Artist rendering of the “Waikiki Artwork” at Cape Disappointment State Park featuring path, amphitheater, and cedar grove. December 23, 2004. Whitman College and Northwest Archives, Confluence Project Records, Box 16, Folder 8, Item 1.
“Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their ‘Corps of Discovery’ were conceptualized by President Thomas Jefferson. Setting off in 1804, they were charged with exploring the land west of the Mississippi River (...). [Lewis and Clark] imagined this land as uncharted - undiscovered in a sense - even though many other people (mostly Native and some non-Native) had traversed and inhabited it.”
”The real story [of Lewis and Clark’s expedition] is still a hero’s story told by, for, and about white Americans.”
Cape Disappointment is aptly named for Captain John Meares’ failure to find the entrance of the Columbia River in 1788. In 1805, Lewis and Clark arrived at Cape Disappointment, where the river spills into the ocean, and ended their journey West having failed to find a contiguous waterway across the continent. The region was first inhabited by the Chinook people, masters of fishing and canoe navigation. This area is essential to the habitat of 12 endangered species of salmon and steelhead, as well as many other indigenous plants and animals. These fish and flora are an integral part of the livelihood of the Chinook people, and today, face threats to their habitat as encroaching development and industry degrade the estuary.
The Confluence Project attempts to counteract the damages white settlers inflict on the land, and reinstate the voices of Native tribes who have been overshadowed by the myths of Lewis and Clark. It created a series of works that point visitors toward stewardship and restoration, and highlight the voices of the original stewards of the land, the Chinook. Maya Lin worked with park staff and contractors to re-plant indigenous trees and flora and installed a fish-scaling table made out of basalt and etched with the creation story from the Chinook tribe. The interior bay is connected to a site across a highway facing the Pacific Ocean where a walkway of crushed oyster shells leads past an open-air amphitheater to the listening circle, a small grove of cedar driftwood columns surrounding the trunk of a dead elm that would have been alive when the Corps of Discovery crew arrived at the site. On the pathway is a Chinook praise song. The planks of another pathway are etched with an index from William Clark’s journals documenting the different species encountered at the site. To offset what they took, Confluence practiced mindful extraction, giving back to the land by revegetating, and reinforcing the shorelines, in an effort to renew and uphold a balance.
Photograph of Maya Lin carving on a basalt column. Date unknown. Whitman College and Northwest Archives, Confluence Project Records, Box 4, Folder 12, Item 10.
Color photocopy of basalt column used for the Fish Scaling Table at Cape Disappointment State Park. Date unknown. Whitman College and Northwest Archives, Confluence Project Records, Box 4, Folder 12, Item 8.