Abstract

Ethnohistoric accounts describe Chinookan people storing valuables in the spaces beneath the sleeping platforms in their houses. Paul Kane's painting of the interior of a Chinookan house shows such spaces also being used for sleeping. Excavations of a relatively large number of precontact and contact era Chinookan houses along the Lower Columbia River reveal that, in addition to the space between the platform and the floor, extensive subfloor storage pits existed beneath the sleeping platforms. In some structures, the pits are located immediately below the sleeping platforms, while in others, they merge into a substantial cellar. There is also variation within large, multi-room structures as to whether all rooms have these features. The scale of subfloor features may vary with vulnerability to flooding. Intra-house variation in these features, however, may reflect the status of the household members. Contents of these features varies markedly from stored valuables to fully articulated wapiti limbs.