History
The various tribal groups of the Kalapuya people were historically hunter-gatherers. They made use of obsidian obtained from the volcanic ranges to the east to fashion sharp and effective projectile points, including arrowheads and spear tips.
Prior to contact with white explorers, traders, and missionaries, the Kalapuya population is estimated to have stood between 4,000 and 20,000. The introduction of the diseases of the whites were catastrophic to the Kalapuya people. Pre-contact epidemics of unknown quantity and effect and the smallpox epidemic that raged through the Pacific Northwest in 1782-83 may have caused the death of half the bands' population. Malaria likewise swept the region between 1830 and 1833. It is estimated that as many as ninety percent of the Kalapuya population died during this period. The Kalapuya were greatly weakened by the time whites began to show up in numbers in the Willamette Valley in the middle of the nineteenth century. Explorers stated that villages were found in the Willamette Valley devoid of inhabitants, standing as testament the incredible devastation by diseases.
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