Pacific Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

The Pacific from Point of Clark’s View

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:46:29 +0000

Charles Fritz’s painting depicts the view westward from Tillamook Head on the northern Oregon coast, the promontory William Clark climbed in early January 1806. The composition is dominated by the Pacific Ocean stretching to a flat horizon, with the rocky headland falling away in the foreground. Fritz works in a representational, plein-air-influenced manner, building the scene with layered atmospheric passages: spray and surf along the basalt cliffs, the gray-green swell of open ocean, and a sky that carries the diffused light typical of the Oregon coast in winter. Figures, if present at all, are subordinate to the geography; the painting is essentially a landscape portrait of the vantage point itself.

On January 8, 1806, Clark traveled south from the expedition’s winter quarters at Fort Clatsop to the site of a beached whale near present-day Cannon Beach, hoping to obtain blubber and oil for the party. Crossing Tillamook Head, he paused at its summit and recorded in his journal that the prospect was the grandest he had ever beheld, describing the ocean breaking against the rocks below and the coastline extending southward toward what is now Ecola State Park. The viewpoint Fritz paints corresponds to that journal entry, one of the few moments in the expedition record when Clark allowed himself an extended aesthetic response to landscape.

Fritz, based in Billings, Montana, has spent much of his career retracing the Lewis and Clark route and painting its sites from direct observation. His 2004–2005 series of roughly one hundred paintings marking the expedition’s bicentennial was exhibited at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, and subsequently toured; this 2009 canvas belongs to the continued body of work that grew out of that project. The painting is held in the collection of Timothy Peterson. Fritz’s expedition paintings have become a reference point in contemporary Lewis and Clark visual scholarship, valued for their topographic accuracy and their close correspondence to specific journal passages, and this view of the Pacific from Clark’s lookout is among the more frequently reproduced images from the Oregon segment of his series.

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Mike Lyall on Cowlitz History and Lewis & Clark

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:09 +0000

oh you’re so quiet and timid we got to get you together get you focused we’re going to have a speaker so we I get ready so everybody hands on your knees eyes forward 1 2 3 good morning boys and girls good morning all right good morning good to see you glad you can be here you are now the tense of many voices and this is called core Discovery 2 and we are traveling National mobile exhibit we’ve been traveling all over the country we’ve seen so many places since we started out we started out in the year 2003 in the home of Thomas Jefferson in monachello in Virginia and we’ve been traveling all the way across the country and we finally reached the ocean and next year we’ll be coming all the way back and we’ll end up in St Louis that’s where Louis and Clark were 200 years ago and we’ll finish up there in September 23 2006 now here in this Mobile T what we do is we have a lot of presenters and speakers they come from all over the country to tell their story and interpretation of lwis and Clark we have native presenters such as singers and dancers and Poets we have Scholars people that have studied lisis and Clark they take the old um journals and they research them every day and they look at them so we have a lot of different people that come to this tent and tell the story of Louis and Clark so here today we have a special presenter we have Mike iel he’s a director of Natural Resources Council for the CIS tribe he’s also the vice chair of the tribal council so let’s give a nice warm welcome put your hands together for Mike AEL good morning good morning uh going to tell you some things you probably know and some stuff you don’t know uh first start out by welcoming you to ket’s Country um some of you may not be aware but before after it was CET country you are in Prince rubberland you didn’t know that one yeah Prince rubberland you’re part of Great Britain right here you’re in you’re you’re English now and then later on this would become part of Oregon over there except this was part of Oregon too and later on after that it would become Washington territory a part of Nebraska so in just a few moments we’ve gone from England to Oregon to Nebraska we’re back to Washington he didn’t even feel like you moved so anyway I’ll start out with a little bit of History uh in 1827 Governor Simpson said skena track runs from off the pet sound and Strikes the Colombia near point bellw skena was the college Chief and skena was the high chief cic were a little unusual in that we had 20,000 people many different villages with one Chief one high chief and that was skena he was my great great grandfather uh later on Governor Stevens would call skena track the C Trail and so you’re at the southern end of this the cets trail we were Traders we we like to trade uh our money in a long time ago was a special little shell called the dent talum and that little shell was also called hiqua and that was our money and it was exchanged in in what they called a fathom which was like 3 ft long and a fathom of the large shells was worth a huge amount of money and we know that that those little shells had great value because in South Dakota which is over over here right in here clear over there they had our dentum shells and we know that because the spiral flute D taum shell comes from only one place in the world and it’s right up the map right here on the Northern point of Vancouver Island and the queen Charlottes it’s the only place in the world that little shell comes from and I’ve talked to people from uh Connecticut that tell me that they have Den talum shells there as well so Vancouver was a trading post hundreds if not thousands of years before Lewis and Clark got here when Lewis and Clark came here they said said that this was a Marketplace equal to any in the world they saw people with sailor suits rifles pistols metal pots all things that they’ got from Europeans when Lewis and Clark came down the river and one of the big things that I have to laugh at my ancestors is we didn’t pick up on the significance of a boat loaded tour us coming down the river we’d seen people come up the river but we never realized anything important would be from somebody coming down the river so when you look at the map you see that me they came from here we’d seen people come from the ocean but we didn’t realize that they came from the other ocean too and that’s something that we didn’t realize so we’ll move on uh we traded and we traded from Canada down to California and in to the mountains of Idaho that’s how far we traveled uh I know that leis and Clark never met my ancestors because skena and all his sons were were large tall men for the time they were all over 6 foot tall Captain Clark was a very tall man he was 6ot and he would have noticed if there were tall indans there so I know that he didn’t meet them because our uh tribal history said that skena was away in business in in Canada when Louis and Clark came through so we know that that that those people didn’t meet with them so now I need to to talk about what did we eat well we ate salmon we had deer elk wapo Camas and berries and we would the fish came to us it was pretty neat setup really we grew the the the cus and the wapo and uh we would go to the mountains and pick the berries our tribe had a a special arrangement with the akamas we would trade salmon on the cetz river for berries on Mount Adams which today it seems kind of funny but at the time salmon were almost as common of sand on the beach and we could get berries for those salmon so uh and we had berries and we were able to preserve our food something that Louis and Clark couldn’t do you guys know that uh were Louis and Clark really hungry when they got hairs anybody know that yeah they were starving all the time they got here because they didn’t have the ability to preserve their food we preserved our food and we were able to do it better than than they would and uh as a result when they come into our villages we were able to serve them meals and we gave them berries we gave them berries in November and December like right now we were able to go and pull them out of the cupboard and there was some nice fresh you know berries that we could serve up for our guests so that was that was how we what we ate and that was how we preserved our food we had large houses some of the houses were huge they’re like modern apartment houses the uh large bigger uh plank houses were 200 ft long that’s almost as big as a football field and inside those houses there’d be partitions to where there would be each family would live inside the house just like an apartment house today and some of those houses were called plank houses and some were called long houses it just depended on where you lived but they were made out of boards and they were easily bigger than this tent and uh they were warm and comfortable houses so I already posed a question did we meet with Lewis and Clark and the answer is Maybe uh Lewis and Clark called us scutes which when you say callets and scutes uh it could well be uh because it’s really important to know that that the way we set our words the pronunciation of of Indian words was impossible for the Europeans and the Europeans their words were impossible for us to say so we had this case to where we couldn’t communicate so we had to guess and Lois and Clark called us scutes they called us huel and ketc now ketc means place of the cets and place of the cets is right here on the CET River and the Lewis River and along the Columbia River now for a very very long time I had read and I’d studied and i’ i’ even seen that one of the the great historians had misunderstood kitc he thought it meant River of the Kitz but once you understand that kitc means a place of the CET then it can be applied to more than one River and uh Lewis and Clark said of us we hear they are numerous they said that a couple different times and how numerous were we we were one of the biggest tribes in the Northwest we were 20,000 and uh we look right here see off the Puget Sound is Olympia and down here to point bellw is the Confluence of the wamit in the Columbia so we lived between Olympia and Portland and out to the West we lived out to Modern Raymond down through the wipa hills to the Columbia and then back up the the Columbia River to the Wind River and up the Cascades up to mount reineer and then over to Olympia it was a huge area we were a very large tribe and we had a huge amount of area so that’s that’s who we were that’s where we lived after Lewis and Clark the fur Traders came and our his our history said that our chief went to Fort George and Fort George is down right here by the mouth of the Columbia we call it asoria today and our chief went to the to the fur Traders and said I don’t like traveling this far can you move your your Trading Post closer to home and the Trading Post closer to home is here so the reason that Vancouver is here is because our chief went to Fort George and asked the fur traders to relocate closer to home and that closer to home became Vancouver so that’s that’s our connection with this area and after the fur Traders came then the settlers moved in and there were Indian Wars and during the Indian Wars our people joined the army my name my first name is Francis and I was I took me a long time to get used to that name and then I found out that that my first name is really someone else’s last name because my great-grandfather served with a lieutenant Francis in the Indian Wars and that name came into the family and he named his son my grandfather and then my father had the name and now me so I my first name is actually somebody else’s last name after the Indian Wars we we resisted signing a treaty after we had fought the wars the settler or the the United States wanted us to go live on the reservation and turn in our guns and go live with the people that we just defeated we didn’t think that’d be a good idea so we told them no and then at a later date we decided we’re going to have to to struggle for a recognition and prove who we are and we had a chief his name was atan stockham and he was appointed Chief by Lieutenant ulyses Grant and just right over here is Grant house and uh ulyses Grant made Antoine stockham the chief of the colge and atan started the the fight for recognition and 150 years later we finished that fight for recognition and we we were granted status that’s special to us it’s called acknowledged it means we knew you were here but now we understand that you really are the cat’s people and that was our history up to now so what do we do today well I’m director of Natural Resources Department today I have two dams in Rel lensing one on the callets one on the Lewis we’re working on salmon tracking on the toodle River and uh I’ve got biologists working for me that are checking gear for chronic wasting disease we’re checking Goose populations for their health we’re working to uh restore salmon passages to different areas and uh we’re working to protect cultural resources right here this bridge that’s if you could look out and see it just right you’d see there’s a bridge across the Columbia River that’s going to be replaced and when that’s replaced it’s going to disrupt a whole bunch of of uh surface and under that surface because people lived here for maybe 10,000 years there will be the the graves of of people so that’s things that we do so if anyone has any questions I’d be happy to answer it if you have a question what I do is I come to you after you raise your hand and then you ask the question and everyone can hear it so go ahead raise your hand if you have a question for Mike clat of people were did did they who was their last Chief or who was the courage I don’t know the name of the last chief of the classup but I can tell you that uh the classup people came up here and traded and if you this is an assignment for the teachers now you read the Molton Lois and Clark Journal set in book six and book seven and in book Seven it explains the role of the classup and the scutes and I’ll use the more modern map though the clups live down here the clups were intermediaries between the people on the the Upper Valley and the Lower Valley and so when Lewis and Clark said the Chinooks have been at war with the scales and the scal the Chinooks are not allowed above the war kayaks the clups were free to come up here the shinook weren’t the clups came up traded took the goods back down to the shinuk and the shinuk would give them goods and the clups would take them back and so that’s the role of the clups any other questions more questions okay let’s go back here what is your question are science are scientists still working on the project to find um where Lu and Clark are or where they also went are scientists still working on the project to find where L and Clark um also went uh I think we know where they went but I uh I know that uh one of the people in the Park Service Doug Wilson is out at Fort classup today and they’re working to find out all of the information they can at the the site of the fort classic to find out how long they were there and and what they ate while they were there and other things like that any more questions we got one back here all right good have you been able to preserve your native language and do you personally speak anything other than English uh I don’t speak anything other than English um I was probably the worst student on the planet so I always tell people English is my only foreign language but uh not me but other people in our tribe are preserving our Salish language the Kat had two languages the Salish we shared with the shahis the two languages are almost identical and the sahaptin we shared with the yakas in fact all of the yakam or the sahaptin speakers when they came here they were called click itats and click attat is really means sahap speaker we have a question over here I will come over here to you and you can tell your question how do you know that they used it all the stuff that you have here how do they know that they use what all the stuff that’s here all the Stu it’s here you mean like here on the table out there you mean like uh salmon and and Cedar that type of thing I I can tell you that Lois and Clark took really good notes and when you read those journals uh teachers it’s book six and book seven and then maybe one of the neatest one is the one that nobody knows about and that’s the White House journals does any of the teachers know about the White House journals raise your hand okay Joseph White House was a private with Lewis and Clark and Joseph sometimes he had Duty and he was gathering firewood and peeling potatoes and doing Army things but other days Joseph had some free time and when Joseph wrote Joseph was one of the only Journal keeper to write active entries so Joseph’s entries were written as they occurred everybody else wrote their entries they took notes and then they recreated them years later so sometimes on the days Joseph was free he gives us the best picture of everything and that’s book 11 and for you guys to study the journals the easiest and best way is to pick the date so like we would just say November 28th 1805 and go back and look and find out what happened any other questions question over let’s go it over here did any of the uh Eastern Oregon Indian tribes like the ellos and the caus did they were they involved in any of the trading down here oh absolutely uh the word Shoni in jargon means person from the interior so we know that people from Idaho came here we know that uh people from California came here and traded and we know that the uh well at least I’ve been studying it I believe there’s a people called wakan Nish Waki and I believe wanas SE and those are people called nutkin from the northern tip of Vancouver Island and those people were here all right we have uh time for maybe one more question let’s go over here how do you how do you know uh where Lis and Clark is bed how do you know where Lu and Clark are buried well um I think it’s written in in a history book uh Lewis is buried and I don’t know where somewhere down South Tennessee Tennessee yeah just Trail they see and then Clark lived a long happy life and died a very old man so they and and he he he wrote down a lot of stories and I think he I don’t know where he’s buried but St Louis St Louis Missouri right I I think it’s time for us to go but we got one more question if somebody’s ready let’s have one more question from this young man right over here go ahead do you do you think or know if leis and Clark pass through this spot where this T of voes is that do you think or no if leis and Clark passed where this spot is right here I think it’s really quite likely that yes they did pass by here uh the only thing is is on the way down I think they stopped on the airport side I don’t think they stopped on this side of the river so but on the way back they spent a couple days here because uh they sent a scouting party up the wamit river so uh they’ve certainly looked at this place if they didn’t stand here all right let’s give a nice big round of applause for Mike iel

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Neil Main on Gateway to Discovery and Northwest Coast Ecology

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:09 +0000

got he they were never good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome to the core Discovery 2 and the teny horses I see some familiar faces um for our next presenter this is Neil M and he’s going to talk about the gateway to Discovery and he does work for a land trust that manages the gateway to Discovery so I’m going to hand it over to new M please welcome him well thank you it’s a pleasure to uh be Mak your presentation both representing the Gateway Discovery and then the North Coast L con servy is who I work for and kind of the focus of my part of the program for those of you that have heard Doug Durer you you kind of got the historical context in terms of na na American element I’m going to focus a little more kind of the scientific side of uh the perspective of not only the historical context by which the the core Discovery come to because as you know for those of you that follow the concept of Discovery usually that includes some element of some unknown or new information and if you make your group small enough uh then everything is new information that is if you’re just telling your friend next door uh then you could well be be the source of Discovery for a certain piece of information for the person next door although the information may have been known for decades or centuries so the whole idea of Discovery is is kind of squishy and I know people have sort of wrestled with this on the core of Discovery and in a way it’s been a struggle to say what did they discover you know people had already been living here carrying on ecological interactions with every single element of the landscape for 10,000 years kind of what’s left to discover so that that’s one of it is sort of what wasn’t discovered that people might think was discovered and then what was actually discovered kind of in our cultural context and then the really challenging part and the part we’re all faced with today is what’s left to discover that is do we know enough to um sustain a culture like ours uh for the same period of time that the cultures had been functioning in the landscape we now uh inhabit so you can kind of set the time frame for what I’m talking about is 10,000 years and we’ll kind of pick 200 years as our operation period and that’s sort of appropriate given today and all the time that’s going on a couple of things that uh that I I’ll mention real quick one is Gateway to Discovery it’s a real place it’s uh 850 Square ft it’s on the south in the seaside for the local people you know it as the laabi gallery but it’s now uh the Natural History Center and there we we have initially started out to create a center where people would really dis use that Center as the gateway to Discovery that is discovering the incredible place that we have here uh we had to adjust a little bit because once we got going we realized that it wasn’t really so much in the gateway to e Cola State Park and sadle mountain and hug point and Fort Stevens but that just walking through through the building to the de that overlooks the Estuary ended up being the gateway to a Wildlife Museum I mean so much going on every single day and having been in science for 30 years You’ think I would have known that and I knew there were a lot of Critters around but the Dynamics of it when we have people staff there and volunteers there every day every minute making notes about what just happened out over the deck from the Otters coming in and catching flounders and eating on the logs to the bald eagles catching the fish to the deer quum swimming across the river to millions of anchois coming in to the golds being so stuck with anchois they couldn’t even move to the blue herand and the king fisher fights and well it just goes on and on so in a way it’s kind of portrays this idea that when you look closely at anything you you usually find action something’s going on and that’s what we found so we sort of modifi you see you get an experience with Discovery at the Gateway Center and then that also leads you to all of the other incredible places uh in this neck of the woods for those of you that maybe haven’t uh done some of the homework with the Louis and Clark expedition to understand it the best I think you have to understand Jefferson because Jefferson’s mind was scientific that’s where he was he was probably the top meteorologist in the nation at that time and he would even make his kids keep notes on the temperature when they were somewhere else you know I mean it was just almost fanatical about it and he had already tried to mount this very Expedition uh in 1783 he was already ated trying to make it happen and they even even collected funds and had someone that he thought that he was going to hire to make this same trip and that sort of didn’t work out so working through the Philadelphia Phil philosophy Society he had started to organize this Expedition and he just never could get it together and he had all the geography and the scientific information that he was wanting to collect so sort of think about and even by the time he was in Congress he had tried a little run at it just at as a congressional person and had gotten people to put up a whole th000 to to finance the Expedition but it sort of fell on De ears he wasn’t able to make that happen so it’s not surprising not too long after he became president that really just kind of pulled the old notes out of his pocket and said okay now nobody can tell me we’re not going to do this but scientific a scientific expedition in 1800 probably wasn’t a real hot item and so his challenge was to cloak it in the thing that Americans are pretty good at and that’s getting more material wealth okay economic get the Furs get the products so that transition you can see it in the documents and in a way you can see the documents being restructured to have this sort of grand benefit to the economics and kind of the social dynamics including one of Jefferson’s greatest passions which was this idea that unless everybody had a piece of land they were farming there was really no hope for democracy so need a lot more territory to begin with and what he wanted to know was is that all nice and flat and plowable so to speak and of course as you know they come out here and found all these dirty rotten trees just covering the landscape almost as Pest and so it wasn’t seen as very productive in that very productive what would you do with a tree I mean not that many trees so they were looking for farmland well uh when I say cloaking I I mean that literally I mean including very sophisticated ciphering messages that were written in code to Congress and between Lewis and Jefferson and Jefferson and Congress uh secret coded messages about this Expedition and again that was sort of the political reality of it was Jefferson had already asked the French ambassadors that about what would people think of this if we went into this territory and you know he says that would definitely be considered um by you know by our government and so it be trespassing on our land which at that point was basically Louisiana what became the Louisiana Purchase and of course when we bought the Louisiana that s took care of that problem on that angle but of course we still had the English you know in the west and so there that sort of secret uh continued on until just about the time in which the Expedition left were still sending these coded messages uh so that kind of set the stage but it again I think starts to bring up the idea about Jefferson’s thought process on this and keep in mind he thought they were going to go find Masons I mean you know they sort of had a little bit of a science fiction perspective this that this West even though like I say you know I think the folks in near San Museum to you know a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Louis Clark expedition you know and that the further they got away from a culture the more culture they found you know literally millions of people already there with full cultures that had uh evolved to very very sophisticated levels and in their own way have developed a science that we’re still trying to get to that is we haven’t figured out the kind of Science in which you can uh make interpretations without our seven steps of the scientific method and yet cultures that had been here had resolved most of those science questions about what to eat what to use how to use it how to prepare it how to treat it just about everything you can think of in terms of the the cultural uh adaptations so when it come time for sort of the eventual expedition to to leave there was you know a lot of training that had gone on Le had spent a lot of time with sort of major scientist of of the era uh describing animals describing technique uh spent weeks and weeks getting trained to just run the instruments that were necessary to collect the data about main about survey and geography so um as primitive as it might have been at that point in time compared to today with our you know we just got through mapping the plat of planes the very land that that Clark walked on with a handheld GPS with a aerial photo of the site that wherever you move on the classet planes a new aial photo for that spot Scrolls up cuz it’s reading the satellites and then it tracks a little red dot on that aerial photo of everywh exactly where you are in the context of that aerial photo and then if you see something there then you just scroll up your little data sheet and plug in US saw these plants that plant this plant this animal that and then it’s all recorded for that single site you know and then think about the technology but in reality plus or minus a few miles probably in some cases feet uh with those primitive instruments using sort of scientific methodology uh Le was able to make incredible uh Records so again this is Jefferson kind of making sure that all of the elements of making this Expedition uh quite documentary uh had been done with the planning process so that whatever skills Lewis mainly Clark as well didn’t have they got this through some of the top people in the nation at that point in time so it it it sort of sets the stage for for that uh that part of it uh let me just shift a little bit to sort of what I see as the um historical Sciences of let’s say the West Coast uh and and in some ways I think people don’t consider real science if you’re doing it for basic in a cultural context or for sort of fundamental survival that the s is something that often times is considered abstraction from the context of the culture and you go to some separate environment for the science and then you work up the experiment and the design and do all that and you bring it back to the cultural context so when the when the native Eskimos native alaskans got together with some of the top scientists in the world they started a Cooperative project in which uh the two Sciences merged and what come out of that was that uh they were both inadequate somewhat they both added there were pieces missing from the Native culture uh in their form of Science and then there were pieces missing from out of the western version of it and so out of that come really a whole new powerful kind of science that was embedded in the cultural process it wasn’t separate or separate from and I think that’s well that has a lot of Merit it also advances my own Prejudice which is the way we tend to select what we think is good bad and so in a way we’ve been promoting this idea of Citizen science that is that science is not something that’s relegated to the science room or to the scientist that it’s a cultural process and that it benef could benefit benefit us in every way we just been working with a mid that was uh opened up from a little excavation was going on for somebody’s driveway and uh in that in that mid was uh these shells and um we just s these out just last week really to get some analysis I’ve already been through them with the stereoscope and there is nothing but clam shells in this entire layer and also with that was the uh was the charcoal that was left after the Clam Lake okay so if you can imagine razor clams I mean this sounds so good to me baking razor clams you know on a dune uh and leaving nothing but the shells and that’s about as good as it can get but you know when you think about it even with Lewis Lewis is bringing his his science here doesn’t mention razor clams okay in in the journals so can’t quite make that connection but you might have had some bad time of the year to be digging plams but think about the weather now get plans just in the last few days here so here’s this sort of common ground of the razor clown uh not something that’s found in the 3 to 4,000 year old men in this area very few razor clams but if you get to the 2,000 year radiocarbon material see razor clamps that’s what this this is all 2000 somewhere between 2,300 years old and razor plans are everywhere uh keep in mind we didn’t have any sand here until starting about 5,000 years ago the ocean was right back against the head walls all Cobble ridges there almost no sand whatsoever and then somewhere in that intermediate time between 4 and 2000 we start seeing these dudes start to grow and they’re Grow Again from back against the head wall and then start migrating to the West um so there’s probably if we get enough good dates there there a point where sort of all of a sudden razor clamps are showing up because we have sand we’ve got Beach whereas if you look at the mid material from say the pomos site which is in the 4,000 year old era it’s all Bay material almost zero Marine materials okay cockal Tres gacks Gaper clams all those kind of bay things so there’s a big transition that went on in terms of the geography here and then you see the razor clam showing up and and this is where I just try to make one point about this idea of how incredibly valuable and exciting it is to know about the place you live because it’s it gives you an Insight that would be comparable to the native science in which you knew about the processes of the natural landscape because you were a part of that landscape okay unlike our culture which is aart from for the most part some of you maybe living out in the woods and digging roots and stuff but not a lot of folks doing that now so this is that sort of comparative in which knowing about the processes now I could probably almost guarantee you that the folks that dug these plans 2,000 years ago would have been hard to imagine the life cycle of a razor PL and I think that was probably a decade ago or so there used to be a program called Beach was it beach festival or something everybody brought all their stuff to the convention center and it was just about Beach things what you found on the beach and all about the beach materials I remember I had my students setting up a little program there on razor Clans and they had microscopes to look at the CL lby and all the different parts of the plan they had the life cycle put up well we spent the whole night arguing mostly with commercial CL ders about our life cycle of these razor plants because we had them releasing eggs and sperm cells into the water right on the shoreline and then we had these razor clams going all the way out into the ocean 15 20 mi off shore and they were like no way I found little baby razor clams on the beach and they don’t do that but of course they do but it’s hard to imagine razor plants could successfully reproduce by sending little swimming protozoa type Critters all the way out into the ocean spending 6 to8 weeks out there and then eventually starting to grow just the tiniest little piece of calcium carbonate on that little lar microscopic laring which then makes the lar drop down to the bottom of the ocean and then the currents on the bottom of the ocean slowly start moving all of these spat of baby plams back onto the beach by the millions and of course they dig in and some of you may have seen this event I mean it’s an incredible thing when they come in and you’re walking and you’re the pressure of your feet makes these tiny little r clams come to the surface uh and we aren’t the only one that has noticed that if you happen to be there on those few evenings in the spring when that happens then you’ll see these goals down there doing this dance going like this and then take a three steps dance p and what they’re doing is the same thing that we end up doing and that’s they’re making making these little baby razor clamps come to the surface and then they eat it so they’re tied into it so I I I kind of where I’m going on this is to is to make one point for the presentation and that’s that when you’re digging razor clams which is the way these razor clams were dug with a cedar stick stuck into a uh El time and that’s your digging instrument and you and their in your 30 or 40 fellow tribes people have got the entire class of beach to yourself it’s hard to change have an impact on the ecology because one the efficiency level is not real high yeah if you can imagine stick about 3 ft long in the end of this poking it in the sand proing it around and trying to catch razor clam uh the productivity was low and even if you could have caught a million what would you do with them you know because you got the ones you needed for that point in time so this kind of leads to the S of The Next Step even without knowing how it worked um as we saw the sort of cultural shifts from one in which culture was embedded in the science the life science landscape then we saw the transition to harvest strategies that no longer were embedded in just day-to-day survival but were then being uh exploited uh and relocated uh as a product material as much as you can get and you kind of see that sweep all the way through the culture uh which that big conversion in which the Technologies started to drive not better lifestyle not better subsistence but uh alternative products from the product that you were collecting whether it was razor plants or fish or trees whatever that might be so you just see that huge uh cultural uh transition so my the razor Clan is kind of my example of of how it changes the way of look at the landscape here in plon county and the say all the Oregan coast and that as you see the phenomena that plays out and in a way it seems It’s not surprising that commercial PL diers were saying those kids I don’t know what they’re talking about was because it just kind of hard to imagine and it turns out that just about everything that we look at closely ends up being wow how how does that work how does that all happen uh to to even have any of these systems work and even though the reverence was there for the salmon uh you can imagine how difficult it would have been for cultures uh these really very sophisticated cultures from 3 to 5,000 years ago to imagine that a salmon was going to swim three or 4,000 miles of the Bearing Sea be gone for 3 years and then come back and find that piece of water that it was reared in and not find it by luck but find it by science that is that that piece of water has t been tagged coated by the unique combination of the material in that particular Watershed 36 71 Cedars 4,221 henlock 851 sword Ferns and then stir well and you get this product that is so unique that it’s can only be in one place there is no other landscape would have that particular set of materials and all of that of course all the pine needles falling under the water being processed by an in a whole series of of invertebrate organisms which then pass that through the body which then add in well you can kind of see the picture you have a chemical potion so unique that it’s Unique on the planet so if you have a o factory system like salmon do that can sort out individual molecules at the rate of about one out of a million they can find that molecule then it’s not surprising uh that a salmon wood swim out of the neana river swim out into the ocean go to the Bearing Sea swing by the Asian coast and come back up the California coast and swim into the mouth of the the canum and start making choices and so this is the first one it has to make big one left or right okay I mean you either go neana or you go in the can so that’s the first move so the messages start getting read first of all you had to just find this place okay to begin with and then you had to start reading these messages about which water as that set of material that was here when I was here last four years ago and sniff sniff sniff sniff you know trying to sort that out and making that hard left and then you know was it mil Creek it is my did my parents live in mil Creek H not quite right there it’s four molecules off so it goes on by and uh and what about shangar Creek and what about China crate and oh coo crate that’s Bells are going off match up match up um and so it takes a hard left up the hill by the elementary school and it’s headed back now to that unique place where those S would would uh you know have their origin and got that that unique code I say unique on on the planet so sometime we call this St and people say that is so amazing I me how in the world can these s to do that you know and not trying to detract from the absolute Marvel of what at all I sort remind people you know what’s really amazing at least to me that’s that’s all it can do it could have not done anything else okay so in a way it sort of changes a conversation and that there’s a certain amount of sort of Destiny to this process that is it isn’t really left little left and maybe it’ll work out be nice and you know it’s quite precise and so if you look at some of the things that creatures do and it’s and it’s kind of surprising that you know you think about January and Clark is mentioning waiting in 3 ft of water across and I got a right across the first time and then waited across this Grand River um and in those 4 days at least the part was here um you know going through all this salmon territory kind of no mention of salmon no mention of Tides which would have been in January would have been like the big deal of all like as you know you know go to the cove and the waves are going over throwing rocks into the parking lot you know very high water so it’s no small item that and 3 ft of water across the mou of the river so kind of I know it was bad weather but wasn’t bad weather that day you wouldn’t be waiting across the mountain mechanical I can tell you there wouldn’t be a low tide to go across there and yet they waited across that but kind of no mention of the salmon but when we look at the Salmon today in the minana system native salmon in January December and January you know we we sort of consider that we’re looking at the same fish that were running through those Waters 200 years ago the same fish that were running through those Waters 10,000 years ago these are all the progeny of those uh individual ation and the irony of it is that there’s a there’s a population of about 500 coo that sort out that neana system every year and spawn in all those little screams there’s eight streams in the city of seaside’s boundary and seven of them have spawning coal and some cases as many as 100 fish sort of still there today and yet you go to the ne mon system and you look at it it looks kind of well might be a little smelly looks kind of Muddy looks kind of dirty and uh so in some cases when on our sort of sarcastic days we say well it looks so bad that no one tried to fix it so it’s still working so that’s kind of the conclusion we got out of that one well the other thing that I’ll mention I’ve covered I’ve covered the razor clams I didn’t mention the ghost shrimp just because that had to be a freebie but the material is so limp you know the kiten on a ghost shrimp is just you know it’s going to go away pretty fast and when we went back well in the 70s you know Smithsonian did an excavation at palro site and they used qu in sivs to SI all the material and they got thousands of artifacts hundreds of thousands of funnel material bones and things and but when we went back and found their SI piles and they took the SI piles the stuff went through the screens and they at that under stereoscope that was where a lot of the world was I mean it turns out that almost all of the verra of the small fish went through that quartering screen and all the little pieces of ghost shrimp went through it and so there’s kind of a a pretty big missing part of the story about this because and I guess maybe if they didn’t have a low tide you wouldn’t have noticed all those gin poles but you know if I was going someplace for the first time and looking across the mud flats of the neana and that’s all I saw I think it would come up I me say wow what are all those holes in there you know and then if you had noticed some creatures doing this you like what are they doing and if you stuck around long enough and then you saw what they were doing you know that long long Bill Cruise off here every year and they gr shrimp okay so just about every creature and if you tell the story of the ghost shrimp people shake their head like the salmon story like the clam story like wait a minute now you’re telling me that those ghost shrimp they build this U u-shaped tube and then those Flappers that they have on the bottom of their body they use those to pump water through and invite other guests in into that tube and then pump 400 gallons of water through there and then the bottom of the tube is where all the debris settles and then they pick through it with those very delicate little mandibles that can almost handle things at the size of a Micon little decaying particles of of Marsh Grass and well it kind of keeps going on and then there’s things that live on their claws that then feed off of some of the material that they well it just you know it’s sort of like everything we talk about here just keeps going a little bit off the chart because it’s like wow and then take all the complexity of every one of those creatures and adapting to sand and reading molecular structure and and then stir that all cuz that’s all going on together and a whole bunch of those things have to interact to survive so then you take all that complex and then multiply you know by factors three or four or 10 or 10,000 so when I look at when I look at materials from Native American mens in this area and sort of think about a culture that was embedded in that process themselves with their complexity and their delicate inter action at precise times and many of the as Doug was talking about in the last session many of those were I’ll call them esoteric not that they weren’t incredibly be but they were imposed views on the system they didn’t arise out of the system but at the same time they were imposed over time and therefore their accuracy was comparable to having analyzed the same that situ situation for analytical values so you have to think about it sort of in in that context well the other one would be the life cycles of the of the Nearshore Birds uh sheer Waters and wh scers uh in the in the palmrose site uh 25 Marine birds were found uh in the following makes at 25 species and of that about 10 of them you could find them as drift once in a while but if you’re going to get get them in new numbers you have to get in a boat and go offshore a fair amount to start catching up to Albatross and and City Shear Waters and things like that so that’s another part of this sort of grand story is the kind of science that would be embedded in your culture deep enough that you could repeated over time to go offshore and collect up green birds where they I mean the rating there are big numbers Millions even now sh City sh Waters you see you can see 300,000 you stand at the C looking offshore and binoculars so there’s lots of them but getting to them and getting to them at the right time and then of course understanding how to process and make them a part of their culture so like I say 25 species have identified uh right now in just one uh mid sight the other creature that was found at Great rates uh was the sea which is another challenging creature very mobile they’re large they’re strong you know you going have to know a lot about their ecology to catch one um where are they how do they feed when can you get there kind of all the all the sort of insight into uh otter culture in some of the inventories um the bone material from a given meter of B remains it was as high as 44 to 46 bone structures from CR and I mean there that kind of density so there was also some U sort of collective effects that occurred from getting individual organisms that come out at incredibly High rates keep in mind the SE are you know long gone here but more than likely they were managing large kelp BS off tomad and were a part of that help sea urch and seaotter S which is kind of say another one of those sort of complex features um we’re out of time got a couple of little giveaways this is just a reminder a little bit about today’s discussion and that’s that uh my goal here is kind of help you change the way you look at a tree and when you see the limbs on a tree it’s easy to think the limbs are on the outside of the tree but when you sort of see this picture this is a stump in which everything inside the stump rotted away except the limbs okay and even though it looks like a torture chamber it’s really the inside of a tree and what the limb looks like from the trees perspective okay so grab one of these if you’re interested it’s got a nice little reminder uh for you which is kind of my party comment uh and it’s a challenge for all of us as we sort of head into this next uh decade about thinking about our place and how to live sustainably in it so thus the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everyone has seen thank you does anybody have any questions for now I um it’s just that I wondered what the word is it mid m i d d n I’m not and how would you define that a lay of Earth I’m not sure I would okay it’s it’s kind of the cultural living site may have been a short ter campsite or may have been a long-term living site in which uh lacking Garbage Service uh it just kind of went out the back door of the long house and all the organic material and it piled up and it decayed and sank down and some turned soil and and so it become the the history of that culturals for the most part food Gathering and and see side there’s maybe the greatest Legacy of any City on the entire Pacific coast of mittens where there was cultural uh inhabitants for thousands of years uh starting about 4,000 years ago and those are maybe 10 ft deep and then every inch of this some piece of History going back thousands of years and so there were lots of sand in this year lots of sand bur not too many the next year so you you can sort of restructure the history of the culture by going through that V AR pardon would that be an archeological term it is yeah it’s uh yeah it’s a common term for the West Coast anyway where yeah okay yeah that’s that’s it it’s the and many of them do have just shells because the the uh natives moved from one location to the other depending on availability of a harvest at that particular time so you find these clam mittens only clam shells nothing else uh sort of from here North what did they what did they do with the grimp you said there was go shrimp there oh what did they do with what did they do why were they in the mid um that they might have eaten them I there’s not much there for for eating part of it so they may well have used app claws for something or some portion of it but they they’re just there so how they were used I I don’t know we haven’t seen anything made out of them like unlike let’s say the uh the little sand snail that you find down on the beach um all about uh you know they collected those probably didn’t eat them but if you take a fingernail file and just rub on the very end of it it takes just a few swipes and you knock the end off and then it’s Hollow all the way through so that become a really nice bead really plus one the first be that you have time for one more question okay i’ like to get back to je Jefferson you said that Jefferson had his son’s report temperature so I’d like to ask a couple of temperature questions to the presentation one is did leis and Clark record any temperatures they want I don’t think they did they had what what sort of therometer would they have used and the third sort of related question is the salmon going up stream do they respond to gradients in temperature in the migration or is it a chemical gradient in the what far as we know it’s gradient but can temperature can be a barrier that is it you know if you those who were in the west 2 years ago when fish started going up Basin and the largest fish die off in history occurred in the pouth river 78,000 sh salmon died from a temperature barrier because so much water is be in that system so temperature for salmon can be Buri I don’t I don’t know about thermometers U but and I haven’t looked at the journals to see if there is any Precision about temperature I don’t I don’t remember seeing anything but there might be something there right we’re going to have to we’re going to have to wrap up our program for the day I’ll be here for a few minutes so thank NE M for coming in and talking with us this afternoon this does complete our schedule of programs here in the tent to many voices today and

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Chief Snider on Indian Perspectives of Lewis and Clark

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:06 +0000

good morning everybody how are you good good good welcome to core of Discovery 2 and the tent of many voices we’re a traveling exhibit been traveling for over 2 years have another year to go we’ll finish up in 2006 September 2006 so we have a full year and when we started over two years ago in Montello Virginia one of our first presenters was Mr Chief Snider he’s here with you today he’s here from the shinuk tribe he’s the honorary chief of the shook peoples from the mouth of the Columbia River so let’s give him a nice warm welcome nice introduction are you everyone as she said I am the fourth great grandson of Chief con Conley who met Lewis and Clark at the mouth of the Columbia in 1805 I was going to ask this question I thought I was going to be talking to third graders but you guys look like you’re about Juniors from Kendrick high is that correct okay I’m all right on there I went out and checked the buses says Hey to see where you guys were from so I’m I’m not too familiar with this area but it’s wonderful to see you we’re here to uh actually celebrate the survival of the Indian tribes on the trail and we’re here to commemorate Lewis and Clark on our Expedition I had to be part of that in lewison about five four or five years ago when uh people kept saying we’re going to celebrate Lewis and Clark we’re going to celebrate this and that and I took offense to that and said well I think you want to use another word because the Indians are not going to celebrate the loss of their land and the loss of their country and the loss of their culture and so what happened at that very meeting they decided to impude all unrecognized tribes on the trail at that time they had about 15 tribes and they went on and then right now we’re over 60 tribes on the trail recognized or Not by the United States government but don’t get me wrong we Indians who are not recognized like the monans at the beginning of the tra the Chinooks at the end of the trail we still recognize the United States government so I don’t want that to be confused now I wanted to ask you how many of you people have Indian blood 1 2 3 4 I’ve talked to some schools for almost 80% of the people of the kids uh thought they had Indian blood but they didn’t know how much they didn’t know uh what kind what tribe they belong to or anything else so I always encourage you if you do have some Indian blood because of college scholarships money and things that might be available to you to find out what your ancestry is and be very proud of your heritage when I was growing up my mother told me don’t tell anybody you’re part Indian because of discrimination other people have that same problem America today we think we’re perfect but we’re not so as I grew up I started catching passes Oregon State University I was floating feather and I was the only one on the stage that wasn’t quite I was the only Indian we didn’t have uh the black people playing football at that time and so I was kind of an odity but I want to tell you something now after working with the uh circle of tribal advisors nationally working with myin out of New York on the Confluence projects and visiting schools visiting teachers and everything else being part Indian is a plus not to say that if you’re not Indian you shouldn’t be proud of your heritage if you’re sweet go for it I always say that okay I just wonder um you know in your school have you kids uh been studying anything about lisis and Clark If you have raise your hands couple of you or some of you so you know the whole story so probably I’m just up here for nothing today but I I want to tell you some of the Indian story how many of you know how to speak uh some chinuk language or some Indian language you know any words well let me tell you how to how to say a couple by the way I want to recognize one of my great friends Rocky Rockwell he’s also known as uh Captain Clark uh really a lieutenant but we’ll call him Captain CLK anyway I I’m going to do this in three syllables for you the first one is CLA second one is how the third one is y and I goes CL how y that means in chinuk language hello or goodbye much like aloa is in Hawaii Hello Goodbye it’s just a greeting that you do on three 1 2 3 say it again whenever you see me on the road wandering around your bus or anything say how you Chief I know what you’re talking about okay in the old days we had a situation where uh president Jefferson wanted to explore the West he thought it might be good to explore the Missouri River and see if I went all the way across America and I any of the tributaries and who I think what was interested in was having some Commerce but the thing that happened was is that he’d never been on the other side of alany mountains we had Trappers back here mostly Franks and so forth that were wandering around some of these tribes but he hadn’t been there at all so he got leis and Clark and they got 30 31 men or whatever and and uh go decided to go across the country and see if they could find a passageway mainly for uh Commerce and or get the land so to speak uh so he was in uh making a deal with some people in Europe any of you know who uh we bought the Louisiana Purchase from anybody know he knows we bought it from the French you can imagine it all start a guy named Napoleon bonapart you ever heard of him about 18 cents per square mile he didn’t know how Jefferson didn’t know what he was buying he didn’t know how many trees uh who was out there he knew there were some Indians because the monan nation was only 40 miles away he knew there were Indians out there but he didn’t know whether they’re going to be friendly or Not by listening to Trappers he felt that they were going to be okay and that they would let him through well after they bought the Louisiana Purchase they doubled the size of America and did you know so at that time there were more Indians living on the west than there were white men living on the Atlantic coast can you imagine that they’re more of a population of course they only been there for 10,000 years as everybody knows about they didn’t come from any place great spirit the Creator put them there at the beginning of time the mountains and The Valleys plants and the animals and the lifegiving rivers no matter what relig you belong to or which one you pray for I use the word creator that encompasses anybody that’s higher than all of us or the great spirit so in saying I might use that term uh throughout my discourse well they finally got that sold and they bought and they so he’s added on the Louisiana Purchase well let’s start out well can’t go because it’s not finalized yet and the Spanish and the frch AR going to let you through so they started at Wood River and then when everything got done they went into St Louis and then on the way and my text today is how are they treated by the Indians and what part did the Indians play in their Journey Across America and they hadn’t hardly got out and they run into the kapoo most of you remember the kapoo joy juice whatever that was in that strip uh maybe you don’t but I know you do anyway kick the food geers they uh they traded uh some supplies with them begin the trading already for three deer and then they moved on but as she mentioned in the last one we started running into some Indians that weren’t quite so friendly sha e were friendly they let them to but we got to uh the yank and Sue the yank and Sue oh they greeted him came out wanted to carry him up into the village on a carrier with skins and of course they’d seen some Frenchmen up this time so everything was great and they were getting along fine they wanted to tell them about the great white father back there who now owned the land and I’m not going to get into that but they didn’t understand that at all this was their land it wasn’t really their land they belonged to the land the land was not owned by anyone so that was fine they parted and they say hey these Indians are okay we’re going to make it fine well they moved on a little further and I ran into back black Buffalo of the Teton suit and he wasn’t going to let them through that’s his River that’s his tribe’s uh place and he’s not going to let them anybody through there unless he wanted and then he wanted everything from him he wanted cigarettes he wanted liquor he wanted everything else they had to trade and so they finally got held up and as she mentioned last class it was a confrontation and it got down to the place where they were hanging on to the Rope on the boat and they weren’t going to let him go in the kill booat and dark he started to draw his sword and they had their guns up on the ship starting the train and these Indians after a lot of two or three different kinds of scuffles they wanted to show let their women come aboard and see what kbo was like and they wanted to spend the night on the boat but finally they got through all that nobody got killed nobody got injured so what happened then they just let them go on there was no to Fe they thought maybe that anybody coming down their river is going to have to pay that was their River and nobody else could go unless they said so so wow we got through that pass and on down the river to other tribes that they met there were over 60 tribes kind of on the trail I think it was 58 in my recollection and they got to the mandad Village I’m just hitting the high spots for you now because there other little tribes along the way but the M Dan was a very harsh winter the snow is put up to here it was freezing they built their Court over here the mandans were over here there also the raras and the Hiatus and they’re all one big family and uh those three tribes were looking for Buffalo and there’s nothing to be found so they had a big buffalo dance and the core decided to pits right in with them they got in on the dancing and they were out there some of these Indians didn’t have shoes and they’re snow clear up their knees but finally they did find some Buffalo they did survive that harsh winter and it was the longest that they had stayed in any one spot up to that point and it turned out there’s one of the two longest stays they had on the whole trip the other being at Fort plat at the end of the trail well there was Chicago there was saak joia and it depends on who you’re talking to how you want to pronounce it I always said saaka because in Oregon Washington we have statues and this A J then I go back and I talk to Amy moset as a man Dan and she’ll say it’s with a G it’s sh not sack we so like she said in her last performance if I say it one way one time and I say it another way next time you’ll have to excuse me because I’ve been using both on the trail the most famous woman in American history there are more statues of Sakia Chicago than any other woman in America history one of the most famous women in all the world and here’s a young teenage girl with a baby P John Baptist shardo and the dad taken along as guides and interpreters well they made it to that Winter thank God they got to their command an told them okay you’re going down the road you’re going to the river’s going to do this the river’s going to do that one of these days you’re going to run into this big hurling waterfalls and they’re probably talking about Great Falls as we know it today it’s it’s changed a lot since those days well that’s okay we’ll get around the falls and in a couple of days and be on our way that was about 3 weeks I’ve been there I know what it’s like I went up to the Buffalo Jump you know where they ran the Buffalo off the hill and uh and the Buffalo would die and they go down and they pick them up that was they just her them out over the sink and the gummy substance on the ground is so sticky that when you pick your feet up you got about that much mud on the bottom of your shoe and they had storms and the rivulets and they almost got drowned in a couple of them but you know that was the home of the the uh Grant and the uh asons some of those tribes and back and forth they finally discovered their way and they gave them directions all this time when we’re making our move we’re getting directions from the Indians Chicago we is trying to interpret the Frenchmen are trying to interpret because there have been some French Trappers in there some of these Indians have never seen a white person some of these Indians had seen a couple there were a couple that had married Indians and were living there and were used as interpreters to help them guide their way CU it didn’t know where that Missouri was going and finally they did they kept going and going and uh they got into a country where the Missouri just petered out and this on the way up they didn’t know whether to go to this River or that River or follow up this way and they finally picked the right direction they got down there and so wait a minute you see a couple Indians out here they see us they run back to camp they’re scared but we finally get into Camp did some trading proved that they were friends and who is there but Caya cay was saia’s brother so they’re brother sister and her sister also was there and SC remember was captured by the Hadas earlier uh 3 or four years years earlier and some of her relatives had been killed and that captured and so she’d come back and she now she’s okay and uh they decided to because they were friends Chicago we had decided to keep on going with them and so they went on they’re heading for what they’re heading for the bot mountains and they had to get across I was talking to Kevin the other day he says he’s gone over with a helicopter he says they took the only route that was available by helicopter looking down on it and getting through the mountains and getting to this place right here it’s the only way through the L path that they could have made and they had guides to help and there they were on top of the mountains with snow they had to kill their horses to have something to eat there was no food and so they finally made it over the way Perry and you guys had a big celebration over there yesterday I wish I could have seen it and finally into this country here thees Pier well thez Pierce hey look at these guys what are we going to do with them look at all those goods they have well let’s have a counsel they had a counsel and they said shall we kill them and take all those for positions they have guns they have everything medicine everything and ammunition well there was a lady there named wat kuis who is very famous and she’s in all the history books and what kise says I’ve been captured like Chicago Leah had been and I’ve been out living with the heights for a while and they’re good people don’t kill them don’t take their stuff but do them no harm and that’s the by word now in this people when I talk to Otis half moon when I talk to Alan pink and I talk to carag as in Miss Pi some of my ramblings they say well maybe the nest Pierce should have taken everything America would be quite different today if that had been the case anyway then what we going going to do we’re down the Clear Water you finally got across the bitter Ro down the clear water into the Snake River and then down to uh Tri Cities and I just been lucky enough to work with Mile in on the Le Park Trail remember sheisa gal did the uh Vietnam Wall in Washington DC and we’re doing uh seven projects on the rivers $22 million in the last two years all I have to do is get talk and we go to places and pick up money we picked up $18 million the last two years so when you get to Portland you folks you come down for these other events come look what we’re doing on the on the Louis clar table of the conference here well it’s all fine we got to the mouth of the uh Snake River now and who’s there they’re Indians there of course well let’s take a little trip up to Columbia now we know that we’re getting someplace it’s not going to be long before we’re going to be down at the mouth of the columia cuz they had known that the ships had come in in fact 28 ships had come into the river already and had been trading with a chook Indian at them up but the UPR River Chinooks had not seen a white man they’ heard about so they run into the wallala wal in they danc with the Walla walas had a good time saw the wanon the bills and the yamas and they came back and said well that’s not the way to go but we’ve met some real friendly animal and everybody’s got these fish dried salmon we part soon we got something to eat but we’re not too sure that we’re going to eat this every day but do you have some dog we like the dog better and so I think Park he didn’t like the dog too much but Lewis he did but all the guys just waiting for something like geese or whatever fevers whatever they could find at that point and they decided to go down the river and maybe you’ve heard the Umatilla Confederate tribes of the Umatilla were there and before they got the SL of CLS and I got five okay so I’m going to run run through this quick uh at the mouth there I saw an Indian with a s coat blue and red sailor jacket they saw s Indians with beads white man’s beads and so uh now we’re getting close then there’s cilo Falls and here are these Indians with flat heads remember Indians are not all one big monolithic group mandans are 6’5 Gerard Baker and tex Hall is 67 I say to them what part of white person are you we’re not white at all we’re full blooded Indians and they’re that tall they’re seeing a chook now that’s 5′ five wearing something wood eating salmon not chasing Buffalo not riding horses doing canoes and these Chinook SE them coming and they they started ringing their hands and crying out loud saying we’re all going to be killed oh there Chicago Le and there’s P so if you have a woman and a baby with your war party it’s not a war part it’s a traveling party so now the chinups had discovered Le part this point as you mentioned it’s just the other way around we’ve been here for 10,000 years and and by the way we did find a basket that was 16,000 years old made of Willow twigs and put together with pine pits when they were doing the dams in Oregon 16 that’s before the Brett’s floods remember the Brett’s floods when they were the top of our buildings in P so on down the river as swall Falls they were hoping that when they went through it was only 40 yard right from here that green can up there and the Indians had been fishing there dip Nets and things like that so what happened there was that the Indians would hope that these canoes would be turned upside down and they’d go and take whatever lands on the shore cuz stepen Ambrose who is one of my friends back east and when he wrote in his book he said that the S Indians were thieves but not really anything left alone was theirs for the tapable canoes hatchets fishing stuff medicine whatever they it isn’t that they borrowed it but he like to say that they were they were stealing it that isn’t the way the indans fell about it so on down the river Vancouver was sco show toes and Sue Vancouver and down to the mouth of Columbia that CH Indian tribe at the end my fourth great grandfather Chief K you see his picture in Charles Russell’s painting greeing the Sakia doing hand signals for the Chinooks and what I’m saying today I’m giving you the Indian viewpoint but I’ll tell you something there were no words spoken Chicago we could not interpret that chuk gutal language no way and so the painting shows them standing up in the canoe waving at each other here was stormy the trees were falling they had gone back into a niche and and the chooks gave them two or three salmon and I’m going to skip over some stuff because now they went down to the tree and carved the name in the tree they went down to the whale and saw where the whale was then they came back and they decided where are we going to stay for the winter and they took a boat York got the boat Chicago WEA got the boat first that time and decided to stay at Fort plet where the more El and they could see The Ships coming in but leave you with this while they there what a paradox it was that while they were there the ship lyia came into Port of Baker’s day and the chuks told them they had left and gone back so they missed the bus ride home so the rest of the story is that you know what happened the white man you mentioned that there one man died of appendicitis on the trail then there were three men who died because they killed two black feet uh pan Indians who were stealing their guns and their horses and I’m talking to a black man in Portland this last year not true at all he says the one the field stabbed died the one that Lewis shot while he was running away recovered and didn’t die so not one man died on the trail not three men died on the trail but two men died on the trail so I’ll leave you with that I say cop from my heart Kaka so it but I want to leave you with this seven chinuk directions never forget them they’re East and there’s West there’s North and there’s South there’s up and there’s down there’s a direction of your Hearts Kaka I’m glad you could come thank you Chief Snider and thank you for coming um before we let you take off at the top of the next hour at 11:30 we will be showing a film across the Divide for e

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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.

Tony Farque on Lewis and Clark in Oregon

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

well good morning ladies and gentlemen I’d like to welcome you to the core Discovery 2 this is a mobile outdoor exhibit sponsored by the national park Serv service and other sponsors that you are you just have to take my my word for it that they’re on this black panel right here I would like to welcome you that this is a commemoration of the bicentennial of the lwis and Clark original core of Discovery and we are doing by land what Lewis and Clark did by water which is to travel out to the Pacific coast and back to Missouri so 1806 200 years ago LS and Clark and the Expedition were on their way back to St Louis Missouri and so are we and along the way we’re stopping at different towns that have requested us to come to the community and Grand Ron has graciously welcomed us with our open arms so we’re very thankful to your kindness this morning we have a wonderful treat for you Mr Tony far is with the United States forest service and he is going to talk to you about Lewis and Clark and what they missed in Oregon a little bit about Tony he’s an archaeologist with the US Forest Service he has been presenting Louis and Clark for three years now and teaching in Oregon Washington and Idaho school with the help of several grants so without further Ado please welcome Tony far hello hello how you doing good to see you thanks for coming down you guys all right can you hear me in the back hello Mike hello Mike is it on how are you we’ got a lot to talk about and we’re have a precious short time don’t we all right well lwis and Clark were on quite an adventure 28 months how do you pack for an 8,000 Mii camping trip there’s lots of things you can talk about with these guys well I’m going to talk about about today is what happened to them while while they were in Oregon they had problems in Oregon this gentleman says they hated Oregon they had some unfortunate experiences in Oran we’re going to talk about that today it’ll be a good thing to discuss okay we’ll jump right into it are you ready all right on this table I have some of the replica artifacts and some old things also which the core Discovery would have had with them course they making a lot of maps they got big coins they were trading to the tribes with which doesn’t work don’t worry and over here trade goods they might have been settling down with in the lodge of one of the Chiefs to make some trade to try to make food or the things they needed they were pretty much out of supplies when they got to Oregon weren’t they okay well what happened is they were coming into Oregon a lot of interesting things they had been through some very hard times hadn’t they coming into Oregon they came through over the Rocky Mountains what happened they had to eat their horses they ate dogs they ate their shoes they ate their candles they pretty much were starving things were not going well were they they had planned to go from their first Winter’s camp at Fort Mandan all the way to the Pacific coast and clear back to St Louis in that same summer they had no idea how difficult it was going to be and they staggered out of those mountains realized they weren’t going to get to the Pacific and all the way back because they had taken way too much time to come through the mountains 144 milesi of very difficult travel was Hardo for sure they ran of food most their supplies they were and they were sick and exhausted they were just about starving of course they came down into Oregon the npers had taken care of them fed them brought them back to their health a little bit they began to eat dog with the npers again except for Clark and Sakia of course would never eat dog because she’s shoson and they believe they were descended from wolves so it’ be like being a cannibal right so she couldn’t eat dog right at all but the men were starting to feel better they built their canoes they shot down the rivers now these guys had had quite a bit of difficulty on their trip hadn’t they they’d come all the way over through the plains they thought they understood the tribes they had their medals Thomas Jefferson of course the great president who sent them on this journey our only genius President we will ever suffer in this country in my opinion had a great vision and he sent these people off to try to look for Nations of Indian tribes established peace through trade with the Indian tribes and set up a nice trading Network for the United States and he called that his vision was to establish an Empire of Liberty across this country an interesting idea Jefferson his idea of an Empire of Liberty was to have small little communities little farming based communities which related to each other and traded with each other and not have a strong centralized government he’d be very surprised today with where this country has gone I’m sure of that so he thought these guys would be have fun they were well prepared Merryweather Lewis of course had prepared for three years with Jefferson a year and a half a very intensive study how to take records William Clark was brought along to kind of lead the men do the map making he was a collector of people of course Lewis was kind of a a loner wasn’t he and he had days which didn’t go very well and if he had those blue days and when it gets cloudy like in an Oregon winter sometimes doesn’t go too well Lewis had trouble in Oregon that’s for sure all right they’re coming down the river in their canoes they’re headed down towards the ocean don’t know how far it’s going to be they reach the place where the great trading fairs have just ended at the DS Oregon the Columbia River was not damned the great George ug has written a good book now called when the river ran wild it’s a great book he’s an elder from Warm Springs he talks about before the Columbia River was damned all the Rapids and all the salmon that went through those Rapids and how available they were to the Indian people the great trading fair that begins in the spring late spring early summer and goes through the summertime in the Dallas Oregon sometimes swelled to 30,000 Indian people for a couple months at a time that fair had just ended when lisis and Clark came down the river William Clark noticed however in one of the Villages at Nik Lish he noticed in his estimation over 10,000 lbs of salmon dried pounded up prepared in baskets and ready for trade we estimate now over 1 million pounds of salmon a year was processed from what is now the Dows to Cascade Locks about 20 mi of the Columbia River just for trade alone quite an industry that’s significant a million pounds of salmon a year for trade well where was it being traded some went East over the nesp country a lot of it though came down the Columbia River now Clark was familiar with Indian people he had grown up out on the frontier with his older brothers in the Indian Wars back East he knew a little bit about how to deal with the Indian folks Lewis had trouble dealing with people in general he was a loner absolutely the size of group this he would probably go the other way talking to this group but William Clark and sit down and talk to you well Clark thought as we come down the river let’s make careful notice of the tribes they started keeping their records Clark was in charge of mapping of course we know that as well right he he was the great map maker have some of the replicas of his Maps up here and he was outstanding map maker they came down the river when they got to the first Narrows where the Columbia River narrowed down to 50 yards across from a mile and a half wide and the whole river boiled through that narrows and was a cauldron of swirling water and the Indians have been out there fishing when salmon were running it became difficult passage the Indians didn’t run their canoes down that part of the river either we had 50 chinuk speaking Indian Villages from that part of the river to Dallas all the way to the ocean it was an alliance of villages relating to each other through Commerce rather than conflict this is a significant Point here the first Traders came out and said we have Indians out here and their relations as people out in the Northwest revolve around trade and commerce rather than around conflict and raiding as all the tribes had been coming across to this point whole different associations of peoples different rules completely are men were not familiar with those rules now these rules have been in place in a long for a long time these chinuk speaking Indian Villages and they had such a Reliance on trade they had a trade based communication where the chinuk chook chook trading jargon was a language of trade that went from the Dows all the way the Pacific Ocean and up the coast that headman for that whole empire was referred to later on as a king king K kamaly of the chanuk proper he was a rich man he was in charge of the Indian money that came down this is the Indian money the dtia shells very very rare this was the medium of exchange along the Columbia River I mean you could trade your canoe right that would be good also and food and dogs but the dtia shells were the standard money 40 of them of the small ones would be worth a canoe maybe three horses a few slaves couple hundred lounds of salmon the big ones much more rare 20 of these strung up would be worth a lot you could trade I think there are accounts of 20 of the large Denia shells exchanged for up to four rifles and rifles were very very rare at that time well com Kaley had his village out on the Pacific Ocean the great Chief himself the trade of this money came through him these shells are not located in Oregon naturally they come from Canada he had great canoes and his people went out in the Pacific Ocean and went in the cold rough ocean waters all the way to Canada and they traded for the Indian money up there and brought it back he was the central Banker for this entire trading system all the way on the Columbia River no wonder they called him a king and he was a clever man rather than having his alliances and his relationships with the neighboring tribes through force and conflict he did it through trade and relationships he had a large family had many wives his children would marry into the head men of other nations it all became a matter of family and relationships very interesting world so LS and Clark arrive in this they don’t know how this works at all they’re used to doing their peace Parleys showing the chief his new father you’ve been a chief for a thousand years aren’t you glad to have a new father right you know your people have been here for thousands it didn’t always work out too well but they had the they had their pattern worked out that didn’t work very well once they got here the real disappointment was as they came down the Columbia River and remember now LS and Clark had been surprised visitors and a real curiosity to the tribes in the Rocky Mountains because they hadn’t seen white people before they hadn’t seen Clark slave York the big black man that was with them and they became quite a sideshow the largest Sideshow to travel through native North America but when they got to the Columbia River and got to the Dallas they were no longer unique there had been trade going on for a number of years for 15 14 and 1/2 years ships had had already been coming from Boston and a whole Year’s journey and anchoring off the coast of Oregon atoria at B Baker Bay and trading for 6 months at a time with the Indians they wanted the otter skins because those otter skins when taken to China were worth a fortune so people were leaving Boston with trade goods for the tribes knives tobacco axes glass beads the blue beads were the chief beads the Tha beads that the tribes in the Northwest one of the most William Clark had told Lewis that when they left Lewis didn’t believe him so they’re out of blue beads by the time they got to Oregon they missed a great opportunity had they had another barrel of blue beads they would have been fairly wealthy they were pretty well gone of course later people were mixing the blue beads up with the Indian money and was coming brother exciting wasn’t it is that nice I like these are not too old these blue ones some of these are old this is a string of 270 year old Dutch trade beads so they’ve been around for a while some of these old beads these tomahawks were very good trade items it’s actually a pipe yes they had 55 of these when they left those are pretty nice those were hot items now they’re coming down the river what do they see they see trade goods they see iron kettles they see Indians with old guns that are worn out they see Indian women with Sailors names tattooed on their arms James Bowman they see Indian children with red hair there’s been quite a bit of trade going on for a long time they’re no longer this the the great curiosity that they had been plus the tribes have seen black Sailors before so York is not even a great curiosity either okay they get to those Narrows let’s get back to where the difficulty of going shooting down the Narrows on the Columbia they have to go there the Indians don’t run their canoes down there they set their canoes up if you’re coming down from above they Park their canoes walk around the horrible Rapids rent other canoes or family Arrangements you borrow a canoe and you head on down the river now there’s been trade going on for thousands and thousands thousands of years and here are the rules of the trade this is something that Louis and Clark really should have known they didn’t know it and it caused them a great deal of trouble if I and with my friends and my family and my most revered trading partners we have what we call a balanced trading agreement or balanced reciprocity you can come into my house and borrow whatever you want because you know I trust you and you leave the appropriate goods behind very informal now more distant kin and not so familiar trading partners have a more generalized trading agreement generalized reciprocity it’s set up by the headman and at each time we’re going to have our trade you can’t come into my house and take things but your headman your Chief and my head man or a headwoman my chief or chief this will determine what the goods are and we put it’s pretty friendly now here’s somebody who comes in sometimes and takes my kids away and sells them as slaves from way far away right he’s not part of the Inner Circle our Arrangement is much different that is called a negative reciprocity or a negative trading agreement so if he comes and take something from me what’s my obligation I got to get even don’t I and that’s been going on for thousands and thousands of years in fact if I don’t come and make it right it’s a shame on my ancestors all right so we’ve got these wat laa tribes people controlling these Rapids they are a pretty tough bunch of folks they’re the rivermen who live on the river the rules are when you come to the watala you have to pay them a toll to go through their part of the river that’s the rules right if you don’t do that you don’t know the rules and Lewis and Clark they’re a military outfit aren’t they they got their guns they March around they’re pretty sure of themselves so when they get to this point and the Indians start coming up and looking at the goods they have and maybe pocketing something saying well I I need to have that and this is the rule tools of exchange for coming through their reaction was not very positive and Lewis and Clark forced their way through pushed their way through bullied their way through so then what do they have to do if you break the rules someone has taken something from you in effect by not following the rules and taking Passage through your area you have to under the rules take something back don’t you that’s what happened so so Lewis in particular characterized Indian people the chinookan people as thieves not knowing that what they were doing was just following the rules that have been play in place for thousands and thousands of years the Indians looked a lot different they were shorter they had their heads foreheads sloped and flattened here’s William Clark’s drawings that he made of the flattening of the chunuk heads the women had evolved to a place of prominence in trade things were much different very much different the weather was bad wasn’t it they get all the way down to the coast they’re pinned down they’ve got a bad attitude a bad feeling for the Indian peoples because they think they’re all thieves they speak a strange language they look different Indian women when they get made up to go out you know they put fish oil on them you know and they have a different different uh way making themselves up the weather pins them down and what they get depressed they’re start feeling pretty bad quickly what else are they missing they’re missing salt of course right they’ got to have some salt but the main thing they missed as they came down was they missed their boat Jefferson had told them when you get there look out on the Pacific Ocean for the trading ships that are there and Jefferson had given them a letter of credit kind of like a blank credit card that they had with them signed by the president saying if these gentlemen present this to you give them what they need and I’ll make good so they were hoping to get out here and find a trading ship still there but what had happened they had missed the boat they were about a month too late they were hung up in the mountains coming through it was very difficult travel they lost another 3 weeks on Merryweather Lewis’s experimental boat which didn’t work it sank and he was totally embarrassed and chagrined I think the men held that against him so they got all the way out here and they’re they arrive in the Pacific Ocean in November the mouth of the Columbia River that’s when the worst storms of the Year hit that’s why the sailing ships have already gone where are they they’re already in Hawaii right good resting up with their whole shipload of sea otter Furs and maybe some beaver furs resting up before they go to China trade those Furs for gold silver Jade porcelain spices silk and go home and increase their family fortune 300 times so they those guys were long gone right what are they going to do they’re going to have a boat they need a they don’t have a fort they have to find a place to live don’t they while they’re here that’ll be good so they’re going to build a fort they think when out on the coast somewhere the weather’s so bad they’re thinking this is not a good idea so they had they plan to head back up the river go up the river and build a fort near Mount Hood maybe 100 miles up where it’s drier but some Clatsop people come and tell them on the other side of the river from Washington over in the Oregon swamp lands there’s a lot of elk now these guys are on the first Atkins diet they’ve been eating 10 pounds of raw meat a day for a year and a half haven’t they and they don’t they do not appreciate the richness and tremendous diversity of the cultures in the Pacific Northwest salmon is one of the greatest foods you could ever have these guys don’t ever appreciate the salmon you can only have this kind of an alliance of peoples 50 villages in a friendly trade Alliance when you have tremendous resource a avilability this was one of the richest places in the world agriculture never developed here like in most of the rest of the world why they didn’t need it the area was full of wonderful Bounty a bounty of food wouldn’t that be something that kind of interdependence of trade when you have that much salmon coming up your river system gives you stab ility amongst groups it it does that’s what that’s what they had they really had a version of what Thomas Jefferson had thought they should seek was that Empire of Liberty equality tradeability it can only come in a resourcer area so there’s trade for food tools religious purposes medicines it’s all here but rather than take the time to get to know the Indian people that were here the chinuk world since they were kind of repulsed by the activity which they interpreted as thev theft and the physical appearance in the language the man moved across the river to hunt the elk and withdrew in built Fort classup and spent the winter pretty alone they missed out on so much previous winter they stayed at in the plains of North Dakota at Fort Manda lived as a part of the Indian trade and the world that was going on and learned a lot but by isolating themselves although they did have time to catch up on their homework and Clark of course did his great map making determined they were had come 4,123 miles he’s like 40 miles off this incredible map maker and Lewis caught up on his writing and his measurements and his scientific documentation they really did not interact with the Indian people out here nearly to the degree they had been all the way across why do you think they were felt so bad you know it was it was the weather but part of it is I think they were the first tourists in Oregon they had exceeded their Authority when they crossed the Rocky Mountains they outside the Louisiana Purchase weren’t they weren’t they so they really had no official standing out here I think they might have known that a little bit and they were a little bit leery of their position though they were careful they ran out of salt they needed some salt they sent some guys out to get to make salt that’s a story everybody knows about they they boiled sea water made 2 and 1/2 bushels of salt Lewis was craving salt Clark could do without it pretty much they go to see a whale that’s kind of exciting right but they missed getting the whale meat because what they were too late to get there their their timing is so off when they come to Oregon they miss the big trading fair when they come it down the river they miss the boat don’t they they’re too late to catch their ships to get resupplied to send people home perhaps they get to the whale too late they hear about a little bit late although it’s interesting sakaja so I say her name insists on going and by way at 4:00 I’m giving a presentation on sakaja all 18 names that I found for her it’ll be it’ll be interesting she decides she needs to go see the whale they go see this 105t whale of course they take great records of it they don’t have much to trade these guys started out with a whole ship a big barge keelboat of trading Goods they’re down to two handkerchiefs of trade goods at this time some buttons they’ve got a couple of coats they can trade they’ve got some fish hooks and some sewing needles basically they managed to trade with the K the tilamook or the kiluk people for enough whale blubber to bring that over so that gets them through part of the winter Lewis writes well it reminds him of pork when you cook the whale blubber now of course shano the French Trader who is the owner not the husband he wins her in a game or purchases her of sakaja is their cook he’s the company cook he doesn’t really have that much to cook most they kill 153 elk with in the Oregon winter the Indians see them as depleting the resources is taking way too much food away for the amount of people that there are there very wasteful they weren’t recycling they’re very wasteful right the Indians pretty much stay away C commy doesn’t come to visit them and because Lis in particular doesn’t feel comfortable with the chinuk people he orders them all barred from the gates of Fort clat up but Sundown every night now so how the Indians what do the chinuk think about these folks first of all these guys are lost aren’t they they’ve come down the river for the first time somebody’s come they’re called Boston Americans were called Boston to the chinuk when I talk to the chinuk people today they still call me Boston you’re either King George from England or a Boston from the United States to the chinuk those are the first group of Boston that ever came down the river that was kind of interesting they were broke actually they had no trade goods left they were pretty dirty their clothes were rotting off by the time they got here their Oak skins were falling off in the rain their uniforms were long gone months ago they were in pretty bad shape the Indians here were very very clean the chinuk people were in the water all the time it’s part of their religion their ceremonies to cleanse themselves extremely clean these guys were probably not that clean you think these were mountain men from Tennessee and Kentucky in fact historians say that at this time in American history fewer than one in 10 Americans took more than one bath a year so it was kind of a different looking group so they they’re lost they’re broke they’re kind of smelly they’re not all that clean and now when they’re all kicked out of the fort every night at dark what they’re rude so no wonder the Indians don’t come to them in great numbers and embrace them and have all the parties that they had the first winner the first winner what Pierre cruzat the wild Frenchman played his fiddle every night there was big parties he never plays his fiddle the whole winter out of the four months they’re here 120 days plus REM it’s raining all but 10 or 12 days it was a winter like January was this year wasn’t it this is the little ice age you guys can look that up from 1700 through the Civil War the Northern Hemisphere got quite colder than it is now glaciers Advanced that’s why when they came to the Rocky Mountains there was snow and August it was a cold old time well they managed to get through the winter they’ve eaten all the oak they can find they traded for a few Roots best they can the men are sick had they lived with a chinook and taken sweat baths and gone on their lodges they wouldn’t have cramped up and become so sick many of the men have real bad muscle cramps from working in the rain and the cold they just want to go home one of their canoes gets lost in the ocean in the storm another one is damaged they’re preparing to leave and head back up the river they only have an a trade good to trade for one canoe there’s still one canoe short Lewis gives the order we’re going to take a canoe now Jefferson has told these guys when they’re out here treat the Indian peoples honorably we want to end up with a whole nation of trade across this country it’ll be good so act respectfully do the right thing you know a month earlier six elk were left out in the woods being brought back to the Fort now the rules in the west are which these guys don’t seem to understand don’t know the rules that causes some trouble when meat is left out after dark what it’s fair game why it yeah because exactly wolves will get it so so if anybody leaves meat out after dark it’s there for the taking so the Clatsop chinuk people took that meat Lewis called him on it and said listen you thieves they’re just following the rules but he called them thieves again well they say okay we’ll bring you six dogs and that made Louis very happy because he lik to eat dogs and so that did Square the relationship at that time but even though that did happen Lewis when they need the extra canoe says because they took our six elk we left out there last month we’re going to take one of their canoes so he so while the captains are thanking cabay or k we call him cabay today who was the clat up chunuk head person of the of the clat up chunuk people on the Oregon coast thanking him for being a pretty good host and he had fed them a little bit brought them some roots and he was provided the most contact that they did have was very limited while they’re doing that and giving him a piece of paper giving him Fort clat for his own personal Retreat to have as a chief which is kind of nice they’re stealing his canoe they have men taking his canoe so here we have Indian view these guys show up as poppers basically they’re kind kind of rude and kind of dirty and really not that interesting and they leave they leave as the thieves and head back up the river very interesting and it’s uh that they were sent out by Jefferson to look for an Empire of Liberty or to set up relationships where he could help establish one where we could have local localized trade localized stability they came over the Rocky Mountains where what men were men and horses were horses and there was a lot of Buffalo hunts and it was just great and Grand everything was that it should be as it should be they came over down into this world of salmon people and they probably were in as close to an Empire of Liberty as existed at that time anywhere and did not recognize it for what it was at all and left disillusioned and left which with such poor reports of the Indian people here if somebody hadn’t been here to see what was going on you would think people really weren’t worth talking to they were just thieves and Scouts although they did notice their canoes they were Amazed by their canoes the wonderful Cedar hats they had and some of the details of their physical characteristics the money was interesting you know they like the money they really had a chance had they spent the time with the Indian people here to get to know them that winter go with Comm Kaley and his people and find out what their ceremonies were like you imagine William Clark if he’d have been with the King C caly and gone in one of those 60 foot hia freighter news up into Canada on a trading Mission what the reports would have been then just would have had the way to connect with the people it would have been a whole different time wouldn’t it so they headed up the river and guess what their timing was still off had they waited another three or four weeks like they had originally planned they would have come up the river during the salmon Harvest there would have been a bountiful trade going on and the Indians there would have been definitely ready to host them feed them and have a what the enormous party which would have been they that’s what they were looking for well they were too early so they came down the river too late they went up the river too early they missed so instead of coming into celebrations they found people who were starving and not doing very well and they went back through the Dallas area and what happened they forced their way through again right coming back now if I forc my way through once that’s bad enough isn’t it if I do it a second time what that’s really on you right Indians were taking more Goods they took Lewis’s dog SE man the big Newland dog Lewis by this time you know he’s kind of depressed anyway wasn’t he we knew he had problems with with uh fits of melancholy Jefferson called he became blue Lewis has become a dangerous man Clark is now in charge of the Expedition when they leave Oregon Clark is a leader of men his whole life he’s a collector of people he loves the interaction Lewis threatens to burn down Indian Villages threatens to punch Indians out roughs them up and Clark steps forward starts doctoring the Indian people with the medicines that they have clearing up some of the eye ailments they have with the laments they have that the Corb Discovery is carrying with them and it’s a good thing he does that because that buys them just enough Goodwill along with their great Superior Hunters George duard couter the fields brother some of the great hunters that are along and they’re able because the people are so hungry they’re able to trade them for some fresh elk meat and just barely get through and head up where they’re going home aren’t they finally all right any questions what do we have here I got five minutes for questions anybody yes questions I have a microphone I’ll come around and everyone can hear your question does anyone have any questions you’ve got one shelves where do these Shel okay he wants to know about the shelves they’re off of vanc Island these are little creatures this is the top of the shell the animal lives out at the bottom they live down 70 ft deep in the dark Pacific ocean waters how’ they harvest these they didn’t have scuba gear a few washed ashore they had a long set of broom handles that interlocked they would stand up on the ocean in their canoes take a a broom head which was carved out of uwood branches into a little head Cedar slats around the edges which when closed up would cause the broom head to pinch these little critters off the bottom of the ocean they had a cedar plank with a hole cut in it that fit down over that broom head two large stones on the side they would get down to the bottom and they would plunge 70 ft down that broom head into the sand beds where these little critters were the weights of those two rocks on the sides would slide that cedar plank down over that broom head close up those bristles and pull them up to the surface what an amazing technology was here without any metal and so they traded them all the way down what was the extent of the trade good question these trade items were found all the way over the Missouri country Indian people had a tremendous trade going on we had uh we find turquoise beads in the Columbia River from the southwest there’s abalone shell from Southern California up here and these trade goods went all the way clear Down Under the Mississippi River and The Naz people who were traded with the Aztec through the Caribbean Ocean knew of these trade goods tremendous trade goods good questions anybody else oh there you go did they have did they ever see any wolves did they see wolves they even ate a wolf while they were in Oregon yes there were wolves everywhere there were Bears they ate over a thousand elk on their trip they ate a couple of wolves a couple of eagles they ate a few coyotes lots of they maybe 30 Bears this guys this is original meat diet weren’t they if it wouldn’t have been for sakaj wayo along they probably would have had trouble without they didn’t have the vegetables but she was able to recognize some of the roots and foods which was very very good for them kept them from getting sick okay you guys can walk by these tables on your way out don’t linger if you want to look at this stuff don’t linger too long cuz other people can see it and we got another presenter coming up our next is going to be coming up on the hour hand

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Chief Cliff Snyder on Chinook and Clatsop history at Fort Clatsop

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

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome to the core of Discovery 2 and the ten many voices for those of you who are not familiar with us we are a child exhibit with’ been traveling the Louis and Park Trail since January of 2003 and made our way Westward to the Pacific Ocean we’ll also be doing the return trip next year in 2006 back to St Louis from the coast we call this the ten many voices cuz we people from all over the country to do programs and theend voices about L Clark and we also bring in charal presenters to talk about their tribe today we have with us Chief greay wolf Cliff Snider who is an honorary chief of the Shimmer and he’s going to be talking about the triel history at the end of the trail so please welcome Cliff Snider is this working can you hear me well here we are at the end of the trail and uh I want to tell you that I’ve been traveling with myin the last 3 days at the smiter in Portland Fort Vancouver and in order to C disappointment I see some of my people who have been following me all around and it’s good to see them here and I want to also tell you that I didn’t do a rain dance this week and that’s the reason why we have such good I want to say to youya clo is a chinook Indian word for hello or goodby much like aloa and I also want to say that I sometimes I fear following Roger wendley if any of you were here at the last presentation he puts such a great show and we’ve done things all across America all the way from here to monachello I would like to say also that I don’t go through the acts like he does but I will probably be doing a lot of reading off of my notes and I think you can understand that and it is a custom of most of the tribes Across the Nation to welcome visitors into their area and I’d like to take the honor at this point to welcome you to the Eternal homeland of the clat of Indian tribe who lived just a few miles from here in fact they had Villages right out here uh where the rivers go into the ocean above Seaside and geart and the class of tribe history actually goes back over 10,000 years by carbon dating and I’m using that in the same text I would the chook Indian tribe because all that separated us was a river we intermarried and uh we visited each other and we had the same language chin pan language and so nowadays you make territories this is Washington this is Oregon the river runs between but in those days we were just all Indians living here at that particular time to the south of us we had the Kil you’ve heard about the whale story uh and Below them were the nalum and uh then on the other side of the Columbia River were the lower Chinooks and then the claps of course were the ones that kept Len par at for clap during that winter of 056 and that was the second longest place that they stayed on their entire trip the first one of course was a man Fort mandad and we’ll get to that later and the third one was last month when I was visiting the T of many voices in CIA Idaho on the Clearwater River that was the third place they stayed the longest on their return trip I would like to take one minute and I don’t know if he’s back there in the audience some place to talk talk about a man who is a director of the ten many voices and core Discovery too I worked with him for 25 years on the chinuk Indian Council even though he is a cloud of Indian his name is Dick bash and he works with Daryl Martin and they are running this wonderful wonderful core Discovery all across America and the people who work here I tell you when I visit with them in different places they I’ve never seen one group of people worked as hard as they do to put on a great show dck bad okay big bash currently is the uh uh ceide resident and chard Baker who preceded him is now the head of Mount Rushmore so I’ve been working with some really neat people across uh in 2003 monachello uh Gerard Baker asked me to be the first educational speaker on the tour dick bash gave the first blessing and so we were right there at Mello and in Virginia in Charlottesville from the very beginning and here we are again at the end of the trail I feel very blessed to be a manello cameia Seaside and I guess in a few weeks I’ll be back in Forth Vancouver when we come back and uh I want to say something about Nick bash we don’t say great in the Indian language like great great great great like the white people do we just say great grandfather or grandfather well dick bash’s grandfather was Chief K or kable who was in The Young Bay area around asor the river and port platza and he’s the one that helped the uh B Clark contingent make it through that terrible winter of op 0405 well I’m getting mixed up on my days but anyway that before they return anyway uh when when LS and Clark left Fort CL and headed back to Jefferson they presented caway with fourth clat pel and that was kind of famous the last few weeks to understand because uh it burned down accidentally and so many times I’ve had my picture taken there and done interviews that it’s going it’s a great loss for me but in the other hand they’re finding artifacts there and they might rebuild it and it might be better than ever thank God we have Nick bash to okay uh one thing that uh we want to say about the classs in that time and you if you’re all oregonians or have been here a long time you know how much it rains he mentioned and for you people who are new from last presentation L Clark spent that winter here and and it rained every day except for 12 days and only six of those days that they even see a glimmer of sunshine so I think we’re very fortunate today I guess a couple of weeks ago when I were walking the ASO Bridge across there and doing some Louis and Clark activities and I imagine some of you were there I think you’d got rained up pretty hard now today my story is going to be a little different from the ones that you might have been reading about on this 8,000 Mi trip across America I’m going to be giving you the view from the Indian Villages look at these people coming who are they I’m going to give you the view the view that these are strangers in our land and it’s not going to be the same thing that you read about in The White Man’s history books so be prepared today to get a different version I would like to ask you though if I could see a show a hands how many of you have a trace of Indian blood in your veins would you please raise your hand wonderful there two or three I must tell you if you are part of Indian and people find this out all the time I know I ask kids this all the time I’m talking to the schools where the teachers are how many of you are Indians and said yeah my dad’s an Indian but they never say they are for some reason but if and all possible when I was a small boy walking down the street with my mother holding her hand people had passed by she was a half GRE indan but she told me never to tell anybody that you’re part Indian because of discrimination factors now we don’t see that today and after playing football at or State catching passes onehanded and being a All America golf coach and things like that wherever I go being an Indian I’m the one that’s different and being being different is my greatest asset in the world that’s one of the reasons I’ve even here today because I’m part of India so follow your bud lines back there if you’re younger uh sometimes there might be some educational opportuni there be very proud of your heritage and those are my days of being called floating Feather by my coaches in Oregon State and now my story how many of you studied uh anything about the Louis Clark trip most of you know the whole story then uh some of how many have read ger and they’re really up on everything there’s still a few of you okay the reason I’m asking you that is because sometimes when I’m talking to high school kids or grade school kids they haven’t had that experience but sometimes I find people in the audience who know a lot more about it for example like Roger he’s had all these journals and he’s been studying for years I have to get mine through Legends and talking to other Indians on the trail and sometimes they’ll tell me stories that aren’t in the white man’s history hisory books and you not something that coming along the trail and trying to relate these stories remember there was sign language but the Indians couldn’t write and so it would be very difficult for them to portray their history down to the line now I might to say that the way the Legends and the true stories are handed down comes through the campfires at night during the winter when they’re sitting around and the elders are teaching the young about what has happened and that’s how the history was handed down for example I told you you told her she told him told him back there got back to me the story would be slightly changed and we did it again the next night it would change again and by time the next year or so it would hardly seem like it would be the same story but here’s my son I talk to my son I tell him to repeat the story back to me okay he repeats it back to me no you have it wrong you do it again you do it again okay we’ll start tomorrow you come back and you do it again and I keep doing that and doing it doing it so that way when he tells his son the story is the same as when I told him and so that’s why when you read the history books it’s all written out and it goes on for ages but the Indian stories are handed down by Legends and so today we’ll talk about that but actually my reflections of this whole business of Louis Park goes clear back to president Jefferson and who set out to buy a little town on the mouth of the Mississippi River called New Orleans and I guess you’ve been reading about New Orleans and watching that on TV lately quite a bit but to get New Orleans was to uh dominate The River traffic on the Pacific so in negotiating with uh France who had just acquired that territory from Spain he found out that Napoleon of all people wanted to sell some land over here because he wanted to pay off his War debts you know Napoleon was always at War and so Jefferson sent an emissary over and they decided on what we now call the Louisiana Purchase and you know how much that was 3 cents an acre little less than we’re paying today around Seaside up there it amounted to $15 million for all the land from the uh East Coast to the Rocky Mountains 15 million well that was smaller than the the budget of the United States at that time when I was in CIA they asked the other speaker about how they pay off those that how do you get rid of it you know where did that money come from and I think President Jefferson died owing a lot of money I don’t think it probably ever got paid for but anyway we acquired the land and that was double double the size of America at that time remember at that time there only 17 states in the union and we only had 15 stars on the flag and when Louis and Clark were handing out Flags it wasn’t really a true emblem of what was really happening now I miss I did a war Cano over in IO a short time back and I told them how legs were handled down but I told him now I’m 80 years old and so I have to write things down so when I’m turning Pages I’ll hope you excuse me for a minute because I don’t want to leave anything out anyway Jefferson picked Mary weather Lewis and then Clark to explore this new region and he knew about uh a little bit about what was going to happen but really he didn’t know what was going to happen with the Indian tribes he knew that some French Trappers had gone up the Missouri River and he thought maybe there might be a river passage all the way to the Pacific coast McKenzie had done something similar up in Canada before that and the information he received back he knew there were different people out there some of them had never seen a white man so he didn’t know whether they’re going to be friendly or whether they’re going to be treacherous and just wipe out the whole Expedition the only knowledge he has Is that real close to monello and I just love the time when I got chance to be in that area and meet with those people cuz actually it was a sister city of uh the friends of Pacific here across the asor in Long Beach and so I got to go back with them too and see that particular area but the mon tribe was back there they’re unrecognized today like that she looks unrecognized by the way I want to tell you even though we’re unrecognized tribe of the United States government we got recognized under the Clinton Administration after 30 years of work and then the new Administration came along they took it away again but I want to tell you something we still recognize the United States government he didn’t know about like I said about being friendly or being Mass but I want you to just come with me and try and visualize in your mind remember on our trip in the bus and we’re going up to Columbia River and we were talking about visualizing what they went through as they came down and you almost get a clear picture even though it’s changed and there dams and things like that things have changed and almost every speaker talks about all the horrible things they went through they talk about the Bears they talk about the river problems they talk about Great Falls Taking a month to get around 19 miles I was there I went to the Buffalo Jump and I know how sticky that mud could be I don’t know how they did all those things but mainly I just want to say like groger said it was the Indians that helped them all the way now the Expedition had started out and of course they couldn’t begin until everything was finalized with France with Napoleon so they kind of sat in wood billies for a while I finally got into St Louis they little dancing and celebration and then they took out now for the next few hundred miles they start running into the oage Indians and the kapoo Indians I always think of that comic strip with the kapoo joy juice I didn’t know there Indians like the kiko but anyway they were and they just went for several hundred miles they run into the shauni Indians who are friendly no problem there and uh they were kind of curious about Lewis and Clark but they didn’t offer any resistance usually they went in their camps and they just uh did some talking tried to counsel him tell him that the white great white father was back in Washington and then in Iowa they ran into the uh otos I had the honor of making the uh reflection speech of the ver speech on the Lewis Park Trail in Omaha and near there was I got a chance to go to Council Bluffs and leis and Clark held her first First Council in with Indians where they just sat down around the council part and uh what they talked about was the great white father that now he was in charge of this land and now they would have to be subservient to him and not trade with any other Nation except America I don’t know how that sounds to you right now but that’s the way I was going at that particular time to cancel talked a little bit about the lotas we get into Lota country first of all you get into the Yankton Sue and of course there been a white man or two had been to that area at this point they still haven’t got to a place where the Indians had never seen a white man so they picked them up on a carrier it was covered with skins and carried them into camp and they had a big feast and they fiddled and they had a great time and that was swell so they decid okay it’s not going to be a bad trip at all well the other lotas the Tetons who were just up the river a aways and you heard about black Buffalo I can’t remember the other chief’s name they were just having a problem with L and Clark what they wanted to do because they had seen some white Trappers come through there is control it trade so they made High demands of tobacco alcohol Goods of every kind in order to let them go by and actually leis and Clark trained their cannons on them Clark decided to pull out his sword and I’m not going through the whole story so some of you read about it but anyway they finally left and good they left a couple of Chiefs and some of the women ride down the river ways with them and that seemed to satisfy them and they went on so here we are in a situation where we know that Indians can be Troublesome not every tribe is going to help us on the way now we run into the RICO tribes a lot of times they’re just sewn in with the Hiatus and the mandans and they shared entertainment with them they danced around the campfire they got out their fiddles and York got out he was dancing they couldn’t believe how well this black man could dance of course they were kind of curious too about his skin cover but they handed out some peace medals and some us flags at that particular point and here they still had some trade goods to trade off so that they could proceed and then they reached the Knife River and that’s where they found the Mand mandans and Hadas and this is the greatest acquisition of the whole trip a 16-year-old woman called Chicago and people ask me constantly how do you say that if you’re a Tri City you say sa Jia with a J some of L sh say there are no J’s in the language of the shis and it’s spelled with a G so for me to tell you uh how old she is where she’s buried there’s a lot of things that go on with that but this time she’s only 16 years old and she was married to a man called T shano anyway they had a new baby and it was just born just prior to the uh Expedition coming in there they decided anyway she’d been captured actually by the Hadas about 5 years before and had lived with them and so she could be very valuable in translating uh for different tribes and also giving directions and some people say she’s not as famous as everybody liked to put her but actually there’s so many places along the trail where she found food for them she’s able to translate for him and actually she was a greatest acquisition to the tribe and so they were hired on even with the baby and of course remember they had the dog Sean and here’s this great big party head off uh uh down down the road but anyway during that winter at Fort M course I mentioned it’s a longest they spent in any one place but the winter was cold the snow was 3 or 4 ft deep the Buffalo were scarce and they had a really a hard time making it to that winter as Roger says um if we starve you starve and if we eat you eat and actually they got along with the Indians so well they went out and helped them Hunt went on their trips with them helped them bring the animals back when they couldn’t find them and somehow or another they made it through that terrible winter they didn’t have too many good Winters I’ll tell you that now they haven’t seen any natives for a long time the grow bonds I want to call them gross Ventures but I guess they pronounce it Rob darl Mark who’s also part of this crew here one of the directors he was from Montana and of course you know the whole story about the great fall so going into that took a month and they finally got to ground that and they nearly lost the Expedition there but they weren’t seeing many Indians but then they got through that and now they are reaching the area of the headquarters of the Missouri they’re running out of water there is no passage all the way through and so Lewis went on ahead and and uh he had some of some of the core with him and of course you know the story they ran into some Indians and some women and they went back and Clark was going to come and the Indians were all afraid that they were going to kill him they thought this is the end of all of us and they knew another contention was coming of course s Jia was in the uh in that group with Clark who was coming up the river behind him so one of the things that Roger didn’t say he that I would say he told the story about the Skins being wrapped around but to make sure that this new Bunch with Clark was not going to kill them all they changed clothes they not only put the Skins around uh Lewis but also Cay wore his clothes with the idea that they wouldn’t be killed you know if they show to be friends and the story of a he a he he where they hugged each other and they hugged each other so hard he was almost tired of being hugged so that was good and then you know Chicago comes along and holy smokes this is her tribe and Kamaya away never walks as her brother and so from then on it was a matter of getting together and uh being friends again it was a wonderful homecoming and so they sat down in the wigwams they took off their moccasins and they smoked together because that was the story at the time that meant there’s a sign of s sincerity security now in order to proceed now they can’t use the canoes anymore so they’re going to have to have horses to carry their goods and this is where uh SC become very valuable because she had to work in the translation I’ll have to read this because it runs on a little bit Lewis spoke English to Lish who spoke French to shano sharo spoke TOA is Chicago Chicago spoke to kamay and Sh and that’s how they translated their bargain and they picked up some horses from them as I recall it was like 28 horses and one mule and the one mule would be more important to them than the 28 horses and then they were going north at this time in into uh Mont ten country and here they ran into the Flathead Indians and they bought 11 more horses and then they traded seven of the horses that they had for other horses and among them were some Colts and you’ll understand later how the Cults come into help him get across the bitters now they know that there’s no Northwest Passage and were steep they said steep like the like on the house and there were hardly any game living in bits you know now there are but those days they’re all down where it was Lush and easy to live now with coming as a white man they all been porched up in woods and on this they were starving and they had to uh kill a coats Colts and use them for food in order to survive and I told to people who have traveled this area by airplane Ron Lowry he’s both chasing Across America Uh Kevin cryst who works here with the tribe with the contingent and he says that is the only way that they could have crossed the bitter Roots is the rout that they took and they finally got to the wake per Prairie and in that Spirit they all offered them some food and the young triman looked at these people and said look at all these Goods say had maybe we should kill them all and take everything and we will be rich but as Roger has told you there was a woman there who had lived with the white people for a while and she had returned to Village as an elderly woman her name is what make sure when you’re reading about L and Clark journals that you get the book about what pise she said they were good men and do them no harm and that’s the phrase that you will see all over the Lewis Park Expedition and so they decided to do that and I’ve been friends with the N Pi for the last 3 or 4 years fact I’m going to speak at their signature event and they said well maybe we shouldn’t have let them go maybe we should have taken everything that they had maybe we’d still have our big Homeland now their reservations have cut into many pieces and they lost a lot of their possessions well they found a way to make canoes they showed them at Canoe Camp how to hollow out cottonwood trees not the cedar trees that we know of or but cottonwood trees you all know what cottonwoods like it’s really hard to work with they didn’t chip on it they burned out these canoes and they used fire and then chipped away after the fire and they made them so they were good enough to go down the Clearwater River and then eventually into what is now le and tri cities and all those places down the river and they just kept going in their their canoes were okay but they weren’t like an ending canoe that you hear about whe the chooks down further down the river they got to the where the Snake River comes into the columia right now I’m working with my on a project at that very point with a with a snake inter Ste Columbia and uh we all have that project done in a couple years but anyway it’s just awesome to see the change and how with the dam there ice Harbor and everything has changed the Snake River completely but they decided to go up the river and they uh met with the EAS even and the wabs and then they turned around went back down and they danced with the w the walls that’s one of the things they always talk about how had a good time dancing wait a minute there’s a human and what’s he wearing he’s wearing a red sailor jacket and they had sailor clothes on well we must be getting close and according to their Maps they should be about 200 miles from the Pacific Ocean CU here these humel Indians have been trading with the chooks at the mouth of river and they got sailor clo and by this time you know 28 ships had entered the CL River before Louis and park even got them so the Indians have been training with them for quite a while they left there they got the slil of Falls and the Indians stood back with their arms folded let’s see if they can get over these without losing all their stuff well the wos who spoke a ventian language and the wish Rams who also spoke the same language they decided they would just let them go over the falls and all the stuff that fall out and anything that’s on the shore belongs to us and that’s just what I mean I met Stephen Ambrose and I approached him with this one time and I said you discredit the CHS as being thieves and he says weren’t they and I said no I said anything’s left attended that’s yours that’s just their way of life and so tting don’t say that they’re thieves but probably were a little bit anyway they they got a couple of canoes over there old remember Slava Falls was only 40 ft wide at that time I mean between me and Roger at the back of the Tennant all further the was between the the rocks for the salmon were trying to run up over the top and Indians came from all over the West to fish at this particular site it’s very important a lot of people talk about the Salo Indians they weren’t Salo Indians they were Indians from all the different tribes there were chooks wish RS washos Bas everything everybody came there to catch fish because it was a tough place for the fish to jump over PS so we’re meeting these new kind of Indians and they got they look different The Man Dan are 6’5 Tex Hall Baker 63 65 head of all the national things American Indians and I’m telling him and know here we are we’re only 5’5 and we got flattened heads and who are these new people coming they got upside down faces and they look like Bears we’re going to be all killed no there’s a woman and a baby and when you had a situation like that with a group of men they’re not going to hurt harm us and so again Chicago wi was one of the reasons why they made it safely down the river and the Indian s said well we’ll let you pass we know you’re not an our party but there’s Indians down Gorge are going to take you out and so they had to worry about that well I got to a place going the walas of course were there and wasu police about where the town of wasu cus is now and Louis and Clark stopped there at Cottonwood Beach and they said this is probably one of the finest places to for human beings to live this side of the Rocky Mountains well of course is a good place to live 16,000 chips liveed in this area at that particular time I mean that from there to the mouth of the river 100 years 100 years before Columbus there was 6 million Indians living on the Columbia drainage and down to California and up to Canada on the coast 6 million Indians as you imagine how many of them have disappeared this time well we’re making by Portland for Vancouver now and we’re head heading on down to the mouth of the Columbia River and oh joy ocean and view what a mate that was my mother was born and raised and is buried at Pillar Rock Pillar Rock claims that’s where they saw thought they saw the ocean for the first time Roger says skak River I’ll have to talk that over with we get through anyway there’s a sign down on pill Rock now says that’s that’s where they were anyway a little story goes on they were they were a bad shape that Snooks found them and that uh Portrait by Russell had some Great Falls show Chicago way of doing sign language with my fourth gr grand grandfather Tom Conley that’s not the way it was the river was roaring the waves were hot the trees were falling and they were hungry they were starving and they weren’t protected in the Dismal Niche for a little protection the Indians bought them three fish and showed them a little place to survive and they finally made it and they ended up a Station Camp I’m going to be running out of time here so I’m going to run along I just want to tell you about how they de decided to go to Fort claton they had run out of trade gr so my grandfather found telling me he said they’re no use to us we’ve already seen 28 ships they had why don’t you guys discuss where you’re going to spend the winter so they had a vote some say it was a poll York voted first black men to vote Chicago voted Tu son sharo did not vote Shannon I say he was 19 Roger says he was 17 was the first one underage to vote so if you say there’s some things that happened there some first did happen but Steph Beckham at Louis clar college says that was not a vote that was a poll and Roger tells me he said Chief you know why they decided to come across river and to uh to the Oregon side I said well no Roger how come he said they didn’t want to pay the washon sales tax I’m going to borrow that Roger from now anyway they got for PL you know the story um Roger done that trail to the whale Thea Beach echola is the way that the chuks pronounced it and uh the class went with them of course those clat Indians they kept them through that whole win they help it’s kind of funny though every time the Indians shot an elk with a bow and arrow the arrow would still be in the elk and when D went out there and shot the El to have five or six arrows in it that was still living they they had to almost traing so that’s the way they kind of got their food but Roger and I were working on the trail I couple years ago from here across to the cola Beach and the state of Oregon wanted to call it uh the Clark Trail well I kind of resisted because the class have been using that trail for 10,000 years and park me over at once even though he took Chicago wi with him to get that BL from the wh well it molded around for about 2 years down the state and finally they invited Roger and I to come up for the big dedication and they decided to call it the classup loop trail and we’re very happy about that thank you Roger anyway uh so on the way back they made it through that terrible winter I’m going to end this said by just saying they hey finally they stole a canoe from the Indians they couldn’t bargain for one so they stole one they got up to the Cath lamet and they took the wrong Channel and it was a w from cath L who is come running after them and said hey you took the wrong channel the regular river is back here little ways so you can go back there but by way that’s my canoe that you stole oh it is well how are we going to work this out so they gave him three Oak skins and he was very happy cuz he had another canoe anyway and so they considered on and then they the scal Indians some chooks stole the dog Sean I he paid $25 for that dog back there so he done at this point go out and get that dog and return it or else and you have to take their lives well they started chasing the uh scools and they gave the dog and they brought it back and he’s very happy well they had a lot of different things but the only when I’m talking about being authentic I just want to tell you one story on their way back of course you know they made it back and that’s the reason we’re all here today and the only reason we’re here today is because as Roger says the Indians helped them both coming and going but but they ADM met uh Lewis fields and a couple others had taken a different course going back and uh they meant with some pyan black feed in as you know if you know about history of black feet to there’s still a war with the United States but anyway at that time there were some young uh black pans uh staying with them that night so they they B them and they danced together and they did the whole thing and but early in the morning these uh black pig boy I guess they’re probably teenagers or something start stealing their horses their guns and taking off with them well feels he runs after one he stabs kills remember in the books it always says there’s only one man died as a result of the expedition in Iowa of appendicitis and now we’re having this problem so there’s one white man died as a result and here’s he staus guy and L chased after the other one cuz he had his rifle or something and he shot him so now we got three men died as a result of the Expedition well I’m telling this story all over it’s not in history but it’s exactly that way so I’m sitting in my house Portland Oregon and I get a call from a black foot man who had met at monello and Omaha and St Louis and all along the way he said I meet you at the truck stop we have a cup of coffee so I told him that story about the cuz he was a black but this is waiting that Che he says that’s true the one that feel stabbed did die but the one that Lis shot survived so only two men died as a result of the some Expedition well I’ll leave you with that Kum from my heart to you how you Mery for coming today and I hope if you want if there’s any questions I’m going to be roaming around with Roger for a few minutes please come up and and we’ll discuss anything you want to discuss I Mery for me thank you so much Cliff for coming and speaking he’s also going to be speaking again this afternoon at 3:00 want to come back e e

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York’s Account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

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

everyone welcome to the core of Discovery 2 tene voices if you folks could this program does get filled up because uh the program you’re about to hear is very good if you don’t mind there’s a space uh SE in between you to sit close together if you can um just so we can get more people in here uh during the program I would appreciate that for those of you who are not familiar with us we are a traveling exhibit we’ve been traveling the Lou and Clark Trail since January year of 2003 and we finally made our way Westward to the Pacific Ocean and we’ll be doing the return trip again next year back to St Louis like L Clark did 200 years ago well 200 years ago on the Expedition Captain Clark brought along his slave York and today York is here to tell his side of the story to be told for the first time so please help me welcome York we have been away from the eyes of the whole world almost 3 years thousands of miles away from civilization lifetimes away from the madness all them civilized men called slavery there was me a young Shoni woman named sag C Lewis C Clark and more than three dozen what I call volunteer Patriots now our mission seem simple enough all we had to do was cut a path through the Savage Northwest Territories all the way to the Pacific Ocean cross 4,000 mil of the highest mountains and fastest rivers in the americ ever seen before President Thomas Jefferson called us his core of Discovery and every day we live is the day we all prepared to die just on the word of the president we left St Louis a small army of men 3 years later we returned more like a Band of Brothers not one day went by that every man was tested past his limits only way you survive that kind of pain if every man willing to give what the one beside him need to stay alive well when had said in hard on us talk around Camp was if our luck didn’t change we might be looking at starvation soon one day C Le called me up says y want you to go out there try your gift for hunting see what relief you can bring to us now I took that request more like an order gathered up my rifle and started out early only been gone by an hour so before I come across some fresh tracks look kind of like Bear Tracks to me now I don’t know how many yall Tred bringing down a b before let me just tell you anything a man goes through with half a heart anything a man goes to with a whole mind either if you ask me but we was desperate I was determined to show Captain Lewis that his faith in me was well placed I thinkig you since the wind was blowing in my face been doing so all morning I might to follow these tracks out the ways without that obey but knowing was coming and if I was to catch up to him we’d have to see where was what so I follow some tracks out a mile or so come over to he and there was way off in the distance now that was a slow moving giant of a bear but by that time I’d already made up my mind and folks that know will tell you once your make up his mind there ain’t nothing in this world set to change it so I found a good size tree laid out my shot and powder and I showed him a rifle I was adjusted for the long range of the shot about to pull up a little more to account for the wind been blowing in my face all morning about that time I realized the wind wasn’t blowing in my face no more mostly kind of that old B on his nose and he let how to grow Sho the tree right beside me I knew my time for thinking was done boom that first shot fell between the shoulders gr on this come charging back in me CLA and face so I du back behind start pring the whole time I make my first mistake with rle right there I was pretty sure it was going to be my last mistake with that rifle it seemed like it took me about I to get that neck shot Lord the whole time I think the B must be beating right down the back of my neck I can’t hear nothing cuz my heart is beating so fast and loud sound like Dr in my ears somehow I got that neck shot loaded I come around the tree I was pull the tricker before I even seted up boom that second try to hit him in the arm it didn’t even slow him down and I knew there wasn’t going to be a third shot so I L my rifle Ste out and smoke to the right side of the tree and I pulled my Axe and my knife and I waited for him see I waited cuz it don’t make no sense a man trying to out run a wound and Angry Bear all that’s going do get you cut up from behind way I see it my best chance maybe my only chance is to Stand My Ground and face him like a man so I waited for him said a quick prayer for my wife and family back to L I said a couple longer prayers for myself mind you then I waited boom boom about that time a do report come from my left side it turns out K Clark sent a couple boys to check on my success and I was so glad he did both shots po that old b square in the chest by that time it must have been nothing but pain and rage prob through that great big body of his that finally give out on him that’s in 10 Paces Where I Stood waiting I took a second to gather the whis thank them boys for their good timing thank them for their better shooting and we set the skin that to clean as much of that bear as we could as fast as we could because with all that smoke and Noise with all that blood see we knew the Wolves was coming and that is the last place a man wants to be when the wolves come so we packed as much meat as we could carry and headed back to Camp arrived like conquering Heroes that night we feasted like kings and the laughter that have been abent from our fires for weeks slowly returned as hard cold men began to speak more farly of home of families their dreams and that night thousands of miles away from this civilization on hard Cold Ground I slept asleep of the day dreamed of my wife and family back in Louisville praying to God please W don’t you just let me see see her face one more time these old eyes of mine before you decide to tear me out of this here World yours my name is York just y it is the name that my daddy carried before me I was born a slave no I was born to be the slave to be the property of another man and that is the shame my daddy carried before me but I have seen a world that few white men might ever dream of I have climbed to the top of snow capap mountains swarm Rivers so Swift that the Buffalo lose their foot watched whales Dan across the Cool Waters of two oceans and and I have walked among the people those Americans you call Indian have welcomed me into their land with open arms like some long lost brother and now I ask you hear of the things that I have seen so that when I am gone from here my name my voice my story does not die here with me for that is the way of the people that is the only thing of value I have left to give now the hardest part for me was always the not know him see many times before Master thought and I would go on adventures sometimes leaving home for months at a stress but always with the understanding we was coming back once we sell from New Orleans all the way around to New England took us 9 months at Sea soon as we touch ground we headed for home there’s something different about this mission of Discovery well everybody talking about where we going and what we doing ain’t nobody said a word about when we coming home and that concerned me that in the fact when nobody ever asked if I wanted to be part of the president’s grave mission of Discovery if I wanted to lay my life down for this nation cuz I was just a slave this even funny thing is you know that if I were a free man I could not have volunteered to lay my life down for the president but but since I was just a slave nobody cared to ask but once we crossed over Missouri River but for me it was like crossing over the river Jordan found myself the other side a changed man to the Indians we met many had seen or at least heard of a white man before but they ain’t never seen nobody like me start to give me names like black Indian or Big Medicine some even said that I was a gift straight from God you know I kind of like the way the Indians is thinking out there now we set our second win camp at the Manan Village called it Fort Mandan for meaga and her husband shano now I called him her husband but we all heard how this Indian girl was stole from her family when she was young how this old Frenchman shano bought her and trade from the adop Indians then decided to make her his wife and maybe that’s why we so close me and her kind she’s the only one out there know like I know what it means to be called the property of another man she was great with child give birth a little poy over the winter I sit outside the lodge waiting for him to come into the world when I hear him crying I told C clock I says C clock as long as that girl that baby with us you ain’t got to word for whatever it takes to keep him safe I am prepared to give it even if it cost me my life and it show as I’m standing here today we all best believe I kept them safe now that winner is also with metal one ey chief of the H Indians now he refused to come and visit for a long time kind of the hadashi Indians had supported the British doing that Revolutionary War I guess we all know how that turned out for him anyway they say that word of the black man finally got the old one he couldn’t take it no more had to come see what everybody been talking about so he come to the Fort demanding to see me I stood there in front of him and the first thing he did was to lick his thumb good and start to rub as hard as he could thinking he might take the black right off of man he said he was afraid it might be another trick by the white man and he had to be sure but when it didn’t come off but that’s when he start to look at me like the others like I’m somebody special and then I did what I always did with a new Chief or tribe I stripped my shirt down bare and I stood there before him with my arms out as far as I can hold them and I let two sometimes i’ let three indian warriors get up in each hand and then I pick them up till all their feet was off the ground and let me tell you something well they Ain never seen a man that powerful before said that a man like that they said that this black man right here had to be touched by God and C CLK he was quick to agree with him he say surely you ought to respect a man with that kind of power he says but if you respect this man then you must respect the white man cuz before the white man come along this York and All His Kind they were nothing but Savage animals and the white man captured him and the white man tamed him the white man made him a slave if you’re going to respect that kind of power then ain’t you got to respect the man that can take that power and make it his slave and then sometimes c l will file the air gun once or twice to get everybody’s attention back and that’s when they start to explain to him how they’re going to be part of a new tribe now called the United States how they going to have a new Chief and great father now we call the president they have this Duty protect the president’s Warriors in your lands or suffer dearly for it now I don’t know how many times I heard him tell one Chief or another tribe that story before I understood what it was they were saying what they was telling all them Indians is they going to be American not like y’all get to be American they was going to be more colored Americans and by my figuring well the kind of misery I call life ain’t got room for more souls I wish I could have made myself so ferocious I could have scared them all away or at least one but I don’t speak the languages besides who was I just y slave of Master William Clark so sometimes I just excuse myself from the lodge go out to the cold night air and you know what the little Indian children that they always follow right behind said they knew that a gift like this could stay with him forever so they want to be as close as they can until God decide to send them on his way and sometimes I’d ask God one day he might forgive this man what he couldn’t do for all the men and children but we stayed with the man Dan the GE been flying North about 3 weeks when the ice started to break on the Lakes the captain agreed it’s time for us to make our push for the Rock Mountain now the man that say any man got a hope of making them mountains need three things good supplies better horses and a man that knows the way they say the Shon Indians is the best place for all three so our mission changed before we can go to the mountain we got to find the sashon Indians we got to find the snake people for the next few weeks moving up Riv we had no contact and finally Captain Clark says maybe a small detailer then working Inland from the water have better luck so when he called the name of the three that would accompany him well my name was on that list because he knew when the step he could take that I wasn’t prepared to follow so he walked 5 days almost 75 miles by the end our boots were tore through and our feet blooded had to wait for the others to catch up when they did well Captain Lewis drew a fresh detail of in and they proceeded on few days later we got word they finally met the Shon we was to get there fast as we could on kind there was a lot of concern a lot of agitation well this many armed white men so far in the Indian country was making everybody nervous but they told him was traving with an Indian girl and a baby was s me eat some fig no self-respect the man going to go to war when not with women and children but they say the word of black man already made himself up River they all just standing around waiting to see what everybody else been talking about so when I step out the boat everybody gather around me like the others then C Lewis called Chicago over to translate with words seeing she speak the language to all that hand talking JW are so good at now that’s when we got our real surprise remember I told y’all this Indian girl was sto her family when she was young how this old Frenchman Sho bner decided to make it his wife well she say she don’t remember much about being a child all but what she do remember is her big brother his name KEH away turns out when a man be Shashi called chief he carrying that same name without even trying to we found a way to bring a family back together now I don’t know about where y’all come from but in my life whenever the change of R tear family apart ain’t nothing sort of DME going to make it right this right here was a miracle God working well he give us a good reason to celebrate at least made it easy to trade for supplies and horses kamway was so pleased he give us his best tracker an old man he say know them Ms like nobody living now the old man’s name was awful hard to pronounce c Le say is cuz civilized tongu were never meant to speak such Savage words just called the old man told me be done with it he said now I was with the Mind well I figure any man going to lead me through the mountains I’m looking at here and promise to keep me alive the other side well I figure a man like that ought to be called whatever he like to be called but nobody asked me what I was thinking and I wasn’t up for volunteer so old Toby lead us into the bitter rot before we got in good we come across the Flathead Indians now they was like all the others except maybe more so when it come to me see the Flathead Indians tell us that an Atri when a man goes off to war and he is brave when a man goes to battle and he is strong The Greatest Warrior on the field they say that’s the only man done earn the right to paint his skin black with the cold from the warfire so when you come back to the tribe everybody know without asking which man among them was The Greatest Warrior which man among them was the strongest which man was touched by God that day so the Flathead figure if God took it to mind to make a man black like that for good ain’t that got to mean he great I sure like the way him Flathead was thinking out there but we only stayed with him a short to sh cuz we had this mountain now if I was to Never See Another Mountain until the day that I die it still be about 10 days too soon for me only thing I knew about the mountain we looking at here is ain’t no way a man going to make it out the other side of life it’s going to save us a brave market for the president’s brave men of discovered and I wouldn’t the only one thinking it but we couldn’t turn back we had ourselves a mission from the president we either complete or we perish in the attempt so we pushed on to the bitter once we got in good a storm come out of nowhere dropped 10 hard inches of snow we lost our path started throwing packs and losing animals got so bad we had to put down two coats we shot them dead and we ate them whole as we were staring we were dying in those mountains finally C Clark says maybe the only chance we got to small detail and working way the other side of this mountain hard as they can gather whatever they can gather and coming back for the rest it’s only chance he said now when he called out the name the five or six men he trust to compy him on this Mission will you best believe my name was on that list because he knew when it come to his life this mission of the president ain’t nobody breathing he ever counted on more than me so we push hard against that mountain until they finally give us way in the other side and the next person they was kind enough to trade us for roots berries and sand we gathered everything we could carry and went back in for our friends now once we made it out the other side we stayed with the next first several weeks took a few days just to feel the bones and our bodies again we were that cold while we healed up we made new canoes now the Indians taught us how to fire boats out see always before if a man want a good canoe you take a tree trunk you put the axe to it and you call yourself a boat right but the envian taught us how to fight you take that trunk lay red hot Co across it and you burn away one layer at a time so when you’re done you got a boat that run smooth in the water you got a boat ain’t got no leaks you got a good craft the Indians taught us that and a lot more they kept us alive out there once we all healed up the captain say it’s time for us to make our run for the ocean we left our horses and a few supplies with the next purse on the promise of returning and we proceeded on now the next few months it was much of the same thing new Chiefs new tribes tell them about the United States and the president C CL even named a group of islands after me called him York’s eight Islands ain’t that got a nice sound to it and then one day we come down the colia and the captain start to shout Ohan oh Ohan we had made it to the Pacific Ocean 4,000 miles of high mountains and fast Rivers all that way all of that suffering and pain and we only lost one man but he was a good man his name was Sergeant Charles Floyd come with us up out of Kentucky he grew up in Louisville but his family figur the god they know and love ain’t never intend one man owning the soul of another man say they don’t want no part of the state that make it the law so he move across the river to Indiana to to free country I was with s Floyd from die I did my best to keep him comfortable I cried with him I cried for all the men might never know one true God loving soul on account of him early passing this world and all but we made it to the ocean you see so we had our own reason to be celebrating now the first order of business at Station Camp was to set our last one of Fortune and the captains put it to a vote which Sal we settle one better for hunting the other good for building and supplies and every man went around saying one way or the other what he thought it ought to be and they got to me and everybody looking at me like I’m supposed to say something here now y’all know better than I do with the law of this nation say a negro man ain’t got the right under the Constitution or under God to put his word up beside a white man C clock well C clock says it took took every man his blood and his sweat and his whole heart to get us this far on the most important mission for a nation for a president the way I see it means every man will earn the right to say where we go from here y it’s time to put up your word it’s time for you to vote so I voted right there beside all all them white men I put my word up and it counted for something and some say maybe that made me the first negro man this whole country to vot Legal beside a white man don’t know if that’s true but I know it felt good it sure felt right so we decided to settle the south side of the river and we set to build in Fort Clon now for the next few weeks I was putting my back into it some days I was holding trees as big around as my body all by myself I wanted to show all of them men how much I deserve that vote see I couldn’t leave no room for questions C Clark as I was working so hard I fatigued my body was made up a few days but I think I made my point clear once we said Camp we start making regular Journeys down to the ocean sometimes just to bring water back to boil down for salt to have something to put on that awful food we’ve been eating for 2 years and some days we sit at that water for hours y’all ever seen the whale before well have you the way move across the water so smooth you can hardly see him there they don’t bring that body all the way out and see just how great he is before he dive down and disappear all together I would sit at that water for hours watching them whs trying to see in my head where it be like if a man had that kind of Freedom if a man could run as far as he want around and nobody telling it’s time to come back or you ain’t got a right to be there just CU of the color of your skin you know I couldn’t even see it but that kind of Freedom would look like one day C clar come through he says y’ it’s about time for us to put our mind back on civilization our mission for the president’s complete our success will be going home soon now them words I’ve been waiting to hear since before we left St Louis me the only man out here away from the world got a wife and family back home able to give them up a dead by now I couldn’t wait to get home one night Cam Lewis call us all around the fire say been think about what he might tell the president of these United States about his brave men of discovery about these men that sacrific more than any Patron ought to volunteer for his Nation about these Heroes that made a president’s dream come alive and he start to call out the names one after the other like he might presented to the president and after every name that be a ho or Hollow cuz I started theid we was having ourselves a good time we was having so much fun that I don’t think anybody even knows I mean besides me maybe they just didn’t notice see after C Le finished calling out the name of those brave men sacrifice more than any Patriot volunteers Nation to we finish listing out the name of them Heroes make the president’s Dream Come Alive well my name wasn’t on that list you see and maybe that’s when come clear to me what it is C CL been saying all this time he say YK it’s time for us to put our mind back on civilization he said y it’s time for us to put our mind back on walking three steps behind and not looking a white man in the eyes when you pass y it’s time for you to put your mind back on not speaking let somebody tell you to speak it’s time for you to put your mind back in change boy cuz cuz we going to civilization cuz we going home now folk ask all the time they say if you had so good out there with the Indians they treating you like God and all then why would a man come back to living like this well I had my reasons my wife my family see a man can’t run away pretending he free if he ain’t got the ones he Lov beside him cuz that ain’t Freedom besides I figure all them children need to know what it was I seen they need to know there’s a place that this country people see you coming they don’t run you off to the corter they don’t spit in your face instead they ask you to come and to sit down right beside them they ask you to eat the food off of their plate because it means they have been touched by God I figure if I didn’t tell them they might never know that they was more than slaves so I had to come back now the truth be told I fig it’s only a matter of time us coming back to civilization me gaining my own Freedom before we left on this mission for the president Master Clark freed Ben went on and on about see as how servitude for life is against God’s Will and against the natural order of mankind I’m giving men his freedom for faithful service for Ben a good boy you been with us a while but not like me I doing Master Clock my whole life more than 30 years by his side without fail I fig after the last three years we didn’t had all he got to do is make it home and he going to make me a free man so I could not wait to come back starting back up River we was making such good time like we was walking on water if we try we get too we trade more horses for both the faster we go by the time we got back to the next person C order us trade everything we don’t need to survive he said trade it for root I don’t know if y’all ever had root before well it ain’t the best tasting thing in the world the truth is it is the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth and that said a lot after the three years out there dog and horse included but we know that R will keep a man alive all we had to do was survive this in Mountain we was going home C L he cut the buttons off his uniform and give them to me to trade all told I come back with 20 bushes of fruit we had more than any man ever want to eat his whole life and once we cleared that mountain we started back for home past sh and the the M the the Sue all the way back into civilization we got to St Louis look like a parade started up folk line the road as far as I could see and most of to give us up a dead years ago for a few days they stopped me on the street asked me about the president’s mission of discovery about the Indians we met the great things we see I went back to my duties I tried to smile and to not look a white man in the eyes when I passed him on the street but it was hard to lower my head again and finally it was time to go on home when I got to Lille I sent the word out when the word day through and all the chores was done everybody’s the around and if it take all night best be prepared to sit all night I tell them everything I can remember about the last 3 years and I told them everything now most of them they couldn’t even believe but I told them anyway and then it was time to go on to Washington report from the presid he give every man 320 Acres of good farmland for his hard work every man double duty pay in gold coin for a sacrifice every man the appreciation of an entire nation for making the president’s Dream Live I was in the slave cours waiting to be called before the president but that that call never came for long it was time to go on home Master Clock say he been promoted to General Chief Indian agent for the the entire nation I fig he deserved it he’s a good soldier like his brothers before but he said to carry out his new duties he was going to be moving his house to St Louis permanent say can’t see himself going about new service in a Strange Land without his most prized possession without his most favorite slave you’re right there beside him so I asked him I said Master Clark if we move to St Louis for good then then what about my wife what about family and he asked me he said what about him I can give you a lawful order he says not expect you to follow without question it’s time for you to be done with that wife y she said I order you to be done with that wife there are plenty of slaves in St Louis I’ll find you a new wife there now I couldn’t believe them words coming out of his mouth like that see the whole time we out there away from the world he going on and on about Miss Julia Hancock of Virginia how he can’t wait to get back to this civilization and take her hand can’t see itself growing old without the woman he loves standing right there beside him so I thought that meant he knew how a man needs somebody he can run home to when the world been standing on his back all day a shoulder that he can cry it if he got to somebody tell him long as you know somebody love you tomorrow got to be better than today I thought he knew what it was for a man to give his heart away here he tell me he ordered me to be done with my wife like she some stray dog I found on the side of the road so we packed the house Master Clock went by boat and I left the slaves and wagons overline to St Louis when we got there I come up with a plan I went to Master Clock I says Master Clark seems to me you got lots of business interest still attend to in Louisville re you need somebody you can trust to handle all that see as I took care of your business most of our life together figure I’m the right man for the job you can send me back to Louisville I’ll take care of your business and be close to my wife and family sound like a good plan he said he can see what I was getting that he wasn’t going to stand for much of that kind of talk but he allowed me back to Louis for four or five weeks to finish up his business and to sell his boat for St Louis when you return he says I expect you to be done with that wife of yours set to get back to your duties as an obedient slave in my house four or 5 weeks for a man to throw his heart away well about 5 months later he sent word to his brother I must have misunderstood his orders cuz I’ve been gone four months too long but some yall know about that when a lot of misunderstanding see sometime a man got to do what’s right by him instead of what another man tell but I knew if I didn’t sell that boat for St Louis directly that’ be the devil to pain Master CL thre before to show me what real slavery is like he said he sell Me Down New Orleans they say a man find himself a slave down New Orleans he ain’t never going to see nothing he love again the rest of his short painful life they got ways down there of crushing a man’s Soul then they grind his bones into the dirt I done seen it you don’t want to find yourself a slave down new ORS so I had to sell that boat for St Louis now before I push off my wife come down the water and see me she say the man she call M well he decided to move his house further south in the slave country she said well if you plan on selling that that boat back to St Louis well I reckon you best turn on around here y’all turn around here now okay one last long look at you why cuz the chances is he ain’t never going to lay lies on again now them few words them few words almost dead but the hardest three years of my whole life could not do almost stop my heart beating dead in this test M but I knew if I did not sell I was going to lose everything I ever loved I didn’t have a choice here slaves don’t have choices so I had to sell for St Louis but when I got home I made up my mind to see and folks to know tell you and said once you don’t make up his mind there ain’t nothing in this world set to change it so I went back to master CL said Master CL since we’ve been together our whole life more than 30 years by your side we was little boys we used to wrest together hunt fish ride horses all day long up and down the rivers when we was older well I went about my duties with respect you ain’t never have to question my loyalty to you or your kid and when you fell down I picked you up and when you were sick I made you better and if somebody was to threaten your life don’t you know that I would kill a man with my bare hands or I would lay my own life down just to see you safe and for three years me and you we stood side by side against the whole world that up there and I did get one acre good farmland for it and nobody dropped the gold cord into my pocket and President Jefferson he don’t even know my name Master CL Billy way I see it you’re the onlyest man in the whole world got the power to give me what I need most right now you can make me a free man Billy you can save my family I thought Master F going to hurt himself count of how hard he was laughing what it was I had to say he said he thought it funny me believ in any service I my whole life more than 30 years by his side was more than what a slave does for his rightful Master under God said if he was to ever see such immense surface he’d be the man to rewarded but it ain’t come yet besides he said you much too valuable piece of property for a man to just let go like that that’s what he said much too valuable a piece of property for a man to just let go if any was to ever ask me what my thoughts was of Master William Clark of the Clark family i’ been quick to say that he was honest but he was fa in the right company I would I would have called him my friend for life right there he made it clear more than 30 years almost every day of his life he ain’t never looked into this Brown face of mine and seen nothing but a slave so I fig if it’s about my value well I can do something there started to agitate doing things just enough wrong he can see it was by my choice so he knew what I was getting that it wasn’t going to stand for much but mind you I tried to smile and to not look a white man in the eyes when I pass but I couldn’t lower my head again so Master Clark had me strapped to the poster he paid a man good money to beat me until I could not see and after I healed up I tried not speaking let somebody tell me it’s my time but I couldn’t hold my tongue so Master Clock had me locked in the jail house 30 days that beat I took ain’t nothing compared to how they break you in the jail house I guess somewhere in all that M CL figure whatever broke in me wasn’t getting fixed fast enough so he decided to go on and send me home to L now I don’t know what the letter read he sent on to his brother I can’t read but I can guess figure that letter says that it’s time for y’all to know what it is to have a severe Master know how good his life have been till now what it is to be a real slave I think that’s what the letter says cuz that’s the lesson his brother said to teaching me they sold me out to man dressed me in rags threw me in the field and he St the big old bull plot across my back and for 2 years that old man tried to grind my bones into the dirt and for 2 years I ain’t heard one word from Master Clark and finally news come through his nephew he decided to go and give me my freedom only been 10 or 11 years now since we we come back on this Mission and most dayses don’t ever see Freedom especially in my age but everything I’m fighting to be a free man for is out of my hands my wife my whole family is gone and how I’m free and I’m all by myself in the world so Master PA give me a wagon some horses set me the drives business running Freight from Richmond Kentucky to Nashville Tennessee folk ask all the time what sense it make a free man ride headlong to the slave South trying to do business well I had my reasons F somewhere along them roads somebody seen or heard tell that family that’s holding my wife if this business of M was worth anything a man might have enough gold in his pocket one day to buy his hard back but there things they don’t tell you about the slave South how they got these laws that say a free man ain’t got the right associate with slaves kind he might be telling that slave what it’s like to be free they might get a mind they want some of the same business wasn’t too good I guess it didn’t make sense white man hire somebody like me it didn’t look good for the slaves to see that kind of thing going on those that did hire didn’t always pay cuz the law say negro man ain’t got the right and the Constitution or God to go into court and swear out against the white man even if his life depend on it my hores started dying I think they was being poison got so bad I had to hire myself in a hard nebor a whole year but I’m done with it now and I ain’t never going back see I know some things now I know now that I ain’t never going to see my life again except every night when I Clos my eyes she right there telling me long as you know somebody love you y’all but the M got to be better than the day but I not ready to die yet and I know now that a man can’t live like this so I come up with another plan I figure if I can make it up to the Missouri and out to Indian country things would be different somewhere out there maybe a man could walk down the road people ask him to stop a while but children ask you to throw him into the air and catch him with the strong hands cuz it means they have been touched by God maybe somewhere out there a man could live a man could die like a man and I a to find that place or I expect to perish in the attempt now before I go I was hoping maybe y’all could do me a favor if you was of the Mind way I see it one day somebody might ask you what you know of Captain Lewis and Captain Clark of the president’s Brave mission of Discovery and you could tell them you could tell them that you know a man with skin as dark as night that you know a black man who walked stride for stride who suffered pain for pain with the greatest heroes this nation might ever know you tell them that my name is your just your it is the name that my daddy came marri before me and although I was born into change you tell them that I am not now tell them that I have never been the property of another man and I ask you this so that when I am gone from here my voice this story does not die here with me but that is the way of the people sad truth is these two words they are the only things of value that I have left to give son has set my friends and now my journey must begin God’s me the S Davis ladies and gentlemen he will be speaking again tomorrow at 1:00 if you have friends or family that think e e e

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Bob Chino on Dugout Canoes of the Columbia Plateau

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:55 +0000

hey it’s 9:00 a.m. so we’re getting ready to start I want to welcome everyone to the Ten of Min voices um we are the only National Park Service site that comes to you so out of 390 National Park sites in the US we ended up in Stevenson Washington today and I think we’re very glad to be here we’re excited so thanks for having us now I don’t want to waste any more of Bob’s time so I’m going to introduce him we have Bob chin withth here he’s with the National Park and he’s going to speak about Dugout canoes of the Columbia River Plateau so please give him a warm welcome thank you um I just want to make sure all the technology is functioning here so first thing I am the museum curator at npers National Historical Park which is located about 8 miles east of Leon Idaho Leon Idaho is on the Snake River on the opposite side of the river is Clarkston Washington so you can probably guess who came through there in 1804 uh our Park was established in 1964 and it’s kind of an unusual Park in the sense that uh we are made up of disconnected sit sites in four states there are 38 sites that tell the story of the relationship between euro Americans and the npers people and the relationship between the npers and their neighbors so the most of the sites are in Idaho but some are in Montana in northeastern Oregon and in northeastern Washington we tell the story of the nesp war of 18 77 of uh Oregon Trail immigration of the missionary era all sorts of things the site where our Park headquarters is located has been a living site for the nesper people for over 10,000 years the archaeological record supports that as well as the tribal history so npers park is is uh known primarily for its Museum collection we are considered to have the finest collection of plateau material culture in the world we certainly have the best documented collection of material associated with uh families and various Traditions uh on the plateau and in the nesp community one of the Striking features of our collect ction is the material culture associated with the introduction and use of the horse in NP are uh noted horse risers and breeders have been for over 300 years they’re one of the few tribes that actually practice selective breeding of horses and they have a reputation throughout the the plateau for taking good care of their horses and having large herds and that sort of I think Louis and Clark talked about that at Great length when they came down uh on the weite Prairie and came down into the Clearwater Valley and got to know the npers much of this material culture is uh significant in terms of its age and we have spent a great deal of time documenting uh artifacts in for example the Spalding collection um I don’t know most of you are from around here you may remember in 1995 the tribe uh organized a huge National fundraising effort to uh bring this collection back from Ohio this is material that was collected by Henry Spalding in 1836 when he established his mission on laway Creek sent back to a doctor in Ohio named Dudley Allen and the material resided there until the 1980s when it was loaned to the park Service uh for exhibit at our Museum in 1993 they asked that the collection be returned uh people were afraid that they had a buyer for the for the material and uh the nesters of course were very upset about this and wanted the material to stay in those first country so they raised money to purchase it from the Ohio historic Society but for the time prior to the introduction of the horse people not just in esper country but all over the plateau traveled uh the very extensive water highway system of the Columbia Basin and Frasier River Thompson River uh basins by boat uh when you look at the organization of Village Life when you look at family structures uh when you look at the studies that ethnographers have done over the years you begin to understand that settlement and almost all human activity was dictated by the water that was around the rivers The Creeks the lakes and so it it is a natural thing to understand that people would have developed all sorts of watercraft and that’s true of the plateau uh there were hide boats there were uh boats made of bark there were various types of rafts that people made but the primary means of transportation and the thing that seemed to be most universal on the plateau and throughout the world in fact is The Dugout canoe Dugout canoes as I say are known worldwide nearly every culture on the planet uh it’s built them and used them at one time um this is a very interesting one from from Vietnam that was recovered a few years ago uh some ethnographers and scientists estimate that people were using Dugout canoes as long as 40,000 years ago when you understand that that was about the time that Australia was inhabited from South Asia and from Southeast Asia you have to ask yourself how did people get around to all those islands in the Pacific and how did they get to Australia the likely answer is they did it by Dugout Community some of the oldest it does that seem like it’s in focus to you no no it doesn’t to me either is there any way of getting that in focus be able think that’s a cable problem right now I think that’s a cable problem from the computer feed problem we’ll have to fix it with we done are are we stuck with it yeah for now I don’t think I’m going to be able to work on it well apparently we’re stuck with it the way it is so uh some of the oldest canoes that have been found in in North America have been recovered in Florida on uh there’s a an area near Gainesville called Lake pioco that uh apparently was what people refer to as a canoe Nursery there are canoes that have been recovered there archaeologically that date back over 8,000 years ago um um this is drawings of several of the canoes there have been over 300 canoes uh discovered in that one lake in Florida in the Pacific Northwest we don’t have such a rich archaological record of canoes and we’re not exactly certain why that is it it may be that uh we just haven’t found them but it may also be cultural there may be cultural reason why there aren’t that many I was talking a little bit ago about the uh the river Network and unfortunately this just doesn’t show up very well because of the thing being kind of out of focus but um this is just the Colombia drainage this doesn’t include up into British Columbia it doesn’t include the Frasier River and Thompson River es which is also part of the what they call the Columbia Plateau or the plateau cultural area so what you begin to see is this huge system of highways of water highways and as I mentioned the canoes were the canoes were the the Chevys the SUVs whatever it’s what people use not only to move up and down the rivers but it’s what people use to cross rivers and people use canoes to trade and to visit uh with relatives to go to places where they would then go uh and Hunt and Gather in different areas in their in their uh seasonal round I want to talk a little bit about the canoe collection that we have because this is kind of what got me started in uh investigating Dugout canoes on the plateau um we own four Cano actually we own three and the Nur tribe owns one and we know of two others uh one was just recently discovered um these canoes have these first two canoes that I’m going to show you have have a fairly long history not only in terms of the park but in terms of the area there there are uh affidavits associated with these two canoes uh 5047 and 5048 in our Museum collection um that date one of them to about the time of Lewis and Clark and date the other one to the 1830s uh because it was made specifically for the the missionary Henry spald that came in 1836 this is the the two pictures on the right and actually the the one where the conservation treatment work is being done um is the canoe that was that was built in the 1830s and associated with a number of well-known uh npers Chiefs that were involved in the construction of it um when I started looking at these Cano news in terms of their physical condition and to try to understand their significance in relation to our Museum collection and in relation to the region I wanted also to be able to um get an assessment done by a wood conservator as to their uh physical condition their state of preservation and what we could do to keep them from deteriorating from having their physical condition deteriorate any more so we were able to get a grant through the park service through the ethnography program to fund uh the assessment the treatment work and research to try to understand the significance of our particular collection of four canoes uh what that did in a nutshell was it took me around the plateau um into down in the wamt valley uh up in the Okanagan Valley and British CL IIA um over into Montana Southern Idaho any area where I might find canoes that were made by Plateau people so far I have found about 42 canoes in different museums and cultural centers and visitor centers around the Pacific Northwest and what I do with those is uh I make scale drawings of them I measure them and make drawings of them and photograph them and try to gather whatever curatorial information they have uh that that talks about the history of them or who made them or the provins or whatever this is uh another of the canoes that’s that’s in our collection this canoe is actually owned by the npers tribe it was given to them in the 1980s uh um it was it was originally located in this field in the in the upper right in the 1960s when they were doing archaeology along the Snake River in preparation for uh the construction of lower Monumental Dam and um the archaeologists would walk by it every day and they finally talked to the landowner the landowner agreed to give it to uh the Museum of Native American culture at Gonzaga University in Spokane and when that closed down in the 8S it was given to what’s now called the Mac the museum of art and culture in Spokane but the Mac didn’t want this because it was a 30ft long hunk of wood and they didn’t really have any place to put it and didn’t know what they were going to do with it so because it was collected off nesper land originally they offered it to the tribe the tribe took it and our maintenance division went up with the tribe and crad it up and brought it down to the park and so um this is the the same canoe undergoing treatment work in 2001 the fourth canoe in our collection is well documented to around 1900 it was made by a man named Silas Lawrence who used it for fishing and travel on the clear waterer River around around 1900 um you can see from this picture in the lower right why I was beginning to be concerned about the physical condition of the canoes there was there was starting to be splitting and material loss and I figured if this collection was worth anything then we had to take some kind of action to to stop this material loss this is a very interesting story this is a canoe that’s uh located in uh Helena Montana it’s owned by the Montana Historical Society it was made by the brother of the half brother of Chief Joseph uh olot who was killed in the 1877 war and uh Ott and Joseph had family in the Kalispel area of Western Montana and it was made for the the family relatives to use used there as a ferry uh prior to 1877 we also have uh one of only two toy canoes that I know of from the plateau now I I want to make it clear that when I talk about the plateau I’m not talking about the northwest coast um this is a whole different ball game than northwest coast uh canoe culture because that culture on the northwest Coast is as most of you are probably aware is alive and well people are making and using canoes uh traveling on the rivers but in the plateau that’s essentially not the case the canoe culture has pretty much died out there aren’t too many people around anymore that know how to make canoes but there is interest uh and I think part of that interest has been sparked by the activity on the coast uh but also up in British Columbia to to revive canoe making and canoe use and to get a better understanding of how important this was in uh in the culture of the people on the plateau and as I say I only we have one of the toy canoes this is the one we have uh and I know of one other one that’s in uh the museum in Victoria British columia but that’s a it’s a suab canoe it’s awab toy again just a look at the the whole issue of material loss this picture on the lower right is the stern end of this canoe in 1940 and the same canoe in 1998 uh this canoe unfortunately spent about 20 years out in the open before it came into the the control of the park service so the treatment work involved uh doing a complete materials analysis uh examining the wood structure um mechanical cleaning as well as stabilization and what what the conservators did was they would they would mix up a compound um the base of which is this stuff called PVB polyvinyl berite and they mix it with alcohol and you can thin it out to the point where you can actually inject it into the wood fibers and it’s it consolidates the wood fibers uh if it’s a little thicker about a 10 or 12% solution then you can actually use it as a glue to put pieces back together to glue pieces back together another thing they were able to do was uh to build the these uh different kinds of structures to support the canoes to keep them from losing their shape anymore that they already had and if you had sections like on the right there you can see where that that piece of the gunnel is split the split runs all the way down pretty much the length of the canoe so using uh plexiglass uh little fittings and bulkheads you can keep all that material in place so that uh um people can see what the thing looks like what what the shape is and to preserve the shape there’s very little effort at trying to uh ReStore in other words put things back the way they were another aspect of the research that I’ve been doing uh involves historic images now obviously you’re only going to be able to go to a certain point uh when you’re dealing with photography but one of the interesting things that I found is that canoes in our particular area were used as late as the 1960s for fishing uh these are all photographs taken around the area um of our park and uh are in the the historic image collection at our park so this is uh I’m going to just take you on a kind of quick little trip around the plateau from a canoe point of view uh as I mentioned I’ve I’ve been down uh as as far south as clamo country um all the way down to the Nevada border uh Idaho most of Washington uh the better part of British Columbia uh looking at at canoes most of the canoes that I found uh are in some type of cultural center setting either in a museum or a tribal Visitor Center or something like that so um all these pictures you see will be mostly indoors uh the first stop in relation to where we are is uh is wanam country the wanam are cousins of the npers as it were part of the same linguistic family uh if you go up to the DS up the river a little ways you can see this canoe on the left uh it’s the second largest canoe that I’ve looked at and documented it’s a little over 33 ft long and uh the one on the right is at wam Dam Visitor Center we know who the makers are of both of those canoes um um there are quite a few canoe families among the wanam people still interested in making canoes um the last time we know of people using canoes uh on that stretch of the Columbia was in the 1950s this is up in uh the Okanagan Valley around Lake okag you have all these towns that uh Penticton and Vernon and uh nearly every Museum up in that area has a has at least one Dugout canoe these are are mostly suap made canoes from farther north but also the Okanagan are making canoes as well um these tend to have a a fairly clear cut water they tend to be a little thicker sometimes they have flared sides um they were used in rivers as well as on the Lakes so that accounts uh to some degree for their their shape uh a little closer down uh up in cordelan country this is a canoe that was collected off of Wolf Creek in the 1940s uh some ethnographers suggested that the cordelan did not even make canoes uh but we know that from their own accounts that’s not the case uh one thing about ethnographies that I learned is you have to pay close attention to who the ethnographer spoke to when they were getting information about the particular culture that they were dealing with um if you talk to somebody who didn’t who wasn’t involved in a particular kind of activity they would tell you sometimes that people didn’t do it or that they didn’t know anything about it the ethnographer would often conclude then that uh oh those people didn’t do that uh but that’s uh almost never the case this is one of the archaeological canoes that I was able to see the Canadian government the British Columbia government did what they call the boundary survey in the 1970s uh they did archaeological surveys all along the border with the US and Canada and they found uh a canoe beaching site that had been submerged where there were uh roller logs and about a half a dozen canoes that were in a little Inlet of the river The Kettle River and they had been submerged when that section of the river was inundated uh when they finished building Chief Joseph Dam up in Northern Washington unfortunately this this canoe when it was uh put out it’s actually on display on top of a an exhibit cabinet and when the when they brought the canoe in the guys that had to get it up on top of the cabinet there were just two of them working there that day and they they decided that they couldn’t lift it just the two of them so what they did was they cut it in half and lifted each half and when I was examined in it um it was the curator of the museum walked by and I asked her why the canoe had been cut in half and her jaw dropped and her eyes got as big as half dollars and she said it’s cut in half and so she climbed up on the ladder with me and saw that it had been cut in half that it’s unfortunate that that’s what happened but at the same time it allowed me to get really good measurements to get the cross-section of of that canoe so there’s always there’s always a a silver lining in every cloud so uh this is a canoe that this is a a very nice story U this canoe was in the shaper Museum in Wind Washington for a number of years and when I went up to look at it um and documented I I talked to the museum about I said you know the MEO people are still around they’re on the cville reservation I said why don’t you give this back to them so they did um they organized a little ceremony and and it’s now on the cille reservation and you can see it in the the tribal Museum on the C reservation when I was up in British Columbia I had the very fortunate uh experience of meeting a couple of people who are involved in the Revival of cane making up there and uh this guy on the upper right is Herman Edward and Gordy marshan is paddling one of the boats he made um I got The Grand Tour uh learned about the different tools and things that they used in uh in Cano making apparently uh automobile leaf springs make uh really good gouges when you work them down these tools on the lower right are all made from from car leaf springs it’s a good good quality metal and uh they use axes as well as adses and different kinds of Choppers for for close-in work most of this work is done uh with without the use of Burning uh I’ll talk a little bit about burning because uh leis and Clark talk about burning so in uh in 2000 they did their first big public activity and that was what they called Unity track and they paddled from the north end of Lake Okanagan down to omac Washington and met up with the okon nogans that live there’s okan aans both in British Columbia and in Washington state so uh they met up with their cousins in in Washington and had a big feast and and have been sharing the canoe building knowledge and everything ever since that time so it’s a it’s an ongoing activity this canoe that’s uh that’s highly decorated here is uh as you might suspect is the women’s canoe and uh they said no we’re not going to have just some plain looking thing we’re going to have some stuff on our so and the men don’t get to go in it uh this was a a real treat for me not just to go out and paddle on the lake but uh I was amazed that if if you have an idea of how important tulies are to Tuli uh plants are to Indian people um there’s not a lot of tulies left unless you go down uh in clth country in southern Oregon uh um but all around the North End of Okanogan Lake that these plants that are growing there um as as all tulies and it was uh when I showed these pictures at home people didn’t care so much about the canoes they said where where are those tulies we want to go up and gather tulies when Lewis and Clark came through nesper country in 1805 they stopped at the Confluence of the Clearwater River and the North Fork of the Clear Water um if you look in the in the blue part of that picture now there is a thing called DW Shack Dam there that’s uh about 400 ft high and it’s changed the the physical nature of this area but this is the area that Twisted hair took the Lewis and Clark expedition to because they were looking for uh trees they could use to to knock down and make their canoes and this is what the area probably was like prior to to loen Clark it was a it was a known camping area um there’s been extensive archaeological work done there um that dates the site to thousands of years ago so it was a well-known place on the river for fishing and for uh for boat building this is a painting by uh nille Williamson who’s a a tribal member earlier I showed you some of the sketches that he’d done uh doing research on uh horse horse gear leis and Clark don’t say much about the canoes that they built at Canoe Camp in fact all they actually do say is they built four large canoes and one small canoe and they sometimes refer to the small canoe as their as their Scout or Scout but one of the one of the things that I have several people have talked to me about you know what their boats probably look like how big they were what they were made out of um and so what I’ve tried to do with the help of other people who are are familiar with with uh water travel and canoe making and particularly uh rafting and that sort of thing on the clear water and Snake River to try to get an idea of uh of how their boats might have looked now these are the three basic forms there’s there’s really uh I’ve Iden ified four basic forms of canoes that were made in up in our area um but this just gives you an idea of what Lewis and Clark saw you got to remember that these guys were picked because they they were competent and capable people they knew what they were doing they knew how to adapt in various situations to take advantage of the local knowledge in different situations so uh in order for them to be successful they had to have those kinds of skills and when they were there at Canoe Camp in September of 1805 they decided that they were going to leave a certain amount of their gear they they did leave all their horse gear um Twisted hairs band took care of their horses and their horse equipment for them Saddles and that sort think they also understood at this point because they they talked a great deal with the Indians the npers knew the river all the way down to the ocean they had traveled it many times they regularly came to Salo uh they knew the people up and down the river they knew what Lewis and Clark were going to encounter um they told them the number of Rapids that they would have to go through and which ones they with they could probably run and which ones they could Portage uh several Indians Drew maps for them uh and that’s one of the one of the maps redrawn by uh Clark but they they knew what was ahead so that’s one thing to keep in mind when you think about the the the boats that they made so what I ended up doing was everybody said as a picture is worth a thousand words um I ended up making conjectural drawings of what I think the large canoes were like and probably what the small canoes were like and people often say the canoes are made out of ponder Roa Pine so people say well you can’t find a ponderosa pine up there now that’s big enough to make a a canoe 50 ft long and and that’s true down by the river you can but 200 years ago you and when you think about what they had to put in their canoes there were 35 people um and they built five boats so on average you’re going to have to put seven people in each boat and you’re going to have to put I’ve made a kind of a partial list of we don’t know exactly what they had left at that time because they didn’t keep any kind of running tally of uh what they were using but they had desks they had camping gear they had all their Botanical specimens um they had all the equipment they needed for their for their firearms uh they had surveying equipment um we know they traded for at least 20 bags of C Roots uh big bags of roots so they had a lot of stuff and they knew they were going to be on the river for about two months they also had the experience of having come from Mandan country to the Rocky Mountains coming up the Missouri River in canoes that they built they talk incessantly about how small the canoes were how they didn’t make enough of them they made eight eight small canoes and they were hoping to use this they they made a metal frame boat and they were going to cover it with uh with elk hides and by the time they got enough hides to do it they were out of the area where they could get good pitch to seal the thing up and so it didn’t work so that was another frustrating aspect for them that they didn’t have this boat so I think when they got to to Canoe Camp when they came over uh L pass and settled into NE first country to make their canoes they were determined to make the boats big enough so that they would be able to put all their equipment in and be comfortable enough for the two-month trip down to the Pacific so these are the reasons why I think the boats were as big as as they are or as as they were um this is a canoe probably about 20 2 or 30 ft long this was taken on the on the upper Columbia uh these are yaka guys this canoe is uh loaded with stuff and you see where this fell is sitting you saw in that one picture of the of the one ofam canoes you see where the guy is sitting in the stern of the boat canoes on the plateau in general were made to be paddled by one person from the stern and one of the ways you can always tell indian-made canoes is the the physical characteristics of their construction and in a nutshell what people did was they they’ knock a tree down the top end of the tree would always be the stern of the boat the lower end would be the bow the specific Gra gravity of the wood is such that if you take say a 40t log it’s going to be heavier on one end than the other okay you want that heavy end to be the bow because somebody’s going to be in the stern paddling the boat so then when you loaded the boat to travel if it was just one person you loaded the boat from the center out to the ends that way the boat was always balanced and the nesp say that if the boat was well made it didn’t matter whether you were going up River or down river it was just as just as easy to handle so when you start putting more people in the boat you’re doing the same thing you’re balancing the load and you’re balancing the people the other characteristic of of indian-made canoes is that they understood about the structure of the tree the the center pith of the tree is is not very stable but the wood just to the outside of that is the strongest wood so that’s what you want to be the floor of the canoe and the lower edges of the sides so when you look at canoes from the end you can see whether or not that that Center section is there in relation to to the floor um I don’t know if this making any sense or not but uh the problem you always had once you carved out all that that soft wood from the middle and had your firm floor was the ends so people used various techniques to to solve the problem of the wood deteriorating on the ends but when you look at the pictures of old canoes and you see that there’s material loss and damage those pictures I showed you it’s almost always on the on the ends where you had to retain that that pth wood from the center of the tree so these guys get in their npers style canoes their Plateau style canoes and they start paddling down the river things are going really great until they start to get to where the Colombia you know past where the snake and the Columbia come together and the river starts to get a little wider and you’ve got Gorge winds and you’ve got chop and all that sort of thing that you can see out on the river any day and then these guys are they’re up against the Washington Bank of the river kind of creeping down uh taking it easy they realize that their boats aren’t the best designed for that section of the river the difference between the nees Pur canoes with their straight sides for the most part and then you start to get down into bam country and the sides are flared just a little bit they’re dealing with the river conditions there that design is a function of the river conditions that they have to deal with and uh when they get when they get down to Salo and they do this one Portage and they come up over the the rocks and Clark sees this canoe that he describes as having a point pointed in and flared sides this is what he’s talking about and they they took one look at this and knew this that they they wanted these boats they wanted to have these boats because these boats were ideal for the conditions of the lower Colombia and as we all know these boats are also ideal for going out in the ocean that’s what they’re made for so this is the the so-called shinuk style Cedar canoe with flared sides this particular one this is one of the boats that I documented this is in the Oregon Historical Society collection in Portland and it’s a qual made canoe but I documented it because it was used its entire life on the lore Columbia but it has those uh familiar characteristics of of Lower Columbia boats and you see what they did these guys were not artists by the way uh but they they Illustrated these boats because I think they were so unusual it was something that they had never seen before they were very complimentary of the skills that the people had and being being able to uh use these boats on the Lower Columbia uh regard regardless of the weather conditions I’ve only got 5 minutes left so I’m going to go kind of fast um this canoe is in wallport right now but it’s also it’s exactly like a canoe that they describe um when they were in that area where Portland airport is now they came onto an island where there were a lot of plank houses and they describe 100 boats uh up on the shore the houses and this is what they’re describing this is a kind of boat that people use to gather uh uh WAP and was it was used mostly by women but if you want to see this boat you have to go down to walport cuz that’s where it is don’t ask me why this one is uh uh in the uh Columbia River Maritime Museum it’s a CF lamit canoe uh probably very similar but maybe smaller than what leis and Clark purchased from the cath lamet on their return trip um these are pictures again up in NEP country historic images of canoes uh this guy on the lower right is eel fishing he’s got himself an eel and his dip net there uh things are still being found this was in 2004 some scuba divers and don’t ask me why these guys were in Lake pandere on New Year’s Day scuba diving but that’s what they were doing and they found this boat so they called the park service in to help them document it and they’re still trying to decide what to do with it but uh the evidence is all over the plateau that talks about canoe use and how important the things were to people so this is the end for me if you have any questions I’ll I’ll try to answer your question yeah we could take maybe one or two questions but let’s do it if you want to look at some of the drawings I have some of the drawings up here that I’ve made I have about 25 of you didn’t talk about the mot and there canoes I didn’t talk about the Maca because I was talking about the plateau and I the MAA are on the coast I’m very sensitive about the MAA because my museum technician Linda Pano that works with me at the park is maau she’s married to anes purse but she’s a Williams she’s a A Williams and uh so I pay I pay pretty close attention to what the maau do I’ve been out to Nia Bay several times yeah okay well I think yeah you can do one I apologize I got here late and if you’ve already talked about this uh please forgive but uh several times in the journals they refer to pulling over to dry out the canoes and to pitch uh them and I’m not quite uh sure I understand what the difficulty is especially it seems like down in the cat lamet area or lung view area they had to pull over to uh make their canoes water worthy once again can you give a little bit of insight to that well a lot of times when canoes are made the wood the wood is the trees are taken down and then they’re allowed to set for a while to kind of cure and then the boats are made but what Louis and Clark did was when they when they cut the trees and within in 10 days they had all five of their canoes made so I think what was going on was the wood was splitting in places and they were using uh pitch mixes to uh to make repairs to seal the cracks okay well we’re about out of time so you’re going to have to grab Bob in the back of the ENT if you have more questions for him but let’s give you a round of applause and thank you for coming to us

The post Bob Chino on Dugout Canoes of the Columbia Plateau appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

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

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:55 +0000

Jeff did you say check check check check check check check check good no that was a mic check so wasn’t me to check yeah okay well we’re all together now so we’re warmer now are we now that’s think warm thoughts 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 to many vo that you’re now sitting in for those you who have not had heard any speakers we’re the Louis and Clark core Discovery 2 exhibit we’re a traveling National mobile exhibit we started out in 2003 monell and we’ve come all the way to the ocean and we’re going to go all the way to St Louis and finish in 2006 and we have done this with the participation with many different federal agencies everywhere from natural resources conservation service all the way to 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 and uh we will be open Monday and Tuesday as well here in this tent a tent to many voices this is where we have a variety of speakers everybody from um Scholars that have spent 20 years studying the journals of Lis and Clark all the way to Native poets and dancers and first first person interpreters and today we have with us a special presenter we have Jeff Petter of the class of tribe and he’s going to be speaking in the Columbia River Trade Center which is very close to here let’s give a really fine Round Round of Applause to defin so uh I’m going to 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 wor on that right up until about 5 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 Orly in front of my travel people and we can carry on and we’ll just have a real pretty picture back there I’m going to need to steal one of these I’m going to be working from down here I open 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 sitting in the room so you can record this it’s okay know know they uh so that’s that’s a gambling song um or what my grandma to we calls a lucky song and uh gambling’s really complicated I I hope you’ve got to talk to uh Ruby and and uh bite out here with the games and gambling looks like something’s going on but that’s not what’s going on and uh 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 recording that are fogging songs that keep the other side from seeing what you’re doing and puts up a wall that their Seer can’t see through um so these lucky songs like this Grandma T we always says makes you feel good makes you feel so 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 soon as you leave here let’s see today’s Sunday so we’re at day late right you’ve got to buy one for Wednesdays but that’s a lucky song from uh the EUR Rock in teela people down south so in shanut Jon CL M Taco CL Tope P pelu cook Butler painter Casey MCM nak mway so most of what I said there is uh welcome you to my land um this is the land of the clouds of people that you’re sitting on uh cousin of the shanuk tribe and one of the five shinuk 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 no heart fam so mostly no heart um I said that my family members are from the village of quat which is where Seaside sits now with a population of about 6,000 at the time right before loen Clark got here um The Village at necat and Ne coxet which are right next to Highway 101 where the gateway to Discovery 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 N which is where the two guys dressed in first got lost and built their little stick shed um right near the N Village there um those guys who were celebrating um that’s where most of my family lived and most of my family members from U my dad’s side my Dad’s here uh by the way Bill P where you go Bill most of my family uh lived in that area especially on my dad’s side the classup side of my family uh only me uh my great great great great and that’s the last time you’ll hear me number great cuz native people just a grandpa but uh my great great great great grandpa George W cook owned the entire West Side from the top of the hill there in Ator out across young Bay and Louis and Clark river um to where cook slooh is named after him um and then property up in Old KN and uh so that’s where my people are from I said I thank you for your good ears and your good hearts and I hope I don’t say anything that vent you but if I do Let It Drop off of you when you walk out of here this is supposed to be fairly light-hearted and and um 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 may I come aboard yes 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 see if I can catch it here got a couple hundred songs rattling around your head sometimes it’s hard to get that okay so we sing to you you don’t know your song so that’s all right just sit there be be mute to sign langu and we’d sing he he ho ho we sing that a bun this time and the ladies would be doing hand motions like this as we’re singing it saying come this way otherwise the guys would be making hand motions like this don’t come to or some some such thing and then you come and you’d be welcome and the first thing that the clouds of are known for they’re known as the um peaceful native people and uh they would have sat you down and asked you if you needed something to drink give you some sammon and some salow to eat and made you comfy made you a bed in one of the houses and then asked you what the heck you were doing here U the Lost guys had it all backwards they show up and said we’re here and this is what we’re going to be doing and uh we’re going to 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 on and by the way we’re we’re going to be camping out here for a little while cuz we’re really hungry U we’re really really lost we’re really cold our shirts are riding 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 Shooks over there who uh most of the tribes on the other side of the river are in constant Warfare um some say still to this day but historically in a lot of warfare no I love my sh 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 U Luc and Clark kind of keyed in on that and also found out there’s a lot more elk 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 they ended up up in a toll where Chief cooy said this is the all right place for you to squat just make sure you’re leave next year when you’re not um so that’s that’s a brief history um I’ve got some cute little pictures here if they work so let’s see all right come on um this is a shot of our new canoe uh we have a 32t ocean going canoe that we just had a for and it’s uh the first clot of oan going canoe that we’ve had carved in somebody think maybe 150 years probably closer to 200 years and this is a still from the uh movie that was made for the National Park Service um that’ll be playing Tuesday but it it’s playing up there now in the fort and I might get a chance to tell you a little bit about that so there’s the canoe with four folks in it it actually takes about uh 10 to 12 people to pull that canoe through the water well um but it will go all the way out hunt whales uh very sea seaworthy so that’s just kind of fun but it is part of trade rivers are are highways the ocean was our Highway around here and the clata people traded all the way up into Alaska or got goods from Alaska by trading with our our relatives up on Vancouver Island all the way down the co Coast to uh middle and Northern California All the Way East at least to Sala Falls and some people ventured all the way out into black blackbeat country uh Lakota country to trade and most of it was because of canoes so it’s important to know your geography um you you are here you’re kind of sort of let’s see if this works you’re kind of sort of here all right and uh on the other side there that’s where our sh the cousins live um our territory mostly ended at least as far as the government’s concerned um we didn’t call ourselves tribes in we didn’t call ourselves Plata by the way um platza is a name that the sahap people of the Sal Falls call this it means dry pounded dry pounded 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 Beach at El Creek and then all the way up to the tip so that that’s us and then the people next to us said okay well we’ll call ourselves this and we’ll call this area our and KS said we’ll call this us but we didn’t call each other that we all shared the same language and uh little variations of it but same custom same spirituality we were intermarried up the 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 them and then they’ll make a deal with you CU you’re 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 L um and so we had relatives on purpose all the way up past Vancouver Island all the way down into Northern California um all the way up river past Sala Falls and it was mostly for let make a deal so you know where you are let’s see um so this is really cool this is something I ran across I was looking for mats to make this presentation and so I Googled um NASA uh photographs of the land to see what I came up with and I’m going to step back so I can enjoy this but um Watch What Happens here so this is an undoctored page right off the web from last week so here’s where we’re at right down where that little dot is more or less and we start zooming out zooming out let’s see if you see it before I outline it for you you see that see that face that woman’s face all of our stories from British Columbia all the way down into Southern Central Oregon talk about this land being a woman that would provide for your every need um we always talk about here on the coast When the tide goes out the dinner plate set you didn’t have to work too dang hard around here to get fed um at the apologists tell us that the average Club work 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 well as is true on most of most of the northwest coast into Southeast Alaska you spend most of that other time free time developing culture spirituality Traditions Customs um hanging out trading 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 had all kinds of the time to do it he didn’t have to be running around chasing deer like Lou and Clark or we already knew where they were and ate a bunch of other stuff those guys hated salmon they nearly starved to death cuz 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 muscles and clams and seaweed all kinds of good stuff to eat they they wanted to eat dogs watch your dog there so uh I thought that was kind of interesting I ran across that totally by accident 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 Lis and Clark got here in 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 going to see cuz they hadn’t seen him anywhere else along the trail really seeing him kind of spotty here and there they met fluent English speakers that also spoke French and Spanish aruk jaran had already Incorporated French and Spanish into it and uh so these guys were U 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 going to figure out what all the Rocks were and where all the mountains were they were going to 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 cuz 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 or if you want your settlers to be able to settle that land um so they weren Traders they were explorers on a military Expedition and they got to the mouth of the river uh right there at L and Clark river and they told Chief koboy we’re just going to 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 going to build a house by the way first folks that we know of 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 leis and Clark remark in their journals there’s quite a few number of red-haired tall lanky blue-eyed Indians living here U that doesn’t explain my genetics though uh I should back up to my introduction my mom’s got some kind of scand movian thing going on but we’re not really sure cuz part of her family was left on a door doorstep an orphanage in Minnesota so we’re not real cool sure on that but we got an oie Olsen in there somewhere which is a pretty good clue um and dad’s got French and and who knows what else going on in in his his family history as well as plate um but as native people we never have to bind oursel by Blood um period we had a whole bunch of French guys that are identified as Plaza living with us that’s no Indian blood at all it’s what’s your language what’s your spirituality and how do you live and it’s still that way people will carry around certified degree of Indian blood cards and that just tells you how much Lota you might be or whatever it is you are but I know full blood lotas 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 too much so blood doesn’t really mean a whole lot it means who do you live with how do you live your life um I have a really hard time living as a cloudon person I live in southern Oregon right now I’m surrounded by L Telma K HOA clam 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 um so here we are Russians all kinds of people that we’re trading with see if this keeps working so these are the major Trade Centers at least according to Anthropologist um 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 Le and Clark got to Sala 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 and that’s one of them big dots 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 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 into Alaska um this is what they had to offer baskets skins berries whale blubber whale oil and ulon oil salmon canoes blankets shells and uh they were bringing that to the party we had dellia from Vancouver Island all kinds of other shells and shell money Roots salmon ulon again whale oil and we had armor we had the clups made in armor and still know how to make that armor called clamens clamens were used all the way down into Mexico and all the way up into Alaska and what there is an elk hiide 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 elk heite 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 medieval armor long before medieval armor they’d rig them up like this around their sides they’ have Willows around their necks and a shield that dropped down made of bar and those for the Waring 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 wife which is about as spendy as anything you get it was three canoes to get a clamon outfit and they still talk about that out there why don’t you guys start making your clam again um down from California and down into Mexico uh today Mexico beads bows obsidian most of the slaves came from Northern California on down in the slave trade although people became slaves just like sagaa by getting captured from other people at War and stuff like that um shells and then the basket work we all had basket work but this is really like big time they were known for it go ahead ulon ulon is a real small fish kind of like a smell and it’s so oily that once you dry a ulon you can light it and it burns like a candle and that’s what they were used for a lot as well as seasoning food ulon oil is really good you have to kind of acquire taste for it if you weren’t born you know eating it but it’s poured on everything dried salmon you pour ulon oil into it freshens it back up and you can eat it Pour it on berries it’s mixed with salow soap berries um snow Berry soup is one of the best things you’ll ever eat but it is kind of an odd taste and they make it up in DC and Alaska and they take soapberries mix it up with ulon oil and it served to you it looks like ice cream doesn’t taste thing like ice cream tastes like eating bare fat but youon oil is very good very healthy if the Luc and Clark expedition knew about the benefits of Cedar uh Pine and ulon oil they could have survived and never and none of these shippers would ever suffer from scouring you could live on it it wouldn’t taste very good e that all the time down in the southwest blankets Pottery axes and stone tools as well as uh tools up from the northern Arctic too from the plains horses Roots Buffalo hides and Flint were their main trade items uh from the Northeast shell beads in wome was their big thing uh Southeast woven clothes and cloth and then now from the Florida area area turtle eggs and bird feathers these things made their way all over the dang 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 um these cowy shells don’t belong here these are from uh further down into Baja and and uh the coast down in there but they do belong here because we always traded for them these hiqua the big dentalium shelves these come from the west coast of Vancouver Island and so do the little dentium um but we always had them here cuz they were money money um these big ones are worth more CU it takes fewer of them to make a string these little ones aren’t worth as much cuz it takes a whole bunch of them to make a string um these other shells I’m trying to do this without bumping you on my mic these are all laella shells these are from California dowy New Mexico and Baja um this vest can you tell what this this guy’s doing here that kind of looks like the Raven’s puking right um this this 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 and British Columbia kind of thing that dies out once you get Washington um but this vest design Was Made For Me by heida clink lady who is from The Raven Clan and 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 I have this design I saw in my head so she made this design for the best and I asked her what it meant and she said well we have a origin story where Raven skco brought the first salmon eggs and sketo was flying over the rivers and streams and dropped those salmon 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 you and she said because um you feed our children just the same way that the Raven fed us but by dropping those eggs you drop ideas that makes them feel good about being native people and proud and they want to learn more and and so I wear this um in honor of those people up there but this kind of design would be common down here as well as chat blankets and other things from there um let’s see this hide is from here so is this one so is this one this stellia like I already said is not from here this Cattail headband is from here as well as this Cedar headband this is a common person’s headband so it’s that Cattail one um don’t have to be achieved to have one just any any old buddy um these shells uh these are from here but these are not and this is uh clamshell beads and you got to imagine the kind of work that goes into this so somebody takes clamshells 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 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 Russia for the most part um and got here from there what else on my belt these trade beads these blue trade beads these are the ones we kept asking Louis and Clark for that they said 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 Southern Oregon this is from Florida these these uh abalon are from Southern California so we’re a whole blend of all kind of stuff up here but it’s because of where we are at the mouth of the Columbia River there we had um 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 got to give us twice as much so why would you do that 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 now Vice Versa if somebody out the plains needed something from Alaska or from the coast they could come down to salila Falls and pick it up there when we came to trade 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 Salo Falls and so we were going and making deals all the time are one for two deals and so we got very very rich um L and Clark and I don’t normally mention them but because that’s what we’re here for I keep bringing them up L and Clark didn’t come as Traders remember so they didn’t bring a whole lot actually they had some stuff to trade when they started out but they had squat when they got here they’ 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 have come up and in our stories I think they’re some of this in the journals but in our stories they talk about those guys would come up and say um I have an alide and I want I want four otter 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 you might bring up what it is that 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 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 tell me everything you saw on the way out who’ you run into maybe I know them how’s the fishing up in salad are they coming in yet should I start going up there do they have the C Roots should we take a a bushel up and sell them cuz they’re dry and uh the whole point of it is the visiting these guys didn’t want to visit and they didn’t want to hang out so they’d show up and say here’s what I want here’s what I’ll give you and then of course the classup guys would say all right um I want twice as much as I usually want then if you’re not going to do the chatting part and the visiting part and you’re not going to hang then you know it’ll cost you twice as much and they said well what kind of deal is that it’s like well you could hang out if you want and I 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 Fort it’s going to cost you twice as much and they complain to no end in their journals about the catsup and their Wy Traders you know speak the English and know what we want to do before we tell them we want to do it and um they just didn’t understand trading trading is a social activity it’s building bonds you know if they were really smart with they would have done was build some really strong bonds and said you know there’s going to be some people coming behind us in a few years that want your land and it would beo 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 saw the ocean they got to see the whale and they’re ready to go home you know we’re going to make some salt we’re going to repair our moccasins make some extra paars and we’re going to try to stay out of the rain as as much as we can um and this is a NOA house another typical uh kind of trading scenario cooking scenario fish drying hanging from the ceiling folks sitting around telling stories now this is uh cilo 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 their fish down here in the lower right dry and filets drying they’ pound their salmon and then they’d air dry it they didn’t smoke it um and they got a good haul um anthropologists tell us that Salo typically moved about a million pounds of salmon every year just for trade that’s not what they kept for themselves Sal 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 like mention it’s a social activity this is the last dance held at the Salo trading house before the Falls went underwater and notice these guys got some funny regalia for Coastal people they got PLS 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 haggling and trading you might try to humiliate me by saying um you try to outdo the other one by bettering them like our Potlatch is I can give you more than you can give me you know I can give you more Salon than 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 a song for healing a really bad big toe that I’m going to give you guys and he’d sing that song and gift it to him now that would look like he’s giv them something but really what he’s doing is saying he don’t have the song for theing the big toe so I’m going to have to give that to you now he’s going to be known forever as the guy that gave you the big to heing song so that increases his honor now you’re walking around with this big tow Healing Song and so every time you sing it you would say this is the big toing song that I got from Big Charlie from you know sahap 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 we hours of the morning cuz the adults didn’t get to dance together until after midnight so you got the boys dance then you got the Warriors dance then you got the women’s dance then everybody eats all this food that’s laid out and then around midnight the teenagers and people that aren’t hooked up get to do their ow dance and it’s only time men and women dance together and this is just go on forever this is a contemporary celebration similar to the one at Salo this is last year I believe the Nill people up in the sound um or British Columbia singing a welcoming song to start their pot their kids are learning here’s the Lal Falls in full force right before it went underwater um and that fed a lot of our trade by the way at least from Inland a lot of fall and notice in the back right hand corner that big structure that’s a fish wheel an Indian invention um we had the wheel long time and what a fish wheel does is it’s a big you seen the paddle Wheels on the side of the ship it’s big one one of those but it’s got catch cans that are made out of wheels and later on um reinforced with wire that are open baskets and as that big wheel moves through the water it Scoops up salmon and drops them in a catch Basin on the other side A lot of times it was holding Pence down in the water but sometimes it would just be a big box so you go and leave your wheel all day long sitting in one spot come back the next morning and have 60 salmon laying there in your box or in your holding pent and dipping them out um fish Wheels operated in the Columbia right up until the late 50s and these guys are dip netting off these platforms very dangerous way to fish these guys are on the bank oh and you saw a fish wheel behind them too let’s see if I can go back a couple big ones back there um this is full-blown and this would be about 1937 fish are in guys are all down on the Rocks there were several different levels of waterfalls that’s theal uh this is around the same time there you go there’s a busy spot we got a couple dip Nets just laying down in the water waiting for a salmon 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 up and imagine trying to yank a 60 70 lb Sal the side of a cliff and you notice this guy’s roped in but they’re all roped in cuz you can get pulled off and die and so they ROP them themselves in it was still a very dangerous thing to do none of these guys are roped in they at the bank there’s the village in the background Sal Wan Village um what’s left of that Village is on the other side of the railroad tracks and be the uh I got to think of my directions now south of the railroad tracks in Columbia River Highway there’s still a long house there they still have a first Sal ceremony there and other ceremonies there this is Chief Tommy Cooney Thompson he was the last Chief um alive when the D when before the dam filled 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 U what they were actually selling and he died of heartbreak soon after um The Falls before and after um this is shot from the exact same spot the photo on the left now let me see if I get this right yeah the photo on the left was taken in 53 photo on the right was taken in 74 and you can see see how it’s changed the water level and the landscape and it’s actually filled in quite a bit more this Falls is really not there like that anymore on the right hand side at all uh the water levels come up and buried the entire complex including burial islands building sites there’s Tommy wearing his Plains regelia my friend Brent Flo’s mom beat at all this regali for him when she was a little girl she used Warm Springs there’s those trade beeds that we love I just got a few slides here uh arrowheads which we’re known for all over the world the best arrowheads came from the clouds of people and the people of Oregon uh Beaver which the Trappers love dear hell oh Nature Bears this is a cedar we did everything with cedar we made our clothes out of cedar boxes cooking implements um our houses some of the berri 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 copper on her hat Big Cedar cap and a cedar hat those are all trade goods too okay come on the big canoes these are Edward edwardes Curtis photos uh taken from here Cattail mats 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 we were created here at Saddle Mountain that’s our origin story um the shinook 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 clups and the shnooks 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 cu the economy was here all the food was here and it’s harder living except for maybe in the W valy but you go out toward the Great Basin and out in the plateau um 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 have alliances is somebody was trying to move into your area and you could call up to the sahap people and say by the way stop these guys or come back down here and reinforce us or down to the Teel or to tun 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’d get a better trade next time you know that that would be our debt to you for helping us out is maybe we potat 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 uh and that’s just one of the Trade Centers for your your research purposes it’s really interesting to read about itoda choco Canyon um kado 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 Noka and Colona um Port Al Bernie a house at husatv 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 got to teach them that it’s okay to hang out um we were the Walmart of the Northwest anybody work for Walmart here I don’t want to offend anybody Walmart of the Northwest you might have already heard me say this in another presentation but we and uh they have no heal plan but it was One-Stop shopping and you were willing to pay twice as much in order to to make that One-Stop shopping the peaceful classs of people are are still here you know still an active presence although we lay pretty low most of the time Louis and Clark’s been a reason to be more visible um 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 a lot happening and I just want to open it up for a few questions before wrapping it up for a close ladies and gentlemen if you have a question you raise your hand I’ll come to you and then yeah go ahead everyone can hear it you said earlier that your grandfather owned a large piece of land in aoria the traditional lore that I’ve always heard is basically the Indians did not have have a concept of so my my grandpa wasn’t Indian George W cook married Mary cook who is a full blood classet um in 1838 and he acquired maybe I shouldn’t make this so public but he actually ended up with two homesteads and an Oregon donation land claim and uh so he kind of a Wy guy he was a friend of the local judge and magistrate and on top of that he was a very wealthy guy he owned a log piling business was responsible for building most of the canies 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 um I don’t know how to say this nicely taken and uh that they couldn’t purchase the land because anybody that wasn’t half blood or less was con considered too Savage to land title and so what he did was he bought up 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 halfblood children that could hold Land Title and uh there’s records of him and his daughter signing off these titles to them giving them their land 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 Stevens and 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 Lou and Clark people married into these families and became clata you know that was the deal is you can marry my daughter but you got to learn our language live with the Four Seasons or you better have a really good job that’s bringing in income um but you got to live with us you can’t just be a squatter or resident or Foreigner you need to become us because it’s us we’re here and then once sellers start coming in then you got this odd thing where people buy land and like today people are transiting you know you grow 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 cuzz they’re connected to the land and needed to work with those plants and animals and roots and and could be transient like that you know time for a very very short question has to be a short question who has a short question my buddy right here right here yeah actually I lived in a TV but we didn’t live in TVs here yeah yeah ladies and gentlemen we’re out of time right now if you have more questions you can ask them right after oh hang on out there n w m in our language thank you for your good ears thank you for your good Hearts if I heard any feelings drop it as you go coming up next we’re going to have uh Bud Clark e e for

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