The Chinook were a group of Native American tribes that lived in what is now the northwestern United States. These tribes, including the Clackama, the Clatsop, the Wasco, and the Wishram, lived on the shores of the Columbia River, made their livelihood by fishing, and spoke a group of very closely related languages - the Chinook language group. Chinook jargon, a pidgin version of the Chinook languages, served as a lingua franca for the whole Northwest dating back to precolumbian times. The Chinook tribes were widely known both before and after the Europeans arrived for their high quality craft goods, their potlatch gift-giving ceremonies, and their practice of flattening babies' foreheads to indicate social status. The Chinook people were all but wiped out in 1829, when a smallpox epidemic destroyed about 80% of the population. The survivors could not endure on their own, and soon assimilated into other tribes or European culture.