Cowlitz Indian Tribe
A nation today
Background
A history the Tribe publishes divides the Cowlitz into four groupings, and each has its own name: the Upper Cowlitz, true mountain dwellers of the upper meadows and prairies; the Lower Cowlitz, Salish in speech and custom, known for stylized canoes and basket weaving and for river weirs that took lamprey and sturgeon; the Kwalhiokwa or Mountain Cowlitz of the Willapa hills, an Athapaskan-speaking people who may have set up villages as far west as Raymond; and the Lewis River Cowlitz, close to the mouth. That page also records that the Upper Cowlitz people became known as Taidnapaum through intermarriage with tribal people east of the Cascades, that a pandemic in the 1830s wiped out about 98 percent of the Cowlitz population, that the Tribe reorganized in 1912, and that it calls itself the Forever People, Cowlitz meaning Seekers of the Medicine Spirit. Recognition was refused by President Calvin Coolidge in 1923 and granted in 2000, then upheld after two years in appeals. In the Cascade country the Tribe's own place-name work gives the river at the southeast corner of Mount Rainier National Park as áwxanapayk-ash in Taytnapam Upper Cowlitz, meaning standing at the edge-place, for the cliff edges of the bedrock gorge the river runs through. Mount Rainier National Park records that all but the Cowlitz among the six tribes it works with trace their modern identity to one or more of three treaties signed in 1854 and 1855, and that the Upper Cowlitz, or Taidnapam, never signed a treaty but kept traditional ties to landscapes that later became part of the park.
Visit and learn
Cowlitz Indian Tribe's own site
Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.
Parks on its homelands
Mount Rainier National ParkThe Cowlitz are the one associated tribe at Mount Rainier whose modern identity does not trace to the 1854 and 1855 treaties, because the Upper Cowlitz, or Taidnapam, never signed one. Even without a treaty, the Upper Cowlitz kept traditional ties to landscapes that later became part of the park. Source
Programs
Natural Resources Department
The department says the Cowlitz have inhabited the Lower Columbia River Basin since time immemorial, and that its mission is to protect, conserve, restore and promote culturally relevant species and landscapes integral to the Tribe's identity. It runs five core programs: Fish Distribution, Lands Maintenance, Habitat Restoration and Conservation, Wildlife, and Administration and Policy. The Tribe's site lists offices in Ridgefield and Longview, Washington, and its Natural Resources Department phone number as 360.353.9425.
Language Revitalization Program
The program describes its work as re-awakening languages that have been resting, and names Cowlitz Coast Salish as the first language it is reviving. The Tribe's Cultural Resources Department, which runs it, also holds a Tribal Historic Preservation Office and a carving program, and it has published a Cowlitz Coast Salish vocabulary builder app and a language revitalization partnership with TLC. Its address is 1055 9th Avenue in Longview, Washington.
Sources
- https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-01-30/html/2026-01899.htm
- https://www.cowlitz.org/our-story
- https://www.cowlitz.org/ohanapecosh-campsite
- https://www.nps.gov/mora/learn/historyculture/archaeology.htm
Checked September 2026.