Dawg
Sez
19
If
this is your first visit to CwHD, a brief introduction is available.
Just click on the CwHD
Intro link.
To return, simply click the Home
link.
Last
week saw the beginning of a brief account of the history of the
Columbia River. This week the story brings us to 1804 and the arrival
of Merriweather Lewis (with his dog, Seaman) and William Clark at the
river.
The
Early Days
Watershed,
Columbia River
(By
Kmusser - self-made,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3844725)
Early
travelers may have populated the river 20,000 years ago. The Clovis
culture, dated about 13,500 years ago, is more certain. The native
Americans the Corps of Discovery found along the Columbia were linked
to these early groups. By the 1700s, this heavily populated area was
already in decline. Smallpox, brought by traders to the mouth of the
river, had spread quickly and taken a heavy toll on the tribes.
The
expedition to the Pacific Northwest led by Lewis and Clark, came down
the Snake River and entered the Columbia at the confluence just
opposite of where Pasco, Washington now sprawls. They camped on a
point of land that has become Sacajawea State Park. 32 miles
downstream from this spot is the imposing edifice of McNary Dam.
To
the north, the river extended into Canada several hundred miles, then made a 180°
turn to the south running 200 odd miles to its origin in a lake
nestled between the Rocky Mountains and the Selkirks. The river
drains 260,000 square miles, is about 1250 miles long, and its average measured flow is over 240,000 cubic feet per second.
Wallula
Gap
http://columbiariverimages.com
16
miles south of Pasco is Wallula Gap. Created by the many Bretz floods
(1000 feet high walls of water moving at 65 miles an hour), the Gap
will be the eastern terminal of our narrative as we voyage downstream
with the Corps.
From
the journal of William Clark [these journals are best read in their
original format even though the spelling, capitalization, and
punctuation are all problematic.The annotation is added.] :
"...
the river passes into the range of high Country at which place the
rocks project into the river from the high clifts which is on the
Lard. [larboard or left] Side about 2/3 of the way across and those
of the Stard. [starboard or right] Side about the Same distance, the
Countrey rises here about 200 feet above The water and is bordered
with black rugid rocks ..."
William
Clark, October 18, 1805
According
to Robert Hitchman1
Wallula is a Nez Perce name and apparently just a different rendering
of Walla Walla, meaning "place of many waters." The river
behind McNary Dam is over 300 feet deep, and a good deal of
imagination is needed to recreate the early river.
In
ascending the river fifteen miles from this place, the land on either
side rises to some fifteen hundred feet above the level of the river
which occupies the entire bottom from rocks to rocks on either side;
when the land suddenly drops from this high plain which extends from
the Blue Mountains on the east to the Cascade range on the west,
forming, as it were, a great inland dam across the Columbia River,
fifteen hundred feet high at the place where the river has broken
through the dam. As you pass out of this gap, in looking to the north
and east, the eye rests upon another vast, high, rolling plain, in
the southeastern part of which lies the beautiful valley of the
Wallawalla ...2
Next
week: the Musselshell Rapids
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1Robert
Hitchman, Place Names of Washington, (Washington
State Historical Society, 1985)
2William
Henry Gray, A History of Oregon. 1792 - 1849 (1870)
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