"THE LAND SURROUNDING the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers—site of current-day Portland, Oregon, and its greater metropolitan area—was not that long ago one of the navels of continental civilization. The historical homeland of the Chinook, Kalapuya, Cowlitz, and Tualatin peoples, among many other tribes and bands, it hosted a densely populated, multilingual, intricately hierarchical society, engaged in large-scale industry (leaching and warehousing the food staple of acorns in mass quantities), agricultural terraforming (the controlled burning of grasslands and forests), and"