Communities and catastrophe: Tillamook response to the AD 1700 earthquake and tsunami, northern Oregon coast

Since Euro-American settlement, the southern Northwest Coast of North America has not experienced a large magnitude earthquake. An extensive body of geological evidence, however, suggests large earthquakes have repeatedly struck the region throughout the Holocene. The Cascadia Subduction Zone, an area of converging tectonic plates off the southern British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and northern California coasts, generates these earthquakes, causing subsidence of coastal lands and producing large tsunamis. The most recent earthquake and tsunami occurred in January, AD 1700. I examine the effects of these events on the Tillamook people and environments of Netarts and Nehalem bays, now located in Tillamook County, Oregon.;Archaeologists have suggested that the AD 1700 earthquake and tsunami caused destruction and abandonment of Native settlements, disturbed shellfish and fish populations upon which people relied, and altered coastal landscapes. Earthquakes and tsunamis have been portrayed as catastrophes for Native peoples. To assess Tillamook susceptibility to these natural hazards, I evaluate the ethnohistoric and ethnographic records of Netarts and Nehalem bays. I also analyze oral traditions of earthquakes and tsunamis from the southern Northwest Coast to assess Native perceptions, explanations, and responses to these hazards. This study is the first to involve archaeological fieldwork designed to assess the effects of Cascadia earthquakes and tsunamis on Native peoples. Sites occupied around AD 1700 on Netarts and Nehalem bays were investigated to refine their chronologies of occupation and gather information about subsistence and landscape changes. I also reexamined previously excavated materials from two sites on Netarts Bay.;I suggest that the AD 1700 earthquake and tsunami were not completely disastrous for Tillamook communities of Netarts and Nehalem bays. Radiocarbon dates provide little evidence for the sites' abandonment following the earthquake and tsunami. Faunal data from Netarts Bay suggest that small fish, mussels, and terrestrial mammals were more intensively used following the earthquake. At Nehalem Bay, people continued to rely heavily on salmon after AD 1700. People at both estuaries continued to occupy low elevation, hazardous areas following the earthquake and tsunami. Southern Northwest Coast peoples and coastal environments may have been more resilient to these hazards than previously portrayed.