Celilo Legacy
Before Celilo Falls was inundated by The Dalles Dam in 1957, a jumble of huge rock formations, spanning the width of the river, created magnificent falls and powerful eddies where salmon were trapped and then scooped up in fisher’s nets. A few miles downstream of Celilo was the Long Narrows. For 10,000 years, some of the world’s best fishing took place at these two sites. In one village, near the end of the fishing season, Lewis and Clark described stacks and stacks of salmon—10,000 pounds, they estimated. The Long Narrows, known for its spring chinook fishing, was under the jurisdiction of the easternmost Chinook peoples, the Wishram and Wasco, while Celilo Falls belonged to Saphatin-speaking Indians. The Skin and Wyam people lived at Celilo year-round, but many other Saphatin speakers, including Yakama, Warm Springs, Umatilla, and Nez Perce Indians, lived and fished there at the height of the summer and early fall fishery. Radiating out from Celilo and the Long Narrows were hundreds of miles of trails that brought not only fishing families, but also traders and visitors from all directions. Today the little park and fishing access site and the Celilo village across the freeway belie the fact that the area was once the commercial, social, and cultural center of the entire region. Think about that the next time you speed by at 75 miles per hour.
Celilo Falls: “The Wall Street of the Northwest”
Friday, November 17, 2006
Celilo and Long Narrows
