Closed Captions Audio Described

Jeff Painter of the Clatsop Nation discusses his people's sophisticated trade networks spanning Alaska to California, their peaceful greeting customs, and how Lewis and Clark misunderstood Clatsop trading practices. He explains the cultural and spiritual significance of songs, gambling, and potlatch ceremonies, and describes the canoe carving, traditional armor, and shell money that enabled the Clatsop to thrive as middlemen traders at the mouth of the Columbia River.

Transcript

0:01 Yeah, for now.
0:04 I know
0:10 we gonna do a quick mind checker. She thank you.
0:16 Check. Did you say check, check, check, check, check, check. We're good. Thank you.
0:29 No, that was a mic check. So it wasn't he to check? Yeah. Ok. Well, we're all together now. It's a little warmer. Now, are we now? That's, I think we, but it's been a beautiful day and uh it's been a great day here at the exhibit and we've had a lot of speakers. This is the Tent of many voices. You now city of those who have not had heard any speakers. We're at the Lewis and Clark Core Discovery Two exhibit. We're a traveling National Mobile exhibit.
0:52 We started out in 2003 in Monticello and we come all the way to the ocean and we're gonna go all the way to St. Louis and finish in 2006. And we have done this with the participation with many different federal agencies that Natural Resources conservation service all the way to the EPA have made this trip possible. There are many different exhibits around this area to see, including a 35 minute audio tour right next door, if you get a chance to see that,
1:16 and uh we will be open Monday and Tuesday as well here in this tent at Tent of many voices. This is where we have a variety of speakers. Everybody from um scholars that have spent 20 years studying the journals of Lewis and Clark all the way to uh native poets and dancers and first person interpreters. And today we with this special presenter, we have Jeff painter of the classic tribe and he's been speaking in the Columbia River Trade Center, which is very close to here.
1:41 Let's give a really fine round, round of applause to.
1:51 So uh I'm gonna start with a song and then I'll introduce myself in our language and such, we'll see if these slides work or not. I was working on that right up until uh about five minutes before I got here. So, uh we'll see we've had some uh technical issues. So I reformatted some of my stuff. If not, I'm used to speaking orally in front of my tribal people and we can carry on and we'll just have a great picture back there.
2:16 I'm gonna need a still one of these. I'm gonna be working from down here. I it doesn't bug you guys, but I, I cannot stand up there. My elders always told me don't stand higher than the smallest person who sits in your room so
2:32 you can retort this. It's OK.
3:37 Thanks.
4:01 Uh So that, that's a gambling song. Um, or what my grandma to, why we calls a lucky song. And, uh, gambling is really complicated. I, I hope you've got to talk to, uh, Ruby and, and, uh, invite out here with the games and, uh, gambling looks like
4:22 something's going on but that's not what's going on. And a part of gambling, especially the guessing games is to have medicine people and singers on your side that can make it possible to see what they're doing over there with their spirit eyes and they've got people on their side trying to do the same thing to you. There's songs like this one that make your side lucky and you're better at guessing what's going on. There's songs, different songs that we couldn't sing with a
4:47 recording that are fogging songs that keep the other side from seeing what you're doing and puts up a wall that their sear can't see through. Um, so these lucky songs like this grandma, why we always says it makes you feel good, it makes you feel happy. They're very upbeat like that. And, uh, she, she always tells people go out and buy a lottery ticket. Now you got luck on you. So, as soon as you leave here, let's see, today is Sunday. So we're a day late, right?
5:10 You gotta buy one for Wednesdays. But, uh, that's a lucky song from, uh, the U Rock and, uh, Telma people down south. So, in uh Shan Jargon. Close Maca Taco, close tope de Chao. Close, Clyde Co uh Naka Ma Lang Khoa K painter Naka Lang Kishu be
5:35 l uh Pelum, peat, peat
5:39 pet to uh Pelum to cook, butler, painter, Casey mcmillan Tums. Uh like that day. Now, I see uh close to uh Nua Massy Conway, Nate. So most of what I said there is uh welcome you to my land.
6:03 Um This is the land of the plaza people that you're sitting on, a cousin of the Chinook tribe and uh one of the five Chinook and speaking peoples. Um And we still call it our land because it's untreated, unpaid for unsettled and uh has a lot of squatters living on it now.
6:22 No hard feeling so, mostly no heart feelings. Um I said that uh my family members are from the village of uh Qua, which is where seaside sits now with a population of about 6000 at the time, right before Lewis and Clark got here. Um The village at Ne Neat and Nant to it, which are right next to highway 101 where the Gateway to Discovery
6:44 Natural Coastal Natural History Center is where we have some offices. So right there were two little villages that my family lived in and then the NATO, which is where the uh two guys dressed in fur, got lost and build their little stick shack uh right near the NATO village there. Um Those guys were celebrating. Um That's where most of my family lived and most of my family members from
7:07 uh my dad's side, my dad's here uh by the way, built in maybe GO V uh
7:17 Well, most of my family uh lived in that area, especially on my dad's side, the Klatz up side of my family. Uh only uh my great, great, great, great. And that's the last time you'll hear me number of greats because native people just say grandpa. But uh my great, great, great, great grandpa George W Cook owned the entire west site from the top of the Hilder
7:37 in Astoria out across Young today and Lewis and Clark River um to where Cook Slough is named after him. Um and then property up in Old me. And uh so that's where my people are from. I said, I, I thank you for your good ears and your good hearts and I hope I don't say anything that offends you. But if I do let it drop off of you when you walk out of here, this is supposed to be fairly lighthearted. And uh
8:01 and I welcomed you traditionally our people. What, what you would have done on the coast is you would have come by canoe and you would have been off the coast, you're not allowed to land. It's kind of like boarding a skipper ship and you know, it may I come aboard as you may. So your canoe would sit off there in the water and nobody touched land and you'd have to sing your song. Asking to be welcome. And then we'd sing one of our songs and one of our songs would be, uh,
8:28 see if I can catch it here. Got a couple of 100 songs rattling around your head. In fact, it's hard to get the one.
8:35 Ok. So, we sing to you, you don't know your song. So, that's all right. Just sit there and be, be you do sign language or something and we'd sing. Uh, um, oh, hi. I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel,
9:02 ah,
9:06 I feel, I,
9:14 and we'd sing that a bunch of times and the ladies would be doing hand motions like this as we're singing and sing come this way. Otherwise the guy's gonna be naked, hand motions like this. Don't come or some, some such thing and then you come and you'd be welcome. And the first thing that the Klos are known for, they're known as the peaceful native people. And, uh, they would sat you down and asked you if you needed something to drink, give you some salmon and some salal to eat
9:39 and, uh, made you comfy, made you a bed in one of the houses and then asked you what the heck you were doing here? Uh The lost guys had it all backwards. They showed up and said, we're here. This is what we're gonna be doing. And, uh, we're gonna be building this thing to make sure you guys don't come visit us and the doors close at dusk. And, uh, we'll open again after dawn. And, uh, by the way, we're,
10:01 we're gonna be camping out for a little while because we're really hungry. Uh, um, we're really, really lost. We're really cold. Our shirts are running off of our bodies and we need some help and that's how they ended up over here. By the way, they had a boat over there to decide we want to stay on the Washington side with the chinooks over there who, uh, most of the tribes on the other side of the river are in constant warfare. Um,
10:26 some say still to this day, but historically and a lot of warfare. No, I love my cousins but, um, a lot of warfare from the Columbia River that north side all the way up into Upper BC. A lot of tribes dropped there fighting over a lot of resources, but very close to each other. Bumping elbows a lot. So they went to war with each other a lot and, and, uh, Lewis and Clark kind of keyed in on that.
10:49 And also found out there's a lot more over here. They sent a little trip over and gosh, there was food that they just couldn't get over how much food there was a lot more shelter from the weather and they ended up up in a toll, um, where Chief col said this would be all right place for you to swap, just make sure you leave next year, you know, when you're not. Um So that's, that's a great history.
11:12 Um I've got some cute little pictures here if they work. So let's see.
11:18 All right. Come on. Um, this is a shot of our new canoe. Uh, we have a 32 ft ocean going canoe that we just had a poll out for. And it's, uh, the first Klotz of ocean going canoe that we've had carved in some things, maybe 100 and 50 years, probably closer to 200 years. And, uh, this is a still from the, uh, movie that was made for the National Park Service.
11:40 Uh, that will be playing Tuesday, but it, it's playing up there now in the court and I might get a chance to tell you a little bit about that. So there's the canoe with, uh, four folks in it. It actually takes about, uh, 10 to 12 people to pull that canoe through the water. Well, uh, but it will go all the way out and hunt whales, uh, very seaworthy, seaworthy. So that's just kind of fun. But it is part of trade.
12:05 Rivers are our highways. The ocean was our highway around here. And, uh, the Kla of people traded all the way up into Alaska or got goods from Alaska by trading with our, uh, relatives up on Vancouver Island, all the way down the coast to, uh, middle and northern California, all the way east, at least to Soli Falls. And some people ventured all the way out in black black bean country, uh, Lakota country to trade.
12:30 And, uh, most of it was because of the news. So it's important to know your geography. Um, you, you are here,
12:39 you're kinda sore of, let's see if this works. You're kinda sort of here. All right. And, uh, on the other side there, that's where our cousins live. Um, our territory mostly ended at least as far as the government's concerned. Um, we didn't call ourselves tribes and we didn't call ourselves plaza by the way. Um, Lasa is a name that the South
13:04 Africa people of the Sola Falls call this, it means dried, pounded dry, pound salmon, really, really good salmon. Um, the, so our territory, at least for governmental purposes, goes up the river here to saddle mountain down here to cannon at Elk Creek and then all the way up to the tip. So that, that's us. And then the people next to us said, ok, well,
13:27 we'll call ourselves this and we'll call this area ours and Kamu said, we'll call this us, but we didn't call each other that we, we all share the same language and, uh, little variations of it, but same custom, same spirituality. We were intermarried up to kazoo, which is really important for trade purposes too. Um, if you want to make a really good deal with. Somebody. Marry your son or your daughter off to him
13:51 and then they'll make a deal with you because your in-laws, you'll get a better price. They get a better price from you. They get free stuff from you when you hold a potlatch. Uh, and so we had relatives on purpose all the way up past Van Cooper Island all the way down in northern California. Um, all the way up over past, so Ia Falls and it was mostly for let's make a deal. So, you know where you are?
14:16 Let's see. Um So this is really cool. This is some ironic process. I was looking for maps to make this presentation. And so I googled uh NASA uh photographs of the land to see what I came up with and I'm gonna step back so I can enjoy this. But um watch what happens here. So this is an undo page right off the web from last week.
14:39 So here's where we're at right down where that little dot is more or less and we start zooming out, zoom it out and see if you see it before I outline it for you. You see that
14:55 what happened there,
14:59 see that face, that woman's face, all of our stories from British Columbia all the way down into the southern central Oregon. Talk about this land being a woman that would provide for your every need. Uh We always talk about here on the coast. When the tide goes out, the dinner plates set, you don't have to work too dang hard around here to get fed. Um,
15:23 anthropologists tell us that the average plateau works something like 12 hours a week to meet all of their needs. Shelter, food and clothing. Now, what do you do with all the rest of your time?
15:35 Well, as is true on most of, most of the northwest coast in into Southeast Alaska, you spend most of that other time, free time developing cultures, spirituality, traditions, customs, um Hanging out training, visiting relatives, telling stories and making sure you have a really deep culture. It's one of the reasons why the art on the northwest coast is so intense and so developed. He had all kinds of time to do. It
16:00 didn't have to be running around chasing deer like Lewis and Clark or whoever they knew where they were and ate a bunch of other stuff. Those guys hated salmon. They nearly starved to death because they wouldn't eat salmon. They wanted to eat dogs, they were eating their shoe leather at one point and trying to boil their, their jacket. Um, when there were mussels and clams and seaweed, all kinds of good stuff to eat. They, they wanted to eat dogs, watch your dog there.
16:28 So, uh, I thought that was kind of interesting. I ran across that totally by accident.
16:34 Um So here we are the bigger map of, uh, our trade area. This is for the most part our trade area. It actually goes down here um past the Maya um where some of our trade goods came up from and it actually goes across the ocean to China and Russia, we've been trading with China, Russia and Spain for at least 200 years before Lewis and
16:58 Clark got here and some say quite a few more, possibly 400 years with China. Um but when they got here, they saw Chinese trade beads Russian goods, iron tools and implements that they didn't think they were gonna see because they hadn't seen them anywhere else along the I really see him kind of spotty here and there. They met fluent English speakers that also spoke French and Spanish, ARN
17:20 jargon and already incorporated French and Spanish into it. And uh so these guys were uh pretty surprised they didn't come as traders too, which is an important thing to remember. They were explorers hoping to control and dominate and get settlement for the rest of the West. So they were gonna figure out what all the routes were and where all the mountains were,
17:41 they were gonna map them and as much as possible, identify the tribes. And if you listen to Bob Miller last night, he really broke down probably better than anybody I've ever heard. Why are you identifying all these tribes because they own the land? So when you get back, that gives you your laundry list of who you've got to go start meeting with if you want that land
18:04 or if you want your settlers to be able to settle that land. Um So they weren't traders, they were explorers on military expedition and they got to the mouth of the river. Uh right there at Lewis and Clark River and they told you, Poboy, we're just gonna hang out pretty much over the winter is what we're thinking at this time. Um We need a little spot to build a little thing. We're gonna build a house by the way.
18:28 First folks that we know that ever came, built a house in our land. Now, we had a lot of people from European descent living with us at that time and Lewis and Clark remark in their journals, there's quite a few number of red hairs and tall lanky, blue eyed
18:45 Indians living here. Uh That doesn't explain my genetics though. Uh I should back up to my introduction. My mom's got some kind of scan movie thing going on, but we're not really sure because part of her family was left on a door doorstep at an orphanage in Minnesota. So we're not real cool sure on that, but we got an Holy Olsen in there somewhere, which is a pretty big clue.
19:07 Uh And dad's got French and, and who knows what else is going on in, in his, in his family history as well as plaza. Um But as native people. We never have to find ourselves by blood. Um, period. We had a whole bunch of French guys that are identified as plaza living with us that have no Indian blood at all. It's, what's your language? What's your spirituality and how do you live?
19:27 And it's still that way people carry around certified degree of Indian blood cards. And that just tells you how much loo you might be or whatever it is you are. But I know full blood Lakotas that could not get into most of the ceremonies. I've been around because they don't speak their language and they don't practice their religion and they, they just lost them. And so blood doesn't really mean a whole lot of easy. Who do you live with? How do you live your life? Um I have a really hard time living as a plain
19:52 person. I live in Southern Oregon right now. I'm surrounded by Lakota, Tacoma, Ku UBA Europe cla. Um So that's how I live most of the year is I follow their seasonal cycle. I speak their language. I practice their culture when I'm in my backyard. It's a lot easier to practice my culture.
20:13 Uh So here we are Russians, all kinds of people that were trade with, see if this keeps working.
20:22 So these are the major trade centers, at least according to anthropologist, uh the big, big dots are the big major ones and then the little ones are what they consider minor ones, but still a whole lot of activity going on. You know, when Lewis and Clark got to Sola Falls, for instance, they remarked that there were at least 40 30 to 40 different tribes gathered at that place at that time doing a bunch of trading. Um And that's
20:46 one of the big dots
20:49 right there now underwater. And, uh I think I put a picture in that for you. Uh, somewhere here. So these are the trade centers and the routes connecting them. At least as far as anthropology knows, these are the ones that are well worn trails, well known stories about trade that was going on.
21:11 Um And notice out from Florida going all the way to Cuba and uh out in South America, there was a lot of traveling going on, people visiting a whole lot of folks. So from the northwest coast and on up in Alaska, uh this is what they had to offer basket skins, berries, whale blubber, whale oil and unicon oil, salmon canoes, blankets shelves.
21:35 And uh they were bringing that to the party. We had Villa from Vancouver Island, all kinds of other shells and shell money, root salmon, unicon again, whale oil. And we had armor, we had the Klatz made an armor and still know how to make that armor called clamen clamon were used all the way down into Mexico and all the in Alaska. And what there are is an elk
21:59 hide that's shrunk over a fire about a dozen times. So you wet, it, shrink it, wet, it, shrink it, wet, it shrink it. And you take a whole tide and you end up with a little bitty shrunken thing about this big, but it's about that thick and an arrow can't penetrate it. And they would rig them up like Viking. It looked like Viking and a medieval armor flunky for medieval armor. They'd rig them up like this around their sides.
22:24 They'd have willows around their necks and a shield that dropped down, made of bark. And those for the warring tribes, that was a good thing to have. But they cost you a bunch, a bunch of money. One report is, it was the equivalent of three canoes. A canoe was the equivalent of a white, which is about as many as anything you get. It was three canoes to get a clamor outfit
22:50 and they still talk about that up there. Why don't you guys start making your climb with good? Um Down from California and down in Mexico, uh Today Mexico feeds bows and sitting. Most of the slaves came from northern California on down in the slave trade. Although people became slaves just like Chicago will by getting captured from other people at war and stuff like that. Um Shell
23:13 and then the basket work, we all had basket work, but this is really like big time. They were known for it. But Unicon is a real small fish. It's kind of like a smell and it's so oily that once you dry the UIC Con, you can light it and it burns like a candle. And, uh, that's what they were used for a lot as well as seasoning food. Unicon oil is really good. You have to kind of acquire a taste for it if you weren't
23:37 born, you know, eating it, but it's poured on everything, dried salmon. You pour unicon oil into it, freshens it back up and then you can eat it, pour it on very berries is mixed with sala salt berries. Um Snow berry soup is one of the best things you ever eat, but it is kind of an odd tastes and they make it up in DC and Alaska and they take sober and mix it up with yon oil and it served to you. It looks like ice cream. It does taste
24:01 like ice cream. It tastes like eating bear fat. But um, Yukon oil is very good, very healthy. If the Lewis and Clark expedition knew about the benefits of cedar pine and unicon oil, they could have survived and never, and none of these shippers would ever suffer from spur. You could live off it. It wouldn't taste very good to eat that all the time. But
24:24 down the southwest blankets, pottery, axes and stone tools as well as uh tools up from the northern Arctic too. From the planes, horses, roots, buffalo hides and flint were their main trade items. Uh, from the Northeast shell beads. And w was there a big thing, uh, Southeast woven clothes and cloth
24:48 and then now from the Florida area area, turtle eggs and bird feathers, these things made their way all over the damn place. And, uh, I'm, I'm kind of wearing, let me make sure that's my last one. Yeah. So I'm kind of wearing a blend of some of this. Uh these cry shells don't belong here. These are from uh further down the baja
25:11 and, and uh the coast down in there, but they do belong here because we always traded for them. These hippo, the big dine shells. These come from the west coast of Vancouver Island and so do the little Dilia. Um But we always had them here because they were money. Um These big ones are worth more because it takes fewer of them to make a string. These little ones aren't worth as much because it takes
25:35 a whole bunch of them to make a string. Um These other shells I'm trying to do this without bumping on my mic. These are all of Bella shells. These are from California down into Mexico and Bo. Um This vest. Can you tell what this, this guy is doing here and it kinda looks like the ribbon's puking right now.
25:57 Um This, this vest is a design. You can't just make a, a design. People own these designs just like people own these songs, right? So I can't just make this design for one thing. We didn't have Raven Clan, Eagle Clan and all that kind of stuff here. That's more an Alaskan British Columbia kind of thing that dies out once you hit Washington. Um But this best design was made for me by how to clinic lady who is from the Raven Clan.
26:19 And uh I was teaching some of her kids and speaking like I do and uh she's just crying at the end of it. And she says, I have to make you something. And I have this design I saw in my head. So she made this design for the vest and I asked her what it meant. And she said, well, we have an origin story where Raven Skeeto brought the first salmon eggs and Skeeto was flying over the rivers and streams and dropped those salmon
26:42 eggs to make the first salmon people which came before us. And uh so this is Raven dropping the first salmon eggs out of his mouth. And she, I said, well, how did that come to you? And she said, because um, you feed our Children just the same way that the Raven fed us by dropping those eggs, you drop ideas that makes them feel good, good at all the native people and proud and they wanna learn more. And, and so I wear this
27:07 um in honor of those people up there. But this kind of design would be common down here as well as CCA blankets and other things from there. Um Let's see, this hide it is from here. So is this one? So is this one this didn't tell you, like I already said, is not from here. This uh cattail headband is from here as well as this cedar headband.
27:30 This is a common person's headband. So is that cat tail one? Um don't have to be achieved to have one. Just any, any old buddy. Um These shells
27:42 uh these are from here, but these are not. And this is uh clamshell beads. And you gotta imagine the kind of work that goes into this. So somebody takes clam shells like this, squares them off, cuts them off, squares them off strings, puts a hole through them and then strings all these square and they're about that square pieces together and then starts working on them on a piece of sandstone like this
28:08 until they get round and they make them in a uniform thickness like that for the most part. So these are actually from California. Um These beads which we're known for the Cobalt blue beads actually come from uh Russia for the most part. Um And got here from there. What else on my belt?
28:32 These trade beads, these blue trade beads. These are the ones we kept asking Lewis and Clark for that. They said they had to send back home for more. This, these were our favorites. Um These are from China for the most part, these antler tips are from uh Southern Oregon. This is from Florida. These, these uh abalones are from Southern California.
28:55 So we're a whole blend of all kinds of stuff up here. But it's because of where we are at the mouth of the Columbia River there. We had uh what's called a one for two sale. So you guys are used to two for one sales, right? Buy one, get one free. We had a one for two sale, which meant um you want one of this, you gotta give us twice as much. So why would you do that?
29:20 Well, if you were coming down from Alaska and you needed something from all the way out in the plains, I could save your life possibly by selling you that item here. You wouldn't have to make the rest of that journey and vice versa. If somebody on the planes need something from Alaska or from the coast, they could come down to Soila Falls and pick it up there when we came to trade.
29:44 And we, we didn't just sit here and make our money. We ventured out in the ocean all the way up to Vancouver Island, down to northern California and up the river, at least to Sola Falls. And so we were going and making deals all the time. Our one for two deals and so we got very, very rich uh Lewis and Clark and I don't normally mention them but because that's what we're here for.
30:07 Uh I keep bringing them up, Lewis and Clark didn't come as traders, remember. So they didn't bring a whole lot. Uh Actually they had some stuff to trade when they started off, but they had squat when they got here, they've given it all away for the most part and they didn't understand trading. They didn't know a thing about trading. And so those guys would come up and in our stories, I think there's some of this in the journals, but in our stories, they talk about those guys would come up and say,
30:32 um, I have an ALP and uh I want, I want for o for that and think that was trading. Now trading to us is a whole another thing. It's a social thing. It's not just an economic thing. It happens. Normally around a house inside a house, around a fire, we sit and chat for a while. I get to know you, you get to know me,
30:55 you might bring up what it is that if you're here for and I tell you to shut up, we're busy visiting still and eating and we drag this out for hours with gambling, those gambling songs and trading songs, we drag it out. Get to know you. Why are we doing all that? Well, you're our newspaper. There is no newspaper. So if you come trading from the east coast I want you to hang out.
31:18 Tell me everything you saw on the way out. Who'd you run into? Maybe I know them. How's the fishing up in Solido? Are they coming in yet? Should I start going up there? Do they have the canvas roots? Should we take a bushel up and sell them because they're dry? And, uh, the whole point of it is the visiting these guys didn't want to visit, they didn't want to hang out. So they show and say, here's what I want, here's what I'll give you. And then of course, the class of guys would say,
31:43 all right, um, I want twice as much as I usually want. Then if you're not gonna do the chatting part and Disney part, you're not gonna hang, then, you know, it'll cost you twice as much. And they say, well, what kind of deal is that? It's like, well, you could hang out if you want and, uh, it'll probably come down later on tonight when we're tired, you know, you could wear me down. But if you just want to make a deal and go back to the floor,
32:08 it's gonna cost you twice as much. And they complain to no end in their journals about the Klotz up and their wily traders, you know, speak in English and know what we wanna do before we tell them we want to do it. And, um, they just didn't understand training. Training is a social activity. It's built bonds. You know, if they were really smart, what they would have done was build some really strong bonds and said, you know,
32:31 there's gonna be some people coming behind this in a few years that want your land and it would behoove you to have really close relationships with us and for us to have really close relationships with you, we could help each other out. They weren't really thinking that way. They were tired, they were worn out, you know, they finally out of the ocean, they got to see the whale and they're ready to go home. You know, we're gonna make some salt, we're gonna repair our moccasins, make some extra pears
32:56 and uh we're gonna try to stay out of the rain as much as we can.
33:00 Um And this is a nook house, another typical uh kind of trading scenario, cooking scenario, fish grind hanging from the ceiling. Folks sitting around telling stories.
33:13 Now, this is uh soil right before it went underwater. And, uh these two ladies are pretty pleased, aren't they? They got all their dried fish in um, all kinds of fish dried up there. Fish heads down here in the lower right, drying filets, drying, they pound their salmon and then they air dry it, they didn't smoke it. Um And they got a good haul.
33:38 Um, anthropologists tell us that saliva typically moved about a million pounds of salmon every year just for trade. That's not what they kept for themselves. Salado still is a functioning community. They just don't have the falls and they don't have the ability to get salmon like that anymore. And, uh, like I mentioned, it's a social activity. This is the last dance held at the
34:02 Salado Trading House, uh, before the falls went underwater and, uh, notice these guys got some funny regalia for coastal people. They got planes, regalia for the most part. And that's really typical of our people to use other people's ideas for clothing, for customs. We would share songs with one another. So while we're sitting there angling and trading, you might try to humiliate me by saying,
34:26 um you try to outdo the other one by bettering them like our pot latch is I can give you more than you can give me. You know, I can give you more sand and then you can give me back. I can give you more blankets. I can give you better songs. I can give you better dances. And so what would happen here is, and also at our, our side on the mouth of the river here, folks would come together and a guy would say I got song for healing a really bad big toe
34:50 that I'm gonna give you guys and he'd sing that song and give it to him. Now that would look like he's given them something. But really what he's doing is saying you guys don't have the song for the healing, the big toe. So I'm gonna have to give that to you. Now, he's gonna be known forever as the guy that gave the big toe healing song. So that increases his honor. Now you're walking around with this Big Toe Heland song. And so every time you sing it, you would say this is the Big Toe
35:15 Heland song that I got from Big Charlie from, you know, South African people. So, you know, now you got this obvious link going on between the two families and it's a big social activity. This dance went on until the wee hours of the morning because the adults didn't get to dance together until after midnight. So you got the boys dance and then you got the Warriors dance, then you got the women's dance and everybody eats all this food that's laid out. And then around midnight,
35:39 the teenagers and people that aren't hooked up get to do their dance. And it's the only time men and women dance together and this would just go on forever. This is a contemporary celebration similar to the one in Soli. Uh This is last year, I believe the Neil people up in the sound uh or British Columbia um singing a welcoming song to start their hot lives. Their kids are learning
36:05 here. Saliva falls in full force right before it went underwater. Um And, and that fed a lot of our trade, by the way, at least from inland Salva Fall and notice in the back right hand corner, that big structure that's a fish wheel, an Indian invention. Uh, we had the wheel long time and what a fish wheel does is it's a big,
36:29 you've seen the paddle wheels on the side of the ship. It's a big one of one of those, but it's got catch cans that are made out of willows and later on, uh, reinforced with wire that are open baskets. And as that big wheel moves through the water, it scoops up salmon and drop some in a catch basin on the other side. A lot of times it was holding tents down in the water, but sometimes it would just be a big box.
36:51 So you go and leave your wheel all day long, sitting in one spot, come back the next morning and have 60 salmon land there in your box or in your holding tent, you dip them out. Uh, fish wheels operated in Columbia right up until the late fifties. And, uh, these guys are dip netting of these platforms. Very dangerous way to fish. These guys are on the bank.
37:16 Oh, and they saw fish wheel behind them too to see if I could go back with them. A couple of big ones back there.
37:24 Um This is full blown and this would be about 1937
37:30 fish are in. Guys are all down on the rocks. There were several different levels of waterfalls in saliva. Uh This is around the same time.
37:46 There you go. There's a busy spot. We got a couple of dip nets just laying down in the water waiting for a salmon to, to swim into them. And then they pull them up real fast and they have a cinch rope that locks them in there so they can work them up and imagine trying to yank a 60–70 pound salmon the side of the cliff. And you notice this guy is roped in, but they're all roped in because you can get pulled off and die.
38:08 And so they roped himself in. It was still a very dangerous thing to do. None of these guys are roped in. They're the bank.
38:18 There's the village in the background. It's a lot of Vian village. Um What's left of that village is on the other side of the railroad tracks and via the uh I I think of my directions now south of the railroad tracks in the Columbia River Highway. There's still a long house there. They still have the first time the ceremony there and other ceremonies there.
38:42 This is Chief Tommy Cooney Thompson. He was the last chief uh alive when the da when before the dam build up. Um His people agreed to sell the falls but didn't know what they were selling really. They thought they were selling uh the right to visit it. It wasn't very clear that they knew in 1960. Uh what they were actually selling and he died of heartbreak soon after
39:06 uh
39:10 the falls before and after. Um this is shot from the exact same spot. The photo on the left. Uh Let me see if I get this right. Yeah, the photo on the left was taken in 53. The photo on the right was taken in 74 and you can see how it's changed the water level and the landscape and it's actually filled in quite a bit more.
39:33 Uh, this falls is really not there like that anymore. On the right hand side at all, uh, the water levels come up and bury the entire complex including burial islands, building sites. There's con wearing his plate to regalia. My friend Bret Florence's mom needed all this regal for him when she was a little girl. She's warm spring. There's those trade needs that we love.
39:57 I just got a few slides here. Uh, arrowheads which we're known for all over the world. The best arrowheads came from the plaza people and the people of Oregon,
40:08 uh Beaver, which the trappers love deer and all danger. There's, this is the cedar. We did everything with cedar. We made our clothes out of cedar boxes, cooking implements. Um, our houses,
40:26 some of the berries from here and look at that. That's a rich woman. She's got coppers on her arm, coppers hanging from her ear, elaborate in her nose, coppers on her hat. Big cedar cape. And a cedar hat. Those are all trade goods too. Ok. Come on the big canoes.
40:50 These are Edward. Edward S Curtis photos uh taken from here, cattail masks which were used to cover houses as well as for eating on and sleeping on. And uh we'll put that as the end one. Um So trading is basically why we're here. We're one of the few tribes in the area that don't have a story about us coming from someplace else.
41:15 We were created here at Saddle Mountain. That's our origin story. Um The Chinooks share the same story that we do. Some of the neighboring tribes have stories about coming from inland and moving down toward the coast and getting stopped by the Klotz of and the Chinooks on the other side, they were too strong to conquer, but they kind of conquered their way down and, and uh from the inland to the coast trying to get to the goods here because the economy was here,
41:40 all the food was here and it's harder living uh except for maybe the A I the valley, but you go out to the Great Basin and out in the plateau. Uh It's a lot harder living than it is living here on the coast. And so people would try to move into the area. Another good reason to have alliances. If somebody was trying to move into your area and you could call up to the South and people and say, by the way, stop these guys or come back down here and reinforce us or down to the Telma
42:05 or twa tatoo, come on up and give us some help. Kick these guys back out. It was really easy to maintain in our territory and then you get a better trade next time. You know, that that would be our uh debt to you for helping us out and we pop at you and give you a whole bunch of stuff. And then from then on your trade would be at a discount. You know, you get a red tag every time you come.
42:27 Uh And that's just one of the trade centers uh, for your, your research purposes. It's really interesting to read about IOTA, Chaco Canyon. Uh Coo all the different trade centers. Great Slave Lake is an amazing trade trade center up there. They still have a huge trade center up in Noa and Kelowna. Um Port Alberni, Aala hust, all those villages still maintain
42:51 a very lively trade as we do. Uh, still here. Um And we're still, we're trying to revive our traditional trade practices, which means hang out, talk a lot, chat, eat some food and uh, do some gambling with us. Uh People are just scared to gamble with us so we gotta teach them that it's ok to hang out. Um
43:13 We were the Walmart in the northwest. Anybody worked for Walmart here. I don't have any Walmart in the northwest. You might have already heard me say this in another presentation. But we, yeah, and uh they have no health plan but it was one stop shopping and you are willing to pay twice as much in order to make, to make that one stop shopping.
43:34 The peaceful Klotz of people are, are still here, you know, still an active presence. Although we lay pretty low. Most of the time Lewis and Clark have been a reason to be more visible. Uh But we're still here. We're still active. Come up to the coastal Natural History Center. Hang out, talk a bit, um, talk to the volunteers when you see there's an activity going on. Uh come down and participate. You know, there's gonna be a lot happening
43:58 and uh I just wanna open it up for a few questions before wrapping it up before close. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, raise your hand, I'll come to you and then you got to look at and we can hear it. You said earlier that your grandfather owned a large piece of land in Astoria, the traditional war that I heard. Basically the Indians did not have a concept of. So my,
44:21 my grandpa was in Indian George W Cook married Mary Cook who was a full blood plat um in 1838 and he acquired maybe I should make this so public. But uh he actually ended up with two homesteads and an Oregon donation land claim. And uh, so you're kind of a wily guy. He was a friend of the, the local judge and magistrate.
44:47 And on top of that, he was a very wealthy guy. He owned the log pilling business, was responsible for building most of the canneries and most of the docks and providing wood for that. So he had a bunch of money and what he decided to do when they opened up the territory for settlement, he saw that the Indian people were getting, uh, I don't know how to say this nicely taken and, uh, that they couldn't purchase the land because anybody that
45:09 wasn't half blood or less was considered uh two s to hold land title. And so what he did was he bought as much of the land as they, as he could with his own money and let the people continue living on there and he held it in trust as soon as they had half blood Children that could hold land title. Then, uh, there records of him and his daughter signing off these titles to them, giving them their land,
45:33 um, in most cases free of charge, but it included some of the burial grounds, many of the sacred sites, although we lost a lot of them up at Fort Stephens in, in that area. But he bought up as much as he could as did other um, allies. So people for the most part up until Lewis and Clark, people married into these families and became Klatz of, you know, that was the deal is
45:55 you can marry my daughter, but you gotta learn our language, live with the four seasons or you better have a really good job that's bringing in income. Um But you gotta live with us. You can't just be a squatter or resident or a foreigner. You need to become us because it's us, we're here and then once sellers start coming in and you, you got this odd thing where people buy land and like today, people are transient. You know,
46:19 you grew up in a family in one area and then you just pick up because you got a job. Well, native people didn't just pick up because they're connected to the land and need to work with those plants and animals and roots and it could be transient like that. You know, we have time for a very, very short question. It has to be a short question. Who is a short question, buddy right here right here.
46:44 No. Yeah, I actually I have lived in a TV, but we don't have the TV. S here. Yeah,
46:52 ladies and gentlemen, we're out of time right now. If you have more questions, you can ask them. Wait after I'll, I'll hang out there like a mai in our language. Thank you for your good ears. Thank you for your good hearts. If I hurt any feelings, drop it as you go
47:15 coming up next, we're going to have, uh, Bud Clark.

Tent of Many Voices

Jeff Painter on Clatsop trade, culture, and Lewis & Clark

Jeff Painter

Clatsop

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Jeff Painter on Clatsop trade, culture, and Lewis & Clark

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