND LITERATURE REVIEW FOR THE OSWEGO LAKE INTERCEPTOR SEWER REPLACEMENT PROJECT LAKE OSWEGO, CLACKAMAS COUNTY, OREGON PROJECT SITE: Oswego Lake LOCATION: Sections 8, 9, 10, and 17, Township 2 South, Range 1 East, Willamette Meridian COUNTY: Clackamas CITY: Lake Oswego FINDINGS: A survey is recommended for the proposed sewer line in the northeastern and southwestern portions of Oswego Lake after the lake is drawn down and prior to trenching for the sewer line. In addition, monitoring is recommended along Foothills Road during the trenching and installation of the proposed sewer along and within the road. PREPARERS: Brian G. Buchanan, M.A., and John L. Fagan, Ph.D., R.P.A. INTRODUCTION This report describes the archaeological reconnaissance and literature review conducted by Archaeological Investigations Northwest, Inc. (AINW), for the proposed Oswego Lake Interceptor Sewer Replacement project in Lake Oswego, Oregon. The study was done for Anchor Environmental, L.L.C. The proposed project area lies within Oswego Lake, Lakewood Bay, Blue Heron Canal, and the Main Canal (otherwise known as the Oswego Canal or Tualatin Canal). A new sewer line connecting the southwest and northeastern corners of Oswego Lake will be trenched in the shallow water areas of the lake. In the deeper portions of the lake, the sewer line will consist of a floating High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) pipeline that will be tethered to bedrock with steel cables and anchors. The large majority of the trench work for the buried portions of the proposed interceptor sewer line will be constructed in the dry when the water in the lake is drawn down. ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING The project area is located in Clackamas County, in the northern end of the Willamette Valley in Sections 8, 9, 10, and 17, Township 2 South, Range 1 East, Willamette Meridian (Figure 1). The Willamette Valley physiographic province extends from the Columbia River in the north south to Cottage Grove, Oregon and is approximately 32 kilometers (km) (20 miles [mi]) wide and 161 km (100 mi) long (Aikens 1993:191). The Cascade Range and the Coastal Range border the valley to the east and west, respectively (Baldwin 1964; Orr et al. 1992). The valley is characterized by low relief terrain ranging in elevation from 15 to 137 meters (m) (50 to 450 feet [ft]) (Balster and Parsons 1968). Miocene flood basalts from the Columbia River Basalt Group are overlain by up to 500 m (1,650 ft) of Neogene and Quaternary fill (O’Connor et al. 2001; Orr et al. 1992). The fill has accumulated from the adjacent mountain ranges and from the Columbia River during the Missoula floods. A reduced energy flow through the Columbia River near Rainier, Oregon, resulted in back flooding into the Willamette Valley. The floods Reconnaissance Survey and Literature Review for the April 10, 2008 Oswego Lake Interceptor Sewer Replacement Project AINW Report No. 2102 -1- deposited the top 100 m (330 ft) of sediments at the end of the Pleistocene during the last 40 flood events (McDowell 1991; Orr and Orr 1996). The flood-derived soils of the Willamette Valley are known as the Willamette formation. Oswego Lake covers approximately 420 acres including West Bay and Lakewood Bay. The lake is approximately 5.6 km (3.5 mi) long, and is used as a reservoir as well as for recreation by the city of Lake Oswego (City of Lake Oswego 1994). Steep and rolling hills surround the lake on all sides, and the lake is fed by streams that flow out of these hills, as well as by the artificially constructed Main (Tualatin) Canal. This canal connects with the Tualatin River, situated approximately 2.6 km (1.6 mi) south of Oswego Lake. The Lake Oswego Corporation, which has owned the lake since 1942, privately maintains the lake for both recreational use and industrial functions. Oswego Lake was known by the Clackamas as Waluga (“wild swan”) Lake and was later named Sucker Lake by early Euroamerican settlers (McArthur 1992:644). The historic boundaries of Sucker (Oswego) Lake were much smaller than the current boundaries of Oswego Lake according to General Land Office (GLO) maps and other historic maps. The Lake Oswego Comprehensive Plan states that the lake levels rose due to the construction of the Oswego Canal (also known as the Tualatin Canal) as well as the construction of dams along the eastern end of the lake (City of Lake Oswego 1994). These features were built in the fourth quarter of the ninteenth century. The rising waters covered large stretches of land that may have been used during prehistoric and historic-period times and created Blue Heron Bay, West Bay, and Lakewood Bay. CULTURAL CONTEXT Native Peoples The project area lies within the traditional homelands of both the Clackamas and Tualatin Indians. The lake is situated along the traditional boundary between the homelands of the two groups. The Clackamas were a sub-grouping of the Chinook, who occupied the Columbia River valley from The Dalles to the Pacific Ocean and up the Willamette River as far as Willamette Falls. The Tualatin were the northernmost group of the Kalapuyans, who occupied the majority of the Willamette Valley south and southwest of the Chinook. All Chinookan groups spoke related languages and shared a similar culture, although each Chinookan village was politically independent. The Clackamas people occupied the Clackamas River drainage from the foothills of the Cascade Range down to the confluence of the Clackamas and Willamette rivers. The Clackamas spoke Kiksht, an Upper Chinookan language that was also spoken by Native groups in the Columbia River Gorge (Silverstein 1990). Chiefs who had no formal authority led Chinookan villages and they exercised their power through their wealth and personal skills. Their wealth allowed them to acquire more followers and slaves that in turn were used to acquire more wealth and influence. Chiefs usually had several wives, often the sisters and daughters of other chiefs, which provided a basis for political alliances and access to the resources of other villages (Hajda 1984:183-190; Silverstein 1990:541-542). The Clackamas first appear in Euroamerican historical records within the journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1805 to 1806. The Corps of Discovery never actually visited Willamette Falls or the Clackamas. However, from accounts of other native groups the Corps encountered, they reported that there were eleven Clackamas villages along both sides of the Clackamas River, beginning some distance above its mouth. These were not mapped within the journals, but the population was estimated at 1,800 people (Moulton 1990:486). Reconnaissance Survey and Literature Review for the April 10, 2008 Oswego Lake Interceptor Sewer Replacement Project AINW Report No. 2102 -2- The project area is also located within the traditional territory of the Tualatin or Atfalati people. The Tualatin were the northernmost representatives of the Kalapuyans, who occupied the Willamette Valley prior to Euroamerican settlement. At the time of contact with Euroamericans, the Tualatin occupied all of the Tualatin Valley and extended southward to the Yamhill River. In the early nineteenth century, the Tualatin were organized into about 20 villages, each of which was independent and had its own headman. Most of the villages were relatively small, probably numbering between 50 and 100 people. The villages were occupied primarily during the winter months, with reliance upon provisions gathered and stored during the summer. During the warm season, individual households and families moved to more short-term camps, where they lived in simple shelters or windbreaks (Zenk 1976, 1990). Lewis and Clark mention the “Cal-lah-po-e-wah nation” as living along the “Multnomah (Willamette) river” (Thwaites 1904-1905:6:118-119). It is likely that the explorers were referring to the groups that were later described as the Kalapuyans. “The first recorded meeting between Kalapuyans and Euroamericans took place in 1812 when fur traders from Astoria, lead by Donald McKenzie, visited the Willamette Valley” (Minor et al. 1982:71). From ethnographic data, Zenk (1976:142-155) has identified the approximate locations of most of the villages. Many of these settlements were in the western Tualatin Valley, around Wapato Lake (now drained but formally along the east side of Gaston) and in the present-day Forest Grove area. There are no known village sites within the vicinity of the current project area. Little else is known of the two groups due to the introduction of European diseases in the Northwest during the late 1700s and early 1800s (Aikens 1993). An epidemic of smallpox struck the lower Columbia River and Willamette Valley regions in the 1770s, with an estimated mortality rate of 30 to 35% (Boyd 1990). Subsequent epidemics of smallpox, malaria, measles, and other diseases in the early nineteenth century decimated Native populations, reducing them to 75 to 90% of their pre-contact numbers (Boyd 1990). Following the Donation Land Act of 1850, Native groups increasingly lost their land to Euroamerican settlers, and in 1855, Congress ratified treaties regarding Native groups residing within the Willamette Valley. The area ceded to the United States by these groups extended from the Calapooya Mountains (the divide between the Willamette and Umpqua river drainages) north to the Columbia River and from the Coast Range to the Cascade Range.

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