Multnomah Channel - Name and History

Name and History

The channel had a variety of names before the United States Board on Geographic Names (USBGN) agreed to Multnomah Channel in 1913. In 1792, William Robert Broughton was the first European explorer to discover the channel. He named it Calls River, probably after the English engineer Sir John Call. The early 19th century explorers Lewis and Clark called it Wappato Inlet after Wappato Island, the name they used for Sauvie Island. In the 1840s, nautical surveyor Charles Wilkes referred to the channel as Warrior Branch because it met the Columbia River at Warrior Point, on the northern tip of Sauvie Island. Before its renaming by the USBGN, the channel had become known as Willamette Slough.

Multnomah, used by Lewis and Clark to refer to the main stem of the Willamette, is what the Chinook people living on Sauvie Island in the early 19th century called themselves. Several Chinook villages with longhouses occupied sites along the channel before the explorers' arrival. Sauvie Island and its mild climate were suited to wapato, a root vegetable, and provided access to fish and game. A large village, one of several on the island, was situated near its southeastern tip, where the channel begins. Another village, with 28 houses and more than 1,000 residents, was sited along the west shore of Scappoose Bay near the downstream end of the channel.