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THE GREAT FALLS
This
is the fourth installment of my brief history of the Columbia River.
As mentioned last week, this history is brief on several counts, not
the least of which is the fact that I am only considering the
sections of the river that form the Oregon-Washington border. As
Lewis and Clark's voyage down the river dovetails neatly with this
history, I will include snippets from their journals as well. These
journals are best read in their original format even though the
spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are all problematic. Any
added annotation is mine. The river, historically, had changed very
little for thousands of years before Lewis and Clark recorded what
they saw. This week the story brings us to the first major rapids of
the river below its confluence with the Snake River.
The
Columbia is a curious river. As Lewis and Clark discovered, long wide
reaches, shallow and calm, are followed by short treacherous drops of
"great impetuosity"1.
Just above Miller Island (RM 207), for example, the river is nearly a
mile wide. At Celilo, just fifteen miles downstream, the river,
before the Dalles Damn, narrowed to as little as 75 feet and churned
itself into a series of rapids and falls (Threemile, Fivemile, The
Dalles, Tenmile, and Celilo). Over a 10 mile stretch, the river
dropped some eighty feet culminating in the horseshoe falls that
effectively blocked travel on the river.
Lewis
and Clark had left the Umatilla Rapids (and the mouth of a small
river on the "larboard side" --- most likely the John
Day?), and paddled another twenty miles or so before arriving at the
Great Falls. They landed and took council.
"...
6 miles below the upper mouth of Towarnehiooks River (Deschutes) the
commencement of the pitch of the Great falls, opposite on the Stard.
Side is 17 Lodges of the nativs ... we landed and walked down
accompanied by an old man to view the falls, and the best rout for to
make a portage which we Soon discovered was much nearest on the
Stard. Side, and the distance 1200 yards one third of the way on a
rock, about 200 yards over a loose Sand collected in a hollar blown
by the winds from the bottoms below which was disagreeable to pass,
as it was Steep and loose. ..."
Journal
of William Clark, October 22, 1805
Celilo
Falls was the great meeting place of the Pacific Northwest.
Archaeologists can date human occupation of the site for as long as
12000 years (just after the last of the Bretz Floods). The place and
the falls went by many names (Horseshoe Falls, The Chutes, Wy-am),
but Celilo was not one of them. According to the Oregon Historical
Quarterly (April 1915) " ... the
name does not appear in print before 1859, as far as yet discovered.
The earlier journals and letters of fur traders and travelers do not
mention it ..."
Lewis
and Clark at Celilo Falls, Mural at Oregon State Capitol
The
journals of Lewis and Clark provide the first glimpse of Celilo. 7000
- 10000 people lived between what today is Cascade Locks and The
Dalles. In the Pacific Northwest, ethnographers estimate that there
were 125 different tribes that spoke 56 different languages.
Klickitat, Wishram, and Wasco would come from the inland plateaus to
trade with the river tribes, the Clackamas, the Wahkiakums, and
Chinook. It was Captain George Vancouver, noting that these natives
had developed a common language, who labeled it Chinook jargon. It
was Lewis and Clark who noted that disease from early contact with
American an European traders at the mouth of the river had already
begun to scythe its way through the tribes.
It
was fish that made the relatively large population possible. Annual
runs of 11 million to 16 million salmon and steelhead made the river
a magnet for native Americans. Though rife with hazards, the fishing
provided a lifestyle for many and a means of trade for many more.
With the coming of the horse around 1730, this Columbia River
crossroads became the hub of the Pacific Northwest.
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1Alexander
Ross (1783-1856), fur trader, as quoted in The Oregon Encyclopedia.
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