Wishram-Wasco Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

Reaching a Large Village After Warm March Across Sandy Plains

Mon, 04 May 2026 16:46:04 +0000

and Strayed away last night we delayed to hunt for him & made
two pack Saddles, we could not find our lost horse, about 10
AM. [we] Set out proced on through high plains and banks of
Sand along the river, the day warm, towards evening we arived
at a large village at the mouth of a creek4 where we Camped our
canoes came up. we purchased 4 dogs and a considerable quan-
tity of Chappalell &C. the day warm, these Savages have lately
mooved here & have a great number of horses, our horses are
troublesome as the most of them are Studs, but the feed is good
[and] the prarie covred with flowrs the natives are numerous at
this place, they had a dance at our fire this evening, nearly the
Same manner & way as those on the Missourie. we played the
fiddle and danced &C. Several of the flat heads continue on with
us & assist us as much as lyes in their power.
1 The Deschutes River, the largest tributary of the Columbia between the
Willamette and the Snake. In its lower course it forms the boundary between
Wasco and Sherman counties, Ore.
2 But not until Captain Lewis had formed the resolution of burning the In-
dians’ lodges by way of punishment for their misconduct. Fortunately it
proved unnecessary to carry this resolution into effect.
3 In Klickitat County, Wash., about twelve miles above the mouth of the
Deschutes, and a little below John Day River.
* Rock Creek, in Klickitat County, Wash.
346 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS [April 24

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Clark Crosses River with Merchandise to Trade for Horses

Mon, 04 May 2026 16:46:03 +0000

eral Indians stayed at our Camp last night. 6 of the party went
out eairly a hunting. Cap* Clark and 8 more of the party went
across the River and took Some marchandize & other articles in
1 “at the entrance of a small run.” Lewis. The run was something over
six miles above While Salmon River; apparently il was modern Major Creek,
in Klickitat County, Wash.
‘ Sepulchre Island, one of a group known as the Memaloose Islands, from a
Klickitat name signifying “the dead.”
3 Klickitat River, Wash., in the county of the same name. The town of
Lyle is on or near the site of the Indian village at which Lewis and Clark stopped.
4 Mill Creek, in Wasco County, Ore. For the camp of Oct. 25, 26, and ’27,
180.”) see ante, 304, note I.
1806] SERGEANT ORDWAY’S JOURNAL 343
order to purchase horses &C. Cap* Clark intends going up to the
falls & See if any is to be had their, a number of Indians Came
to our Camp Some of them on horse back. Serg* Gass and 2 men
Set at makeing pack Saddles. Cap* Clark Sent back a part of the
articles as the Indians asked more for their horses than our goods
would admit of, but he was going up to the falls in hopes to git
Some their by giving a little more than has been offered as yet.
our hunters killed this day only two Deer [and] 2 Squerrells of a
new kind of any we ever Saw before. Cap* Lewis had the Skins
Stuffed & taken care of. one large new kind of a grey Squerrell
also. 1 or 2 ducks the game is verry scarce about this place.

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Canoe Bottoms Smoothed; Hunters Bring Five Deer

Mon, 04 May 2026 16:45:38 +0000

delay here for observations &C. and to repair the canoes also.
Several men went out in the timbred land to hunt, we unloaded
the canoes and hailed them out of the water to Smooth their bot-
toms and repair them, one of the men giged a Sammon Trout in
the River, towards evening the hunters returned to Camp had
killed 5 Deer a goose and a gray Squerrell. a number of Savages
came in canoes made in form of ScifTs to our Camp, our officers
took down some of the language from these Savages and compared
with all other we have passd and find them to be all of the flat head
nation nation but different tribes, we think the flat head nation
to be more than ten thousand Strong, the River raised con-
siderable this afternoon.
1 Mill Creek, in Wasco County. Ore. The site (if the camp is just below
the steamboat landing at The Dalles. Wheeler.
1805] SERGEANT ORDWAY’S JOURNAL 305

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Terry Courtney on Columbia River salmon fishing traditions

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:57 +0000

genten welcome to the tent of many voices this tent is part of a traveling exhibit that has been following the Lewis and Clark Trail since January of 2003 set up in cities towns reservations all along the trail uh we have followed it all the way from the East St Louis up to the Mandan Villages and to the Pacific Ocean and now we’re on the return Journey heading back East just like Lewis and Clark were 200 years ago Lewis and Clark made this journey in three years time period we’ll be making it as well in that same time frame but they would not have been able to complete their Journey had they not had the help and assistance of many of the different Native Americans that they met along the way in this tent of many voices we bring people in from different backgrounds different walks of life to tell their side of the Lewis and Clark Story or tell the side of the Native Americans and what their lives were like before Lewis and Clark and after Lewis and Clark so it is with great pleasure today that I introduce to you our next guest this is Terry Courtney and he’s going to be talking about fishing along the great Columbia River so let’s please make Terry welcome thank you very much uh if if any of you in the back room cannot hear me uh sometimes my voice gets real low so just raise your hand I’d really appreciate it I know you know it’s not fun to go somewhere and not understand or hear people I am the oldest of seven children I have one brother Five Sisters my ancestry starts here on the Columbia River the Wasco Little Village up here by Lone Pine Indian village by the Dells and where the Dell’s dam is there’s still some old structures there that where people had built modern type buildings and now they’re dilapidated but that’s where my ancestry starts from now we’ve been moved Inland uh to the waren Springs Indian Reservation which is about 90 miles or an hour and a half Inland it’s uh well I guess I need to start off with uh took the wig in my language is good day Ki NAA I’m just asking how are you I am fine IM always which means my name is always which is little brother the name I adopted from my grandpa and my grandfather I thought so much of it that I put it on my license plate and and so now I drive around in the countryside and I have have my own name on my own vehicle it’s kind of warm up here so it’s kind of kind of taking my mind off of where I need to be and and what I need what I need to cover um years ago most of the people on the Columbia River never really traveled away from the river when the fish started running we needed to catch each and every fish that we could but even though there was an abundance of salmon we had people in our tribe that would tell us when we had enough fish years ago there was between 9 and 16 million fish that run the Columbia River but even then we had bad times just as much as we had the good times and the way our people looked at it the way I look at it as a a person of vision is every time you have a bad time the Creator is testing you to see what you’re going to do the fish are low the water’s low the huckleberries aren’t there very much so the Creator is putting you to a to I believe put us to a test how do we combined as a tribe or as a clan to harvest and take only what we need then the rewards come every so often I was raised in a boarding school and uh to well I lived way up in the woods with my mom and dad and uh one day this big black Buick drives up and this lady all dressed in white which is a I thought was a nurse got out and was talking to my parents and the next thing I knew I was I was 5 years old and I was riding down to worm Springs to a boarding school so I never got to see my parents for about about three years and it was it was quite different because in the boarding school we had to to get up and then we had to all wash and get cleaned up all by a certain time and then we had to line up outside and be in and actually be inspected while you’re five six years old and on up to the eighth grade so yeah I never I never spoke any of my language I did not have long hair so in a way I was blessed there I I wasn’t picked on because I I did I only knew English but my friends around me that knew knew the language were forbidden to talk it and there were consequences the same as there was consequences when we were learning things to like to read and write if we consistently didn’t get it right then they would kind of tap you on the hands right here and if you persist if they thought you persisted on being nonconformist and they would turn your hands over and and uh lay it across your hands so a lot of our elders grew up that grew through the system before I completed it did not ever want to be called an Indian or didn’t want to be known as Indian because there was too much heartache with it so even now you run into some of the tribal people that are seem to be real hard noosed and everything and it’s it’s something that you know is just not passed out of the mind and then it passed on this is what some of the kids have learned but I was fortunate enough to have my dad come in from from outside our culture he was from Alaska he came down into tahola area and was raised raised there passed among missionaries for probably four or five families before he’s adopted so the first thing they did is after they got him they asked him when was his birthday and he just said what’s a birthday so they thought you’re not serious and they said well I don’t know what a birthday is so they said well that’s the day you were born and so we got you on September the 17th you’re you’re about this old so September the 17th 19 12 is your birthday and the preacher and his wife there were English their last name was ellworth so they said well you’re not really our son so we’re going to pick you out a name so they went down the list and Y and behold here’s Courtney so that’s how we got our name uh and my dad uh was raised off the reserv ation and so when he met my mother we no longer even though we lived on reservation we no longer had ties to the language we didn’t have ties to to the beliefs and stuff that we had but the one thing my dad did teach me was to when I we mainly were fishermen I mean not not as you see a net but a fly fisherman and so that’s all my dad knew so he always events he told told me as I got older I was catching too many fish and so did my grandpa so he said you need to take only what you need so if you go down and you catch fish for a week for the week you’re no longer going to fish so you have to string your fishing out so that’s that was my first knowledge of of having to deal with anything in nature I’d like to share with you now uh years before then when uh our people first lived on the river we depended on the salmon steel head coo whatever was in that River at time the fishing methods uh vary greatly from most of the stuff that you you see now uh the Water the Columbia River as you now see it wasn’t the way it is was then it was a series of whole bunch of different Rapids turbulent boiling water in a lot of spots and this was about the only spot that their tribes could really fish because when the river was wide in spots the fish were all over so was the channels narrowed up and the water became turbulent and rough and this was where the fish congre at it and they would pull up in holes and some would go straight on through and some would go around and rest and so our people would had different methods of fishing for the salmon and uh before we get too much into that you probably see the fiber on this and you’ll say that that is really thick how can you catch a salmon with this but most of our Nets and stuff were made out of fibers this is in this would have been the inner bark of Cedar and the fine mesh on the Nets their finer would have been out of dog bang uh Nettles and there’s some other materials that are long forgotten or that our people didn’t want to share with other tribal members so it just disappeared with the coming of livestock onto the reservations and uh not people not having enough Savvy to to uh have enough crops to feed the feed the wildlife then they naturally ate everything in sight so a lot of a lot of things that we knew medicines fibers disappeared this is just a this is just a little baget I don’t have a dip net which would be about this long and fit on a hoop this size to about like this and each one of these strands the women would go out and they would Harvest they would Harvest these plants some of them are this short and some are as tall as I am they take and they they break the plant up and they use uh stones and until they get the fiber and then they peel them back and then they take all the they would take all the fiber and if you put all strands together and they would they would spin them like this until they got to the end to be frayed so then you put another another one on here and you put this over and uh if you wanted them larger then you left them at a small small diameter and if you wanted them larger you just took two or three whatever you needed and they did the same thing so to make a dip net I would estimate that it would take uh probably about two lengths of a football field for these women to spin this twine so that the men could weave the Nets and usually the men were the only ones that W the Nets and the women did as they do now they did most of the work they spent all the twine they were always consistently working on that plus they had to take care of the children then when the salmon came the men would bring the salmon to the women and they would cut it and they would hang it to dry most of it would you know there was no refrigerator or anything so most of it had to be dried so it was all Flay and laid out a dried so they were continuously hanging fish cutting them hanging them and uh the way I understood it is nothing was ever wasted in The Villages they had dogs so they would take care of all and dry all the meat the backbones the heads and the heads after they they dried them laid out they were called Muk each strip of dried jerky was called cage that’s like jerky and uh the backbone I I I don’t know the words for that but they had dried skins too and after they got through that they ate the eggs and I I I never wanted to eat the eggs because they just you know they look slimy they pretty color but they didn’t smell good so you know to kind of get off the subject a little bit one year um my little daughter was sitting there and she’s a year and a half old so we catch the fall salmon and the fall salmon have like marbles for eggs because they’re so big whereas the the spring salmon they have skin and the eggs are real small so they’re together so I’m looking at these eggs I’m looking at my daughter and I thought I’m going to see what she’s going to do so I rolled out about 10 or 12 and she starts eating them and I put some more on there and she started eating them so I thought well if she can eat them so can I so I ate it and it really isn’t any different than a boiled egg which to me was surprising it’s just the thought of it and now we get back to where the the women doing the work and after the women did this and uh certain women were picked out of the tribe and they would go and travel up to about 6 months away from away from each Village and Clans and they would make this big circle going up into the like like uh we take the May sometime the celery comes out and they go out and they harvest the celery and that’s only edible during the season they can’t be can’t be dried or anything but then they go and they start digging Roots there’s about five or six different types of roots there’s some that that are around I think they kind of call them wado down here that are down in the will Amit River back in uh our country is called looks and you have dck which is about this long and about that wide looks like a carrot they’re all about six to8 8 in underneath the ground then you have pahi and it looks it’s a little root system a plant that only sticks this high of the ground and you only dig down possibly maybe an inch and they they fan out but they’re they’re in a rock patch so all these can be dried so the some of these women would go out and they would pick the roots and they would dry them and then from there they would make it into the higher country where they had the medicine stuff Camas and and other stuff then they from there they hid into huckleberries and once they were into the huckleberries and they dried them up there by building fires and uh having finding rotten logs and they would they would sh uh scoop them out a certain way this is what I was told by one of my friend scoop them out a certain way then the uh one woman would be in charge and they would put a bunch of huckleberries out and then every every half hour they would turn the berries and turn the berries so that’s how they they took care of everything so when you came back a big basket of huckleberries like this might be just a little little conglomeration like this and I knew that they had our people long ago had to have Foods where you could travel because uh uh as as the tribes moved through different areas some of the people didn’t like you and they were saying this is my country so you didn’t dare build a fire so you had to be able to travel through different parts of the country and I think uh through this whole United States as we know it I think all the tribes had their own their own version of what they call pimkin pimkin the base on there’s two different types of bases I guess there could be three now but they had one that was they ground up the salmon and that was mixed with with uh uh all the berries and The Roots and stuff and then if you wanted the meat then you took elk or you took the deer meat and you ground it up and put it into them but the key to all this I’ve been hearing two different versions and for years I’ve always wanted to try and make some but no one would give me the ingredient so finally three years ago up River they’re talking talking about how essential the steel head is to the tribal people because they cut the underbelly off and then they hang it out and they catch it and dry it and this is what they mix with the with the pimkin and that just that so won become rancid and so just lately I read another book and it says they take the oil out of a chinook so it’s kind of a I’d hate to Tri in a it then the other one is I say three is because now you have people that are into to non meats or anything so you could possibly make that into all vegetable dish if you have any questions along the way and don’t understand or or want to know something just don’t be afraid to hold up your hand or say excuse me and uh so as our as our women folk travel then the men Folk it was up to them to scr the shores and and uh meand are out a little bit looking for whatever deer they could find that were that would be near the river because the elk were up in the higher country so that’s why our people used the uh columia River and the natural resource out of it which would be the fish that was our currency so we needed buffalo buffalo highs and certain times of the year people would bring in from the from the Doos bring in the Buffalo hies bring in the obsidian that we needed and then tail your shells off the coast so there’s various Commodities that were traded up and down the river and I’m pretty sure a lot of you have heard of salila Falls which was the the last of the great trading centers but it it was not the biggest it was the last is the only reason you hear about it and people saying it was the biggest but it was not the biggest up here by the Dells there’s a place called cyhawk where horse Steep Lake is that was known as probably the one of the biggest trading centers and if you look at the Gorge as you’re going up it’s all steep walls you get up to the DS and it opens up so it was easier for tribes to come in and and Venture and trade right there so that was why most of the big trading was done up River until you got to the mouth of the coli River and then there is where uh the main tribe there was a chunuk nation and uh as you come up you have different different uh Clans and bands of tribal people like in this area uh see it’s a River Bridge of the Gods this was owned and fished by the dog River tribe and I think you I don’t know if you been aware of when loose and Clark came down they they dumped over a few times so they pulled out above the Cascade Rapids and went around and put their boats on the side and it ate all all their equipment out you know to dry what they didn’t know well the Indians came along and Indians start picking up stuff and walked off and so they were hey what’s going on you know the people stealing from us right in daylight you know but the dog River people owned this area they made the trail so you had to pay a fee the same as you would have to come you know pay over to come over this bridge so there was a kind of a big M uh misunderstanding and and unfortunately it was in black and white saying that you know they were thieves and stuff but uh and of course you know the some some tribes they if they saw something they like then you you better keep your your hand or an eye on it pretty close because it could tend to disappear once in a while but most of time if our people saw something they like they would try to trade for it and so I always looked at the uh trading back into I know one of the uh necklaces was made on the coast out here by the ha Indians and made it up to Columbia and it event she made it back to Milwaukee Wisconsin so I always looked at it as the the tribes had internet first it was just a lot slower um and uh I also have a name that was given to me uh in the honor of my uh grandfather and it is tea tea a cold but right now I don’t use it too much because there’s a little bit of conflict with an another member of our tribe so I’ll I’ll take on two other two other names and then I will take my grandfather’s name still which I which I’m entitled to but the names are given to to all the children as they’re growing up so that you’ll always remember your ancestors so even now when I went into the service I came back out I didn’t know some of these kids and I’d only been gone for two years so I’d asked them their name and I didn’t recognize their last name so I’d say well who’s your mother I who’s your grandmother then I knew who they were so to us it was like this is your this is another way to trace your DNA um trying to think here back to when we’re grown up along the river now I’m not sure how the female part interacted because I think the daughters as they grew up there were just taken right in to the to the all the work you know the hard work and everything but I know it for a while until a certain age the boys and girls all played together but then there was a certain time where um Boyhood kind of died and they had they used to have a ceremony for when you when you were a young man you were no longer a child anymore they also had a ceremony for honoring the girls into Womanhood and this was a big thing you know it was nothing to be ashamed of they had they had uh rights that they that they did for them and it was astounding to to find out that uh some of the I don’t know if it’s some of the tribes or all the tribes but you have uh uh right of fertility and this is actually where they carved the stone out of a excuse me but they carved a stone into a penis and this is a right for uh for fertility I don’t know how that went on but to me it was It was kind of different to see some of these things and you I mean the way we’re raised now you’re kind of halfway ashamed to see some of this stuff or to even talk about it and as as a young boy if I’d have been growing up in the village when I start turning to a young man the first thing I would have to do is start learning how to make the knots to weave a net and you were during the winter we didn’t fish we didn’t hunt everything was away from us everything was hibernated and so the tribes everywhere always looked at as a winner and stuff is when you when you’re a family you spend time together you teach each other by Word of Mouth you teach each other your language you teach each other the rights and stuff if you’re going to work on Nets you want to work on them then if you’re working on your hunting gear you work on them then we were not supposed to as the salmon is running we’re not supposed to be working on making I mean we’re supposed to be ready because each and every fish that you caught made a difference so as a young man would make they would have to make say four or five Ines or so then as you got older then they got more and more but probably by the time you’d you been working on for two or three years you had to be able to make a dip net and the net material was fairly strong then so you you didn’t have to work on too many but after the coming of the white man please don’t take me wrong at the coming of the white man then the tribes were pushed off of places where the natural material is livestock came down if they weren’t fed right then they ate everything in sight then a National Force comes along and you can’t go there and harvest anything so our people start turning to twine you go to store twine so you know you catch two three fish they make a big hole in it so our people the boys as they were uh growing up in the 50s they were always constantly making Nets because of the material that they had to work with and finally they came up with h with nylon twine and that was much better but it wasn’t treated so it tend to be very slick so it was a trial and error of how to make a net to make different different types of knot so that the when the fish H in they wouldn’t split open the mesh and go right on through so even nowadays we have a regular Mash knot and a half double knot double knot and a half and the double knot and a half comes in really handy because that’s when people started working a monofil line so it’s the fish couldn’t be able to see the Nets and stuff on the the boy the well all the all the children in the family when you’re growing up we have laws that are Unwritten and those we had to learn word for word and sometimes as children are say you’re a teen you’re 19 20 years old and grandfather starts off with you know when someone dies on the river and the kids will say grandpa we’ve heard it a million times and he’ll he’ll say but you haven’t heard it enough because when I pass away you have to be able to tell your children the same thing and one of the reasons they didn’t write it down is because because you cannot amend it you cannot add an amendment to an unwritten law now people can even nowadays are people in the tribe you know it’s not written down but people don’t really know so they they got an idea so then it’s up to myself or some other Elders that know their laws that are supposed to be which I did not know until I was about 36 year years old and I started doing doing this fishing and doing hunting because up until then I had never been involved in any of my treaty stuff I just went to watch the dancing and the celebrations and there was no power I was in I went to the ruse feast and everything and I didn’t speak the language and they talked their native language so I had no idea what they were saying or what they were doing and as I got older while the elders started realizing that there was a gap the language wasn’t any good what they knew because a lot of the young people didn’t know what they were talking about uh in honor of the uh fish when we were what we’re supposed to still do is when the fish comes up well let me back up some years ago when the river was Wild and the water was turbulent we could drink out of it anywhere and the main reason being that as the water spilled down it turbulated and so all the all the stuff that was impurities or any solids that were in the water would naturally float to the top so even nowadays I know I I’ve tried to share with people if you’re out rafting somewhere you lose your water you don’t have any water find some tumbling water you take your cup and you turn it upside down put it below the water surface about a foot turn it over and swish it a little bit you bring it up because you have the more pure water underneath as you come up to the top everything flows off so you can you can get your water that way now when the Waters narrowed some fish went through and some came up and were washed back down some came up to the falls and I think you’ve all seen the picture where the bear is standing out there waiting for the for the fish for a demonstration a lot of people or a lot of our old people would take and they would have a a net assembly with this is a waterfall right here so the net would be shoved out here fish jumping in you know there’s 9 million fish so there’s no problem with getting a fish so when a fish two or three fish in then they pull it back in and on the other end of this there was another net so when you pull this one in club took the fish out you were pushing it back and forth so you always had a had a net in the water at this level and so that was one of the ways that back in the old days that they got them plus they uh they did a a dip net system I guess I’ll have to kind of back up here have do you all know what a dip net is dip dip when they dipping just sweeping the water anyway since I got this here I was going to make it into a set net but I realized that usually this is usually a fur Pole Douglas fur white fur tends to to break and even though this is a tubing it has about the same principle but you usually need to find where the where the fish come up because most of your fish are going to be out in the middle of the river and that’s the plan that’s that’s how nature takes care of herself make sure that all the beig all the good fish are going up and then you have the weaker strand which comes in comes in along the banks so you take and you you dip the water come out like this and when you hit the end and you raise up come over plunge it in real quick and and then come down and as you’re coming down you there’ be rocks and stuff so you have to eventually you you’ll find out where all the rocks are so you bring this up over the water you come in like this and as you’re coming down like this and all a sudden it’ll Tremor well the fish has got in there and it’s trying to get out so you just jerk up real quick and the old ones didn’t didn’t have this but they had a a real long a real long n on them and they were probably three times as big as this and they were all wooden so they pull them up and then whack them and then get them out and then start scooping again nowadays they have uh metal hoops and uh when you catch this salmon now most of them you jerk real quick and this will collapse down into a bag so your fish is hung out right here so as you’re sweeping the water and coming down through here and sometimes you can feel you can feel it you can feel when you miss this it’ll slide right right right by them and you come back up and you come down and then when they get in there sometimes if you’re not quick enough just because you have a net you know they won’t be in there oh the other thing too is you the fish hear that and they’re gone they’ll turn and they’re going down the river see this more gentle it’s that’s more like wood so wood was always recognized as being a lot better but became became more work and harder to get this is what I would go through even if I was on a platform I come down enough enough time to I’m a night fisherman and our tribe years ago used to never never hardly fish at night because it was dangerous and there was so many fish you could get what you could always get what you wanted so a set net you just take this over plunge it into the water and you have a what they call a tie down rope so you move this down you just make sure this is tight and you just stand on it and so the water tubulates and Bone bounces and it moves and stuff so you have to get used to I like putting my hand on it because if a fish hits the hoop on the outside I can feel I can feel sometimes feel a spin or if it hits straight onto the pole because you can hear a thud but you don’t you it’s hard to tell because of the the water whether the salmon has hit the hoop or has hit the pole so if it hits a pole you feel you can feel it through here and the nothing down here so the reason they they call this a set net is because as the water rises you’ll have to move up with it and sometimes you have to to move in a straight line either way so that’s why they these trigger strings are usually like this and we usually just try a twig on here real quick like that and when you do get a fish and you pull it up you get it here on the deck and just like this you have to watch for the club and everything you get it out here and then you always got to make sure that you put it up here because that fish is if you put it down here that fish is out and more more than likely at night he’s going to be gone you put it out here and then you look for your club and I usually spin the and then try to try to hit the salmon between the right between the eyes on top of his head and the reason I I don’t use a flashlight we don’t have very many fishing places but we have more and more fishermen so if I build a platform and I leave or I do something I have people coming down and bother me so if they don’t know how much fish I’m catching the chances are they’re not going to be down bothering my fishing place so in the dark the salmon is a streak like this and it’s narrow and it gets wide to the head so I know where the head is so you just reach down there and push down on it and then you smack him gently and then when he just shivering then you can you can feel up on the head and and I’ve never hit myself in the in the hand then you have to pull the salmon out and lot of as the fish are running I usually just slide the fish to the back of the platform take this and push it in real quick take this underneath a 2×4 and then you take it around and lash it down and no you have to reach out here to find the string in the dark okay it’s working real good nothing is hit so then you get up go back put your fish back in the in the box and come over and and uh I use a uh I’ll have a 2×4 out here so that if the fish does bounce he won’t go off the edge because sometimes you’re trying to find a club and you get over here and you get too far over this one if he drops over the edge and you have to bring him up over the lumber and the lumber will catch on the net and you have problem s and I also have a 2×4 on this side and I put a flashlight right here in a flashlight in case I need it and there’s a what’s missing on this is a a setting that we have one wire that comes to the front here another one that will come about from right here to this side of the hoop and it comes underneath here it’s called a tieback so when you throw it over so when you’re fishing at night you have to I usually we grab the pole and stuff and then you have to search for the trigger string put it in your hand like this so that when you throw it over it’s it doesn’t catch you on the feet or it doesn’t catch you behind the back of the head because it will and when you put it over most of us just put it over and you you push it hard so if this thing comes over the top of your head you could you could go in and we’re all tied with with uh safety ropes and so a tieback is is really essential because uh as the salmon come up they Glide along the Rocks that’s her guide path and the water’s spilling and boiling and turbul so when they come on here like this me and so if fish aren’t hitting in there I have to pull it up and then I have to untie everything actually everything water comes over here then I have to get out on this plank and I have to reach out out there and lengthen or shorten the wire then I come over here and then I have to take this one back it looks kind of dangerous when I first started this old guy told me you know all this stuff and I’m standing there and the only thing I’ve ever done is f fish you know you get out there and and here’s this platform sitting out there above the water get get on it oh man you’ve heard people say I wouldn’t get on that thing for it save my life so I’m thinking holy mackerel you know I go out there and I’m going like that and it’s so I finally got off and looked underneath and there’s a lot of lumber underneath there you know that we so wouldn’t pull forward rocks on the back and so I get out there and push a net over and the water takes it like this whoa you know no one told me the water was going to be that vicious you know so and then I hit another one where they said just push it over you know and and it’ll set in place and I put right here and I’m trying to grab the thing and the water keeps pushing this thing up and down and you’re trying to reach underneath you know and so it can be quite an experience I just I just finished this this is this one is a just out of uh store twine they call it I don’t know if you I don’t know if you remember store twine back when I was growing up you ordered groceries and you put them in a box and when the box is overflowing they put the lid the lid staying straight up they got this grocery twine and they wrapped around two or three times and tied it and so that’s what this is is just is mainly for a for a demo it fits on about a about a 12T hoop which is probably about like this we can fish with Hoops up to on or I fish on a dute river in Central Oregon uh we we can use up to 16t hoop which means I could walk over and I could just go like this and walk into the to the NIT to the hoop and some of the some of the uh this is one where we fish up by the walls that made for a 16t 16 ft hoop and it is tapered I worked 8 to five and when I go down a fish I I would miss fish so I kept thinking how am I going to make this better so I got this how to make a net book even though my uncle had taught me how to make one and so I thought I’m going I’m going to get greedy so I made the net real big on the bottom so pull them here and and I can see the fish going down the River it was so big the fish had turn around and come out so then I went back and I made so I made it tapered a little bit so then when the fish come in they hit the back then they’re there’re they’re hooked up for a split second so I was able to catch more fish so then I just as my Nets got longer I just started using the taper and U there isn’t that many fish so a lot of stuff that I that I learn that I have I watch other fishermen fish like the tie down that holds the hoop right up against the bank well you go up there and and you’re waiting for your turn to fish with some of these guys and you can feel the fish bump you know and if bump again you know so you say well aren’t you going to move it and I say well what are you going to move it for they’ll go it eventually you know I mean that’s that’s that’s no other way of sitting it is so a lot of times I go up there while they’re sitting there and just talk to them and I reach on back and grab that tight down wire and then I just pull on it you know okay well I won’t tell them nothing because they know how to fish so when they leave I’ll just adjust it my way and then I catch what I need and then put it back the way you know I’m for the fish I’ll be I’ll be truthful so pardon me not really it’s it’s it’s all in the mind uh like on a Columbia there there is no choice because the water’s so slow you know the water’s so slow you have to have a big fairly big hoop and the net has to be really long because they get to the back and if you had a set net or something and you’re trying to pull it you know by the time you start pulling it up the fish have got so big time to uh to turn around and they come out so they in the Columbia they they fish up to 26 30t Di dier of Hoops which I could be like this you know and the net is from here to the end of the stage you know and it’s it’s it’s getting a little tougher you know there there isn’t very many places like that to fish I think the the Klickitat River the dut River the yakar river a little bit you know not too much u a lot of places are just disappearing where you can catch fish but that that’s one of the things I believe been been concerned is uh arguing with our tribe is because like now the fish are not very there isn’t very many numbers but the way that our people fish you fish whether it was good years or bad years because what you’re doing is you’re taking out the weak strand so if you close the season completely you got the weak Strand and you know you have them in a mix so you delete your your uh pool hate to say it Terry but we’re out of out of time I know you guys probably have questions for Terry because this is an interesting topic but um I’m sure Terry can stick around and uh you guys can talk to him ask questions in the back of the ten many voices if you don’t mind so we can get set up for the next program which will be York he will be here to tell his story of the Expedition so thank you so much

The post Terry Courtney on Columbia River salmon fishing traditions appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Willie Pitt on Wasco history, treaties, and sovereignty

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:56 +0000

voices for those of you who’ have never been here before just tell you a little bit about us we are a traveling exhibit we’ve been traveling for 3 years now this is our fourth year on the road we’ll be doing the return trip back to St Louis like Lucen Park did 200 years ago when Lucen Park was in this area 200 years ago they came across the Warm Springs Indians and today we’re going to be have Lou pit from the Confederate War Springs he is the director of of government Affair and training and his what he’s going to be talking about is the tribal preservations of Jefferson’s ER to today so please welcome Louie pin um P good afternoon my Indian name is Yan my uh my dad uh uh U on the Columbia and uh he was enrolled at Yakama he lived where where I live now in warm spring I’ll show you on a map where that is my mom was an enrolled warm Springer and she’s from UPR River though the um my dad was Wasco my mom was warms Springs and both of those tribes uh were there when Lewis and Clark and Expedition came through so some of our relatives were there and uh what I want to do is to give you I think uh thousands of years of our uh time on the river and where we are now and uh just look a little bit into Thomas Jefferson at the time had a lot to say about what the uh uh views were of Indian people and you know Thomas Jefferson didn’t even leave the uh uh the East Coast he basically was a armchair type of president but created a lot of the the myths and the stories that drove people to want to see more of the of the country as it was just a young country at the time of America and a Young Nation but us Indian people talk about our Nations that we are nations within a nation so please keep that in mind okay hold on here okay so um what we have here is a a picture a drawing by an artist of the uh in 1850s a Paul Cain who uh captured the way of life that had survived and that our people lived on for thousands of years a time that we call time immemorial since the beginning of time um this is down in the Columbia River Gorge down in the Wasco area we have three tribes that are part of our Confederacy today called The Warp Springs the Wasco and the POU tribes and because the US government looked at the land and who is on there and they just put people together some tribes were put into two or three different uh Indian reservations and other confederacies and I’ll show you a little later about the inter relatedness of that life was bued for thousands of years the the men fished and hunted as a part of our way of life religious and belief system the men had certain duties similar to what we do today very physical type of Duties dealing with the fishing the building of structures of uh Warfare uh hunting uh and the Strategic type of planning in The Villages and how to interact and work with some of the tribes that surrounded us here’s a romantic depiction of a Wasco Village on the Columbia River oh from here it probably would be about 50 Mi well let’s see would be uh about 60 Mi up River from here and again this is a very romantic depiction because remember the the Columbia River niana the Big River was a very Wild River when the rivers ran wild yes so anybody that built that close to the water would had to be a little bit crazy because that River would have fresh shits and if you were there at the wrong time really where our folks would really be able was up here because up there was like what you call a 500e water plane now um again this is uh um life was good Mount uh Jeff Mount Hood um y East as we call it and again the Great Waters of the uh uh that Lewis and Clark were looking for um some of you uh probably don’t know how Oregon got its name is that U uh there was a a mythical big river that flowed uh about people were on the I think the upper end of the Columbia and that is a big river and uh it its mythical name was Oregon or something like that or or r ygu n Oregon and uh so that somehow with a couple of map makers is that uh gave this area territory the name of Oregon so it’s a Indian name so very proud of that as well as a lot of things around us are Indian names this is a wonderful area with names like classup County kamin wakam uh chuk wonderful names all all tribal names our way of life on the land our tribe has celebrations of uh ceremonies throughout the year that we thank the Creator the Creator provides us with water with uh fish deer Roots berries and back to water when we celebrate like right now we’re going to be celebrating uh acquisition and the Creator gifting his roots is our women will go out gather the roots and the men are in the old days would protect their safety and uh uh they come back and and bring those on in and we meet we used to meet on Wednesday and the women would work Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday we would have a feast the feast dealt with again the same order of things as we’ve done for thousands of years starting with water ending with water where we thank the Creator and we eat the foods in order and we have lessons so we have uh like Sunday school would be for kids we have that every Sunday for us even today talking to us about our Native American values our Indian values our values that are connected to those lands that we were that we don’t say that we lived on that we come out of that we’re in the land the way of life very circular the uh Earth provided a lot Waters provided a lot of sustenance uh we used not only to sustain ourselves we used fish and deer and such to trade and a trading center uh all through the Columbia River because remember rivers rivers are all highways as so historians talk about rivers unite mountains divide and so the river is a a Avenue a channel for Commerce it always has been so uh our Folks at a wonderful wonderful place called cilo wam is the other name for that up River about 120 miles from here is that uh that place is U now inundated because of dam construction our opinion on that we have varying opinions uh but one of them is is that the Bondville Dam and all of the dams on the on the Columbia were done to for progress but like the Bonville like the Bonville dam was built for u u uh to maintain our n our American way of life of which part of that is the Native American way of life too like one of our Wasco Chiefs said is that if uh the Hitler would have won the war those treaties that we cut that you’ll hear about later that we made wouldn’t have any meaning then so anyway we uh we are too is an interesting fact is that uh our our people the native American people have uh probably I think it is proven to be the highest amount of participation in military service back in World War I we actually had people that participated in World War I and at that time weren’t even citizens of the United States jonos people too jonos people were moved away from their homelands they made war on the United States and they were just protecting their way of life similar to what any people would do and one of the stories I just heard about about a week ago was that when they were in prison they were in prison in Oklahoma U they were kind of in a different status and didn’t quite know what to do with jono and his Warriors is that they uh let them out to join the battle in World War I and then when they came back they had to go back to prison that’s one of those things when it comes to Native Americans I just you know I just cringe because again this is our homeland too we were here first and that’s been part of the Lewis and Clark Story is trying to get the story out and tell it our way that’s not good that’s not bad it’s just the way it is so the way of life again we lived off the land for thousands of years the land produced very well you take care of the land it takes care of you part of our songs talk about the water being the the life blood of the land and uh anyway it’s a combination that’s worked again successfully for thousands of years remember America is still a pretty young country the uh Thomas Jefferson and in that era of the Revolution uh again the Revolution was done to get out from the under underneath the unfair treatment of King George III and Prince Philip in the parliament all kind of history that if you’re like me you avoided it too is that well it comes in handy nowadays as as a Native American trying to explain our situation to uh go back to those times and talk about it this is pretty much a real good example of what everybody thought about Native Americans in those days this was on the East Coast where Indians were basically a majority and at any given time could have wiped out those colonists those folks but uh they were U uh pretty much different nations that really didn’t coordinate well with each other and uh basically uh um believed in people living up to a deal in the United States was only going to take so much but as they gain power and confidence and uh almost to the point of arrogance at some time is that uh this is one of the statements talked about the Savage as the wolf to retire being both being beast of prey though they differ in shape and uh Like the Wolf of those days is that the wolf can survive only if the wolf adapts to the the people the uh colonists and later the uh the uh 13 American states just and same thing was said about the Indians we have to learn how to survive uh George Washington and Thomas Jefferson uh both uh I think uh felt honor to work in battle with Indians uh on their side and then they also found them to be notable enemies too to battle against their great warriors because again we were those folks I’m sure were like we would do if somebody attacked North Carolina or somewhere would we be there to fight I think we would be our folks were fighting for their homelands too so as the wolf is what Native people were thought of in those days and uh part of the whole move in those days what’s called the League of Nations where the Christian pretty much white Nations male dominated uh were talking about some sort of rationale to be able to uh live with their Christian ways and to live as a people of Honor how do we deal with this well the way we lived off the land as what they said were Nomads we were nomads and that we were Wanderers and Hunters is that that was a quote unquote a heathen uncivilized Savage way of life and therefore at at that time we weren’t even human and so it uh it was I think a real dark time in early American history is a pretty dark time pre- early American history was a time of slavery and what’s called conquest and uh to leave us out there in control of these wonderful Forest without making things square and farming them and civilizing the land is that uh that’s civilizing it and that’s making it more productive is that to leave the Indians in possession of their country was to leave the country A wilderness it was a waste of lands John L the great philosopher of the time who believed strongly in Discovery the rolling uh you know not only only in America from the going from east to west but also throughout the world this League of Nations were these nations of U trying to civilize be civilized and again part of the thing was to try to christianize the world and change people no matter what so there was a lot of things that happened that again because of our religious uh I think uh uh doctrines that we kept in in place and develop more in our US Constitution and basically respect throughout the world the world is you know now we talk about that global economy it’s dealing with Communications and we use a lot of you know people uh keep an eye on each other nations keep an eye on each other discovers have ultimate dominion over Indian lands wow we were here for thousands of years we lived off the land it was our land we we had nobody telling us what to do people come in and say they have dominion it means they have control and power over us because we don’t build our houses Square we don’t civilize the the ground and make it into productive farmlands and uh we’re not Christians and so they have dominion over us this is one of the individuals that uh didn’t know that America had dominion over him his name is picin he’s a Wasco Indian that again was the if you think about and know where the dalls is B from the DS up is the Warm Springs people and then from the DS down to even here we called the uh the chukan in our case it’s the Wasco people we spoke a language called K and tomakin he’s uh I get a kick out of his hair too cuz looks like he always has a bad hair day too is that Indians with curly hair is it’s a curse but he’s doing okay tomic’s notability is that he when he was young I had to put him about three different articles I read in document research read is that he was there part of the uh person he was part of the team that took away uh Clark’s dog Sean and uh and Lewis and Clark threatened to killed those guys and they had to drop the dog and bring them back and uh for us is that our view of it was more of a rescue mission because you know LS and Clark when they were coming down river one of their favorite diets was of course dog they just ate dog and they ate horse uh the our Our Roots were too rich for them our salmon was too oily for them uh the elk didn’t quite hit some of them just right uh the bear that we had and the and the different type of other foods of that we added to our food just some sometimes didn’t hit them right and so they had a totally different diet than we thought so tomakin this was painted in 1847 and he was just a young fellow back in uh 186 again he’s one of my relatives on my dad’s side this is a uh one of the ladies here this was about 1938 this picture was taking notice the slope of the forehead she’s one of the last ladies that was um um actually went through the uh the action that people did on the lower River here the notable people the high Noble folks that had the higher classes had the shaped foreheads and so she’s a Wasco of status and uh again she’s a a person that I’m not sure if I’m really related to this individual or not but there’s um this is a P mm he’s from up River he was as far as I’m I’m concerned he was kind of like a stragic strategic person when it came to negotiating firmly with war so he was always seemed to be on the edge of uh certain The Firm actions of his people that were U River again what I’m trying to do here is connect you that we are a people this is a Kamaya kin he’s from north of the area we talked about he’s a yak Warrior Chief and also the main thing he was trying to do is try to get peace for the lands along his homelands up north of the river Lewis and Clark stated when they were got here into Wasco country that they saw Square buildings the first Square buildings that they saw on their long journey since they left St Louie and that was again Wasco territory this is a plank house of the Wasco folks I just learned about two weeks ago that those roofs that the roofs with the planks like that in the summertime when they dry it up they they shrink so it add air between them so the air could go through it well in the winter time they would swell shut so then the water wouldn’t come through the average uh water that uh comes down in rain at Cascade Locks is 70 in I think it’s almost 30 in here 27 in in Portland so notice too the uh uh the canoes canoes were again a main mode of transportation they were also um uh trading materials and like LS and Clark did I think a few times when you’re out of wood one of the things you really need it when you you go anywhere is you need good dry wood and if you’re in the rainy season as they l found out when they came down here it’s really hard to find dry wood cuz uh they they talked in the in the book by uh boto they complained for almost 30 days about the rain at the Fort clat area and all I can say is welcome to the Oregon coast there was a Cano that Lewis and Clark saw that was so fancy and they couldn’t see anything that was similar to it they figured it was something that was traded to North uh North and up at Puget Sound this is the inside of the uh aasco Village aasco Lodge pardon me this is a pretty wealthy Chief with the size the size of it is pretty large see the plank roof there he’s got salmon areas to uh to dry and hang salmon got the trophy look like a earhead there I think these guys are gambling a little bit uh holding a discussion over here um just like the French we keep our dogs inside to keep the place clean and critters out and certainly uh places to sleep and U again our folks were a little bit different that when we have these celebrations that we get together people give away a lot that’s how you show how wealthy you are how much you give away not what you hold on to but what you give away just totally a different group one of the uh uh later uh explorers when they met with the Indian tribes and this one other situation outside of Lewis and Clark gives you an idea of the cultural Clash is that um this U non-indian fellow was trying to remember what what’s the best thing I can give to these Indian people maybe like this similar to this is oh my prize keys that I’ve been saving for um you know 400 miles on my my journey from somewhere from the East and uh he went in there to and he walked in and the smell of the salmon and the smell of the uh of the deer meat and the smoke he thought it was really repugnant but then when he looked up the smell of that cheese the Elder Indian folks had their nose covered but because they couldn’t stand the smell of that cheese it was so different so something you know that our cultures can class sometimes and we don’t even know it you’re jumping to take a look at the area without the house there this is what it would have been like for thousands of years uh just below cilo Falls cilo was this wonderful place that had a a Falls channelizing where an area where fish would have to go through this and our folks used to be able to by like my dad used to do was be able to fish there when the fish were running you could make a lot of catches and depend on the season whether it be a commercial whether it be substenance for my own use or um a ceremonial for religious purposes is that you could really catch a lot of fish to help take care of your bills for the rest of the year and uh there was a a very narrow channel to me the Falls was one thing but this for the mighty Columbia River Narrows down to like a 45 to 50 yard width and all that water just amazing and uh right here you have now like the uh the roads freeways right here and I think the water level would be right about there nowadays then go over to right about over there there was leis and Clark like this crazy guys that they were the Indians all lined up right here when they were coming down and they were they just didn’t give it second thought they went down these really dangerous Falls for this water just shot down there um just fast and the Indian folks got up on the edge there and I’m sure they made bets one way or the other if they was going to make it or not and the guy that bet they’d make it through want a lot of money cuz they made it crazy guys but the Indians wouldn’t do that because it was way too dangerous science this is a place called Cascade Locks right here today there was a that that gentleman m tomakin is uh he used to fish in this area there was three sets of Falls one right here one set right there and the falls right there those are called the Cascades and Cascade Locks today is right in this area and uh Tom used to fish in here but he lived here and uh so I’ll tell you a little bit more about him later what this is is Sciences found through research sech through oral histories and through actually digging into the ground where people live and we couldn’t say anything about it because we were moved by this time to the reservations by the US Army and U uh again the the Bonville I think it has part of the Bonville Dam you can see part of it right there so this is Portland’s over this way maloma County starts right about in here this is a a map that they made of cilo Falls The Falls coming down coming down here flowing this way and just a wonderful place I’m I was old enough to be just a six and seven year old boy at the time part of the fishing on the river this is they uh uh at the DS would be the Wasco folks there was so much fish to be had that uh they they actually almost on industrial type of level there were thousands of pounds Lis and Clark U said there was a there must be 10,000 lb worth of salmon uh sitting on the racked up stacked up to for sale and trade and uh that’s again salmon you could if you once you had a a a something to trade and barter you really had some wealth because there were people that we kept control of these areas where not everybody could fish just our friends just our relatives and the guest but but they could only fish with our approval the Trade Center that was cila Falls going north south west east tremendous trading that happened uh again one gentleman that’s from down this way uh uh what’s his name m uh L um two wolves what’s his name Jeff painter um he was talking about how the system worked here they had like a relay race type of folks where we would trade materials but we trade with somebody here and they would in turn you know get something that they could easily trade maybe up this way and then so on so on so on we have materials that we get all the way from up here at Alaska uh down here in the northern California the Euro all of this was a another tribal group called the Pud folks that basically help uh stayed in the U uh High Desert type of areas and our folks uh roam from Canada and uh I think just about all over is that depended you had to know how to get through somebody else’s territory just like today when you go through Idaho Idaho recognizes that if your car is licensed and you’ve got insurance and you got a driver’s license they recognize that similar things had to happen in our earlier days of our Nations too we had to know how to get through these other nations this is the dalls area right here the Wasco territories are all the way up to the D and the Hood River would be well here’s Hood River again look at all of these Villages that were along that area Hood River has uh villages in that area um the many villages of the wco area the Discovery Centers right there fishing and hunting winter Villages uh summer Villages uh basically our lands Lewis and Clark came down here and they camped at a place called Rock Fort and uh they were told by the U River by some of the U uh people that helped them come down river the N first that uh these Indians down here’s language changes and that’s when they started talking to the Wasco people these people up here were speaking ich the uh the the the land of that that area sahap here’s looking at the different tribes I’m not sure how well you can see that in the Wasco family there’s the Dows the dog River or the Wood River wos the Cascades the Cascades also are known as the kealas or the wlas the clamus clamus river Clackamus County named after that UMAS another group this is all the language group of the kickster the Wasco Folk the chinuk speakers alas skuts c c the class and also the Chans on the North side here spoke a similar language to the KCK folks now a lot of them speak the chinuk jargon kind of a trade language made up of a lot of U uh the languages of the of the area plus uh whoever came into the area like the Chinese and the uh the uh British people and the French and the just like any other language uh according to the book that Carolyn Gilman wrote is that they also as a part of the language great book from U the U Missouri Historical Society God as a present by Carolyn Gilman talk about them learning some languages words that weren’t really proper to say except I guess in trading and uh please note every acre in the Oregon had a tribal group on there this is just what they took snapshots of and figured out from the late 1800s and uh the language groups of a tremendous amount of diversity culturally and of course this is the west side and I live on the east side ta is one of our West Side tribes the uh pyute tribe here the clth and the modok again lived this way for thousands of years Lewis and Clark only came down on the river to uh basically just got like they say the tip of the irisburg view of what we had in this area as far as Nations excuse me we have at DW Springs the war Springs confederated tribes has Wasco Warm Springs and Pou excuse me there’s 13 different bands of PUD in the state of Oregon now to hiok is the name of the dutes river the original name which means that’s the place the snakes the PES come out of they used to get down to the Columbia but they would use the river the shoots now to get to the Big River again look at the uh the language group of the Ki or the down river chukin down river down river Chans are about from here up River upper chukin are here basically the same language called KCK weco Cascade uh we have clus people in our tribe we have some molas the molala people pushed over here for a while in 1810 and 1815 somewhere in there we pushed them back over but of course in any interaction that you have anytime you uh for whatever reason you you know you you interchange we uh we kept some of the the good-look women and the hard hardworking young boys and some of the men that they had to help us out as tribes tribes weren’t always done just by blood if you had a guy that was a good horse trader it was a smart leader or a smart chief that would draft that person to be a part of his tribe or her tribe there are also matriarchal women leaders too the human kill us caou the first different nations excuse me so this morning I heard a gentleman that Jeff painter talking about the the halum clups there’s some clups right there and uh sometimes we got along sometimes we did this is the Wasco folks the Warm Springs folks in here and the P folks lived around in here and again that’s the way it was for a lot of years the yumaa folks this is their area here the yamas up here let’s take another look at that this is a a little bit broader picture here’s my tribe we gave to the United States 10 million Acres title when promis for our way of Life the right to fish the right to hunt the right to dig roots and the right to pick berries and also the grav are are stocks and so did the AAS that gave up 12 million Acres yumas gave up less than nine acres the N first gave to the United States title of I think it was 10 10 million Acres 10 million I hope I said that right um so that’s the deal that people have to live up to people people say oh those treaties that she made with the United States are old documents they shouldn’t be honored well what happened in 1776 isn’t the Constitution an old document too should we honor that heck yes we do we are we have good people that pay the highest price of all for that that their lives and liberty for protecting the Constitution which in turn is really our way of life that we love As Americans so that’s the deal we gave up title to 10 million acres in return for treaty rights that the United States is supposed to honor in all states and all people under United States too so that’s what the we harp about in Indian country that’s the thing that we’re always looking to is trying to make sure that we’re having our way of life taken care of and uh people listen to us and again this is a this doesn’t mean that those Tri no longer exist they’re they’re all through here there’s 50 some tribes in the state of Washington U amazing country with the people that we have a diverse country that we do have with many many cultures including Native America my reservation we call it a reservation because it was reserved for the exclusive use of said Indians and I’m one of those said Indians that was in the Treaty of 1855 we have land use we’re taking care of our land and I’m can brag that we’re taking care of our land better than anybody else I’ve seen in the Northwest and we have um set aside for our riparian zones which is the area around streams and creeks and rivers we set aside our wet lands we have Wilderness areas that we’ve set aside these are links for linking of of the habitats for wildlife to go through up and down and uh another set aside here we have we’re water rich in worm Springs this is a the Cascades is pretty much right here Portland would be up here uh from here down to Cascade Locks a little hint is uh 36 miles that’s the the straight flying Crow it’s 36 mil some of you know why I’m mentioning that some of you don’t um but we have 650,000 Acres that were reserved for ourselves I’m really proud of U our lands here because we uh we uh compared to other tribes that the question can be asked how much of those lands are tribally owned and controlled if you go to the nest first it’s like 15% tribally owned and controlled on reservation the yellas all maybe 55% tribally owned and control the Yakama probably 50% own and control you come to my tribe 99% owned and controlled by the Warm Springs tribal government are we real proud of that you bet we are strong element of sovereignty we’re the big dog land use We’re The Entity that has to be worked with how did that happen part of it is we were out of the way of the um of the river we’re out of the way of the Oregon Trail we didn’t have great lands we had this terrible thing on our lands called trees the the people in those days in the in the 1850s is that they wanted land like you have down here that are open PLS that you can get rid of the trees and make them into that productive Farmland real quick in uh the forest that we had there they were so thick that people just did not want to have anything to do with them and so this was kind of located in the back door of uh the Oregon territories but you know what happened after that trees had value we built bought our own meal uh a meal that was put on the reservation by non-indians they took the they call they did what’s called hydrating we didn’t do that they did and we eventually uh bought the mill we built a resort called canita we did a whole bunch of planning with those dollars arm Springs folks are amazing U when the Dallas dam was flooded is that flooded our Salo Falls there was money given out most of the other tribes the other three tribes gave their money to their tribal members our tribe gave a part of it to tribal membership and put the rest of it into studying about where we should be going so we worked with Oregon State College at the time and uh a lot of money in those days we spent I think upwards of $8,000 working with them on talking about the potential for how do we uh use our lands and our Waters and our resources so again I just uh I can brag all day on Warm Springs like Muhammad Ali says a bragging if you can back it up and we we’re going to continue backing it up at War sprs again this is the lands that we gave to the United States 10 million Acres I put this in there this is Jefferson County that that they don’t have any Authority on reservation 13 different counties part of my job as Government Affairs is to figure out how do we go about protecting our way of life that deals with water fish deer roots and salmon and other medicines and materials there’s a gentleman had the buck skins on and had the all sorts of outfits that he got from the land Etc is that all that comes from the land how do you how do you go about making sure that those 13 counties understand how important those are to us here’s the here’s that point the Cascade logs 36 miles but as you know that’s as a straight flying Crow the drive there is about 120 mil and uh we have our boundaries and this was recognized as owned by us have you heard it’s on there too the Louisiana Purchase the Louisiana Purchase the biggest real estate transaction ever it was not a real estate transaction there was no land that actually changed title at the Louisiana Purchase what happened there was the the great nations of United States and I think it was what was it France is that they just had preemptive rights and then the United States had the right to be the first in line to buy from the rightful owners of the land The Many Nations uh that were all through there some of them didn’t want to sell so they went to war with them and they had an element of Conquest in there so get your facts right the legal owners of those lands through the native nations of that era Thomas Jefferson this is wonderful I thought Jefferson um that the belief that people are capable of self-government a belief in decentralized small government units a belief in the need for public deliberation and civic education through participation in politics that sounds like what we’re doing today doesn’t it for the most part anyway I won’t say anything about our International presence um want to get to do US own argument here but there was another of this too there was a lot of other folks that just wanted to be once they got elected they’re the kind of like the King again they’re going to tell the rest of us how to live nope so I like Jefferson’s idea back in those days the founding fathers all argued about what should happen and here’s another thing unfinished Revolution that the Constitution and that these governmental institution as we have today that’s where we are part of my pitch is that not only do you have to get used to people culturally but governmentally too we have different type of governments within your your state here in your nation you have to also learn how to get along with us that unfinished Revolution includes the different type of not only people but types of governments not only within the United States but outside of it here’s theas mil Creek our treaty was signed right up there I don’t uh let’s see I don’t know how to show this I guess the my hoods over here this is depiction by depiction by an artist that put a Time wheel on here and uh at this time kind of give you Lewis and Clark didn’t make the list and and I think later at the end the Custer defeat didn’t make the list but certainly disease and the loss of horses that got stole by this other tribe made it on here so the Indian folks uh kind of had a different view of what was important where are we going for the next 200 years this is something that Onida chairman uh New York onidas there’s two onidas when they they split the onidas and moved some of them to Wisconsin move some of them to Upper New York and uh he says the casino is not a statement of who we are but only as a means to get us where we want to be we had tried poverty for 200 years so we decided to try something else 200 years up to now we know your casinos a part of who we are we’ be using other things in our sovereignty of using that um and so we’re not quite sure where we’re headed but we’re not we’re getting tired of your poverty so we want to have a fair shot at having a good life so I uh I just wanted to touch on a number of things I I recommend you know that even though leis and Clark is all over with is that it’s really exciting as an adventure I’ve got the Devoto book this is the Missouri Historical Society book Carolyn Gilman wrote this wonderful book I swe I’ve got some of my credits um some of my pictures um Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson’s got a lot a lot if you go to Paul’s bookstore it’s amazing how how prolific he was that it means he wrote a whole lot but everybody wrote about him too because he gave a lot of his thoughts out on paper and he argued with these other founding fathers of America and it’s just wonderful Oregan Historical Society wonderful things Young Folks you should grab one of these and read them as I get older these are getting more fantastic become more live to me all the time I just really I’m amazed that U I wonder why I didn’t like history when I was a kid because right now for me that’s really where it’s at so I uh again I uh as a tribal person is that love being an American and I love my Indian ways too is that we’re going to be continuing our way of life with our values being Native American and also as Americans too so again I uh appreciate your time uh to sit here and listen to me and I guess we have some some time for some questions true so if you have any questions for L just ra hand I’ll come around the mic how did the Daws Act of the Indians uh I understand you’re Now American citizen but also you play status is a another Nation sure the Dos act you’re talking about the inheritance act the do Act was a uh an attempt at the United States there’s folks uh in Congress that felt uh what do we do with these Indians is that how do we uh help them survive and so in their good intent they figured let’s make these Indians civilized and Farmers like us so right at the time we had land that we own in common with each other tribalism that’s kind of the classical uh interpretation of tribalism and U do that said that uh every head of household was could get 160 acres and then we were responsible for farming those Acres but they didn’t tell us that they were also going to become uh taxable in the county and so a lot of our folks what’s this all about they didn’t pay the taxes so they lost those lands where the county foreclosed on the reservation our reservation U actually grouped up and talked to the superintendent at the time to get the superintendent to find monies on these lands that were going to be lost through tax U um tax problems and bought those lands so that’s part of that leadership that I say that was good there what was the second part of that all States oh sure well well we do we do I think all of us have different type of statuses of uh I mean I I have I’m a American citizen a tribal Citizen and the state citizen part of the challenge is the way of life and uh part of the kind of the understanding of sovereignty is trying to figure out you know what are we here for and uh it’s our way of life and I tell people that they all we all have to learn how to use regardless of your status you have to learn you learn to use the the governments or the entities around you to help you better protect your way of life but our primary focus is uh as tribal folks because there’s a there’s a a tremendous difference in us from other minorities because the treaty and and the US Constitution have us in the uh Constitution that says only the United States will deal with Indian people and in the act of Commerce only con the Congress will deal with the Indian people and these treaties were done between the United States and the tribal Nations so we have this different status that uh we U see if we took a vote just like here if we took a vote now let’s vote for something that would be good for just me you guys may vote with me you may not but most of the time out there like in Oregon I think we’re just barely pushing like 2% of the population we’d always get out voted so we run to that unique distinct political entity status to be able to help protect us government to government that means we have to go talk to Congress that means we have to work with the Senators that’s my job uh Representatives by lobby at Salem and that’s utilizing that government to government status and of course is that uh we have this land that we have we have these off reservation rights too and most of that isn’t because the unique status we try to just talk with people in common sense if you protect something that uh uh gets better water quality that’s good for everybody can’t cut that water in half and say this half’s mine this half’s yours it’s good for everybody so yeah I think all of us kind of claim some sort of different status but I’m definitely an American I pay my taxes every year and u i don’t pay taxes on reservation because that’s part of the deal but uh if I work for a state government somewhere I’d have to pay taxes so we pay our fair share and since uh you got your land from us too is that we feel like hey we don’t want to pay taxes so we don’t that’s part of the deal so I hope that came close to answering uhhuh how how foro all over the place and nobody else can well the uh that’s one of those rights that we had that weren’t limited until U the United States got concerned about its uh its um impact on the the constituents of Congress people which are everybody but the Indians so uh with it’s not Indi and everywhere it’s uh clearly we could build on our own reserv ations with pretty much without much hassle and then now we’re pushing to Aboriginal areas like the Cascade Locks for the Warm Springs tribes is uh our people have been there for thousands of years and I agree there are some folks that we see that are ruining it for everybody they want to build the casinos 3 400 500 miles away from their reservation and it’s closer to the city and all that but if you look at that reservation too they have a need to be a B to try to get money somehow because they don’t have anything and so it is a balancing act you have Senator McCain from Arizona and you have representative Pao from California that are trying to answer exactly that same question the question is how do we do this fairly with this Bevy of different tribal situations and U because Indian Country again it’s just such limited resources and u u it’s a problem so we’re hoping to get fairness across the board and that’s what that’s all we’re asking for for us any other questions actually we’re out of time you guys have questions I’m sure Lou can stick around you can catch me here I’ll hang around for a while so thank you so much for coming and we’ll be in your area coming up pretty soon so thank you our next program will be on the e

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Bridget Whipple on Warm Springs weaving and basketry traditions

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:52 +0000

well good morning everyone all right about half the classes are awake here but good morning everyone morning all right now we got an excited Bunch wonderful and welcome to the ten many voices ten voices is part of the core of Discovery 2 TR traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit it’s a national traveling exhibit been on the road since January 2003 and continue to travel through October of 2006 what we do here in the T of many voices is we bring in a wide variety of presenters to share with us different aspects of that Lewis and Clark expedition we also like to hear from the descendants of all those American Indian nations and we’re living here long before the arrival of ly Clark and this morning we’re pleased to have with us Bridget Whipple she’s the cultural Anthropologist for the confederated tribes of the Warm Springs reservation and she’s going to talk about weeding and basketry traditions so let’s give Bridget a warm welcome to the T wel can you hear me okay um like you said my name is Bridget W and I’m from Warm Springs and um welcome you know to the Columbia River I’m sure you all live here but welcome um to to our land when it was you know before the treaties but what I’m going to speak about this morning are some of the um the weaving stuff that we do and what I brought today are um these are Tuli rushes and Tuli rushes have have a long history with our tribes we um use them for housing um there’s a frame outside on that side of the Discovery Center that has a um like a A-Frame and what they used to do is um weave the tulies and make these mats that was part of the housing we didn’t live in TS you know like you see on the the movies um those were the Plains Indians and you know we’re from the colia river river so we use two Le them to pass some around so you guys can touch them but tulies um had many many other um uses um I mean this is part of the seeds that when you get a Tulie they’re about this tall you about three of them put together they’re about you know about 8 9 ft tall and then we cut them down into the sizes that we need and you know we dry them but some of the uses that we have for these are um when babies are born babies will get a baby name before they’re a year old and they’ll like lay them on the mat and the mat might be about as big as this table and sometimes the mother will be holding the child or they’ll just lay the baby on there then they’ll get an Indian name a baby name and then as they get older they’ll have another mat and they’ll get a child name and then when they go through they write a passage as an adult and then they give an adult name and then again they’ll have a mat um when people get married they the couple that’s getting married they’ll stand on a mat it’ll be a wedding mat and then when people pass away they get wrapped in the that so there’s a lot of um uses for it um um it’s used as decoration I’ve made some at my house that I use today as place mats um there’s just a lot of different things that they’re used for sometimes people use them as decoration like I’ve seen crowns made out of them in this shape um made out of the tulies and then they cut them and you know they’re used for decoration as well I’ve seen them made into bags like this but they made out of tulies and then they’re um measured like this then you have a Tulie bag and they’re real um sturdy they last last a long time and um just kind of a neat neat um plant and it grows in like marshy areas you probably see them along the comia river and you know they they’re just neat when they’re fresh and green you can pull them out of the water and there’s a little bulb on the end that you can eat it’s really really sweet um another one that I have is um Willow I pic cut these yesterday um we were building a sweat house and Willows used for a number of things also um like I said the sweat lodges we make them takes 12 about this size 12 of them to make one sweat lodge for for a family so we constructed a new one yesterday cuz we always make a new one before it snows and when we were younger if we got into trouble our grandma used to tend us down to the creek and tell us to pick out a willow for our and then when we got back that was what we got worked with so pick the fat ones if you ever get outet they don’t hurt as much as the little ones and this is also Willow um we stripped this earlier it’s not really the right time to get the willow right now for weaving um I we just you could get the willow pretty much anytime for the sweat lodges but for the weaving you have to get it around early fall like August September and um I can send some of this around here let that’s a fresh one and I can send some of this this is that type of of Willow split um three directions that’s a traditional way is to split our Willow in three ways after you take the skin off of it but to make a basket are you guys going into the museum no oh well if you get a chance when you go into the museum you’ll see the Huckleberry back baskets that’s what this stuff is made out of where they call them the cck aat baskets and this is for the outer the inner I don’t have any with me it’s called bear grass that’s used as the the inside the poing but the Willows really um really a neat fiber to work with cuz you could gather and I gathered this earlier and I have some more rounds like this and we’ll save them up for 2 or 3 years and um to make one basket and we only work on them during the winter months not any other time of the year and one of the other things I have is this is called a corn husk bag and my grandmother gave me this one um it’s another Twining method it’s used the husk to the corn with cordage and you wrap it and then twine it together it’s a really long process um I don’t really know the history behind it I just when I was about seven or eight my grandmother gave me showed me a bag and this was the bag she showed me this bag and she showed me $7 and she’s like which one do you want and then I was like looking at the money and my mom’s pitching me take the bag take the bag you know and so I took the bag and my grandma puts the money in the bag we could tap this down but it’s kind of has a neat story cuz every year on our birthday we get to choose something from her and I have almost all of her corn husk bags now every year I got the same kind of bags um but those types of bags were used um as a trade item on the Columbia River they were used um in marriage ceremonies they make come very large as well and if um a wedding was um a good thing between the two families um they would fill them with roots and or dry fish or you know something that showed that the young lady getting married knew how to do that so and this is um this has a twined edge this is called a shakai or a um Indian suitcase um it’s I just like it so this on is a side piece like I’m wearing right here but um this was a really good trade item on the Columbia River and it has a twined edge and with buck skin and we can pass this around and this one is a cedar bark basket it’s not twined it’s folded it’s taken from cedar bark tree and the history behind this basket was for portable storage that was needed quickly like if we were in the mountains picking huckleberries we could pull a piece of bark off of a tree and make a basket like in half an hour and um if we sealed it with pitch it could make it waterproof so but a lot of times it was used to um just store excess berries to haul them home or um if you find her medicines or teas that you want to well you stuff them in there and um just store them but the there’s another story behind this um our elders used to talk about is this woman her name was papia and if you didn’t listen and if you didn’t um mind your parents or whoever was taking care of you or if you didn’t mind your teacher she’d come at you in the middle of the night and she have on her back like this and she’d stuff you in it and take you away you know and it and our elders used to say don’t look out at night because she going to be peeking in at you and if she has her basket on your back on her back she’s looking to take you away because you’re not being a good child so next time you look out your window and it’s dark on Halloween but we could pass this around do I have any questions yeah it’s made out of the cedar bark tree just one piece of wood one piece of bark what you geten away in the basket youever away the basket I never got taken away in the basket no look out was basket we used to when we were little kids you know our grandma would tell us the story and then we’d like run out and peek out the windows and sometimes we’d have somebody scare us but the and do they just to the block off the off the tree and then they tie it up so it’ll stick together yeah it’s one piece of bark and then you fold it up and it’s just one piece did any of your friends get taken away from that no but we have a video um from about 1950 and they had showed how a baby was taken away or a child was taken away but it was like a play you know just to show the kids to be good you ever any of the basket do you know anyone who’s been taken away a basket what kind of tree was it to put the um basket together a cedar bar three to T she was the basket woman can you say that who made the basket I did I made it do you have schools what you have Indian Schools Indian schulls no school yeah we have Indian schools where I live we have our own school with kids like you guys how do you speak in Indian if I told you good morning I’d say it that means good morning in my li can you say it no took we get to get the basket over yeah it’ll make it over there keep the everything moving guys everybody get a chance to see it do we have some more questions for bridg you did any rituals I had the first friiz cat on the other side did you do any rituals we do yeah when some of the things I talked about like with the Tuli mats with the baby that’s a ritual when they get their baby name that’s one of them yeah the land that we’re standing on um a little bit closer to the river was a an Indian village here that people theas people lived at and um it was called NE flu and it mean Rippling water on the Rocks which meant it was real shallow but it was a fishing area so all along the Columbia River where we’re at was there was Villages and fishing and Gathering and um everything was here how do they decide the baby names and can you share yours or is that something that’s like um well a baby name is given for a certain purpose like when the if the baby was born in the spring like I have two daughters um my oldest daughter her name is Rose Bud and she was named after a lady um from Montana that showed me how to be work so and her name was Rose but her um Indian name is is Chapa which means Where the Wild Roses Grow and then our younger daughter um my husband Sue from South Dakota and his family um wanted to give her a name so she has two names um my aunt named her um lookl Kash me which means um shiny sunflower and then um my husband’s family we named her H sh which means three stars woman which is their family name so when you say her whole name you know kind of a long name for a fouryear old and then as they grow older they’ll get another name my name um adult name is Yo which is my grandma’s grandmother’s name so the adult names are usually handed down you know how to say hello in your language no do you do it depending on the time of the day so like I said it’s morning so means good morning please say good night language how do you say good night in your language um um um where did you get the string on bag I’m not b the cornhouse bag the string the the handle it’s a deer skin bu skin how do you say oh goodbye in your language goodbye how do you say goodbye in your language it means see see you later do you know what look like right here I don’t have I have ten of shoes on Grand I you say buffalo langu who wants know how to say buffalo didn’t have Buffalo my friend do you have any Indian shoes yeah here look at Len can you talk about the importance of salmon for a little bit yeah sure um salm to our people related to the water water means everything to our people it’s what gives life um when you talk about the Columbia River we call her inana which means the big big water or the Big River and it’s where we got everything um we got the fish from her we we got the clean ourselves from her we drank from the river um it meant everything when we did our sweat bath we took the water into the sweat with us but the fish coming out of the river meant that we were going to live we were going to survive um sometimes like the um cedar bark basket you could line that cedar bark basket with the pitch but you could use the salmon skin as well which would make it really waterproof um or you could even eat the salmon skin if you we got it hot on the rocks in the fire and it was kind of like chips almost um so but the salmon in our culture was was like everything it meant everything to us it was a trade item um they wind tried it they when salt when the Traders came like Louis and Clark they brought salt and sugar um we learned how to Salt s and in barrels that they brought and um so salmon was you know our life blood as well as with the water but when people when our people live here all the time um like I was saying right below us is a was the old village and um you know our people that lived there you know had the salmon and they dried it and traded it with the other Indians and they traded things you know like stuff made with the willow or stuff made with the chulis as well because some people were known for fixing salmon some people were known for their bead work some people were known for their weaving and it was your specialty that made you give you trade items to trade with other people so um on my mother’s side of my family we’re weav you know all you know all the history that we have all the way back it shows that our people leave you know we did the corn husks and we did the tulies and and all of that but on my dad side my dad’s from the river too um my mother’s Wasco my dad’s Warm Springs and my on my father’s side they were fish people in the fishing and Gathering so we had to learn how to dig the roots and pick the berries and um do all of the beeder stuff so my children get to learn both you know they’re really rich in that Heritage and they’re learning how to do everything you know they go out with us and clean fish when it’s fishing time and then we’ll get to weave in the winter and we’ll go dig and pick and we’re part of the ceremonial digging for the the louses and um it’s just it’s a rich rich culture you know and we keep it intact just by practicing it what do you eat there besides fish what do you eat besides fish we eat beer meat we eat elk meat um we eat the berries like the huffle berries and the wild strawberries and um popcorn berries choke cherries um all the different kind of roots do you eat rice do you eat rice not really only want to go to Chinese restaurant I would like to ask do you teach your children in the school your Creed language the language yeah yeah my my grandmother who showed us how to weave she doesn’t talk English to my children only POS the language you made pizza you know how to c fish do you know how to clean fish yeah do you eat any other kind of fish we do we eat trout we eat um S I only like s in the trout go to want know if you go to Warm Springs water slide my kids do right tra time for one or two more questions guys move be back here do you have any Indian money do you have Indian money do I have Indian money yeah my trade goods are my Indian money the school what were the schools made what kind of school schools out of like out of these out of the Tuli the Tuli re man let’s Thank You Bridget sharing with us let’s please give her a round of applause e

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Canoe Lost in Current at the Cascades Portage

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:07 +0000

Saturday April 12th 1806. rained the greater part of the last night and
this morning untile 10 A.M. we employed all hands in attempting to take up
the lost Canoe. in attempting to pass by a rock against which the Current
run with emence force, the bow unfortunately took the Current at too great
a distance from the rock, She turned broad Side to the Stream, and the
exertions of every man was not Sufficient to hold her. the men were
Compelled to let go the rope and both the Canoe and rope went with the
Stream. the loss of this Canoe will I fear Compell us to purchase another
at an extravigent price. after brackfast all hands who were employed in
Carrying the baggage over the portage 11/2 miles which they performed by 4
P.M. the nativs did not visit us in Such Crouds to day as yesterday. we
Caused all the men of the party who ha Short guns to carry them on the
portage for fear of Some attempt on the part of the nativs to rob the
party. The rain Continued at intervales all day. in the evening after
everry thing was taken from the lower Camp I Set out myself accompanied by
the Cheif of the Clah-clal lars to the head of the portage. as we passed
the remains of an old Village about half way the portage, this Cheif
informed me that this old Village had been the residence of his Tribe
dureing the last Salmon Season. this village I mentiond in decending this
river, but did not know the Tribes that had inhabited it that time. Capt.
Lewis took a vocabulary of the languge of those people whilst I had all
the baggage taken across the portage & we formed a Camp at the place
we had encamped on our way down.

at my arival at the head of the portage found about 20 of the natives of
the Wy ach hich tribe who reside above the rapids, with Capt Lewis. those
people appeared much better disposed towards us than either the
Clahclallah or Wahclellah and Condemn their Conduct much. Those tribes I
believe to be all the Same Nation their Language habits manners dress
&c. are presisely alike and differ but little from those below the
Great Narrows of this river. I observed a woman with a Sheep Skin robe on
which I purchased for one Elk and one deer Skin. the father of this woman
informed me that he had killed the animal off of which he had taken this
Skin on the mountains imediately above his village, and that on those
mountains great numbers of those animals were to be found in large flocks
among the Steep rocks. I also purchased 2 pieces of Chapellell and Some
roots of those people. as the evening was rainey and ourselves and party
wet we Concluded to delay untill the morning and dry our selves. The
Indians left us about 6 P M and returned to their Village on the opposit
Side. mountains are high on each Side and Covered with Snow for about 1/3
of the way down. the growth is principally fir and White Cedar. the
bottoms and low Situations is Covered with a variety Such as Cotton, large
leafed ash, Sweet willow a Species of beech, alder, white thorn, cherry of
a Small Speces, Servis berry bushes, Huckleberries bushes, a Speces of
Lorel &c. &c. I saw a turkey buzzard which is the 3rd which I have
Seen west of the rocky mountains. the 1st was on the 7 inst. above quick
Sand river. for the three last days this inclusive we have made 7 miles
only.

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