History
According to Haruo Aoki (1998), the Cayuse called themselves Liksiyu in their language. [2] Their name Cayuse was derived from the French word "cailloux," meaning stones or rocks, adopted by early French Canadian trappers of the area. The name may have referred to the rocky area the tribe inhabited or it may have been an imprecise rendering of the name they called themselves. [3] The tribe has been closely associated with the neighboring Nez Percé and Walla Walla. The Cayuse language is an isolate, independent of the neighboring Sahaptin-speaking peoples. The Cayuse population was about 500 in the eighteenth century.
The Cayuse were a seminomadic tribe and maintained summer and winter villages on the Snake, Tucannon, Walla Walla, and Touchet rivers in Washington, and along the Umatilla, Grand Ronde, Burnt, Powder, John Day River, and from the Blue Mountains to the Deschutes River in Oregon. Historian Verne Ray has identified seventy-six traditional Cayuse Village sites, most temporary, seasonal sites; five separate villages in the Walla Walla Valley and seven Cayuse Bands scattered throughout Eastern Oregon and Washington. The Walla Walla River Cayuse Band was called the Pa'cxapu. Other sources name only three distinct regional bands within the Cayuse at the time; two centered on the Umatilla River; the third on the Walla Walla River.
The Cayuse were known for their bravery and as horsemen. They bred their ponies for speed and endurance, developing what is now called the Cayuse horse. No longer restricted to what they could carry or what their dogs could pull, they moved into new areas, traveling as far east as the Great Plains and as far south as California, to hunt, trade, fight, and capture slaves. Meanwhile, their herds multiplied rapidly, a combination of skillful breeding and periodic raids on other tribes. By the early 1800s, a Cayuse who owned only 15 to 20 horses was considered poor; wealthy families controlled 2,000 or more. Horses improved the range and effectiveness of war parties, making it possible for Cayuses to dominate their sedentary neighbors on the Columbia. They claimed ownership of The Dalles, the great fishery and trade emporium of the Columbia, forcing the weaker bands in that area to pay them tribute in the form of salmon and other goods. They frequently were in conflict fighting with Piute, Shoshone, and Bannock Tribes to the south and east referred to as the Snake people and other tribes such as the Blackfeet over territory and hunting sites.
As white settlers moved into their territory in large numbers following the opening of the Oregon Trail in 1842, the Cayuse suffered. Even settlers passing through competed with them for game and water. Crowds of whites invaded the region during the California Gold Rush beginning in 1848 and when gold was discovered in Eastern Oregon in 1862.
The tribe gained wide notoriety in the early days of the white settlement of the territory. In 1838, Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa established a mission among the Cayuse at Waiilatpu ("Place of the Rye Grass"), a site about seven miles from the present-day city of Walla Walla and about a quarter mile east of where the Cayuse Pásxa winter village was located. In 1847, a measles epidemic, suspected by some to be contracted from white settlers, resulted in high fatalities among the tribe. A small group of Cayuse, after putting Witmans medicine to the test with both sick and non sick individuals, and which all test individuals died, believed the missionaries were deliberately poisoning their native people, since a much higher percentage of the natives were dying from the measles than were the whites. In addition, cultural differences and settler encroachment had caused growing tensions.
The Cayuse attacked the missionaries, killing Whitman and his wife Narcissa, and eleven others. They captured 54 European-American women and children and held them for ransom. They destroyed the mission buildings. This attack prompted an armed response by the United States and the Cayuse War ensued. Five Cayuse warriors were hanged; see Cayuse Five.
The Cayuse put the captives to work together with their members; the adults made clothing for the tribe. They released the hostages after the Hudson's Bay Company brokered an exchange of 62 blankets, 63 cotton shirts, 12 Hudson Bay rifles, 600 loads of ammunition, 7 pounds of tobacco and 12 flints for the return of the now 49 surviving prisoners. The Cayuse and many from other nearby tribes such as the Walla Walla Tribe were hunted down by Militias and massacred. The Cayuse eventually lost the war. They were forced to cede their land to the US and shared a reservation with the Umatilla and Walla Walla.
By 1851, the Cayuse had long intermarried with the neighboring Nez Percé, with whom they had sheltered; many learned their language. Kathleen Gordon a Tribal member of the Confederate Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation was a Cayuse/Nez Pierce Language instructor who spoke and taught the Nez Pierce language, but also knew small amounts of the Original Cayuse Language that is now extinct.
In 1855, the Cayuse joined the Treaty of Walla Walla [4] with the Umatilla and Walla Walla by which the Umatilla Indian Reservation was formed. Since that time, they have officially resided within the reservation's limits. During the mid-twentieth century, some members moved to cities under the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, an effort to give better access for contemporary jobs.
Their number was officially reported as 404 in 1904; this number may be misleading. A count in 1902 found one pure-blooded Cayuse on the reservation. Descendants with ancestry partially of the other tribes may still have identified as Cayuse. The Cayuse language is believed to have become extinct by then. As the members of the three tribes have intermarried, they no longer keep separate population numbers.
The Nez Perce are an Indigenous people of the Plateau who still live on a fraction of the lands on the southeastern Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest. This region has been occupied for at least 11,500 years.
Walla Walla, Walawalałáma, sometimes Walúulapam, are a Sahaptin Indigenous people of the Northwest Plateau. The duplication in their name expresses the diminutive form. The name Walla Walla is translated several ways but most often as "many waters".
Marcus Whitman was an American physician and missionary. In 1836, Marcus Whitman led an overland party by wagon to the West. He and his wife, Narcissa, along with Reverend Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza, and William Gray, founded a mission near present-day Walla Walla, Washington in an effort to convert local Indians to Christianity. In the winter of 1842, Whitman went back east, returning the following summer with the first large wagon train of settlers across the Oregon Trail. These new settlers encroached on the Cayuse Indians living near the Whitman Mission and were unsuccessful in their efforts to Christianize the tribe. Following the deaths of many nearby Cayuse from an outbreak of measles, some remaining Cayuse accused Whitman of murder, suggesting that he had administered poison and was a failed shaman. In retaliation, a group of Cayuse killed the Whitmans and eleven other settlers on November 29, 1847, an event that came to be known as the Whitman massacre. This led to continuing warfare between settlers and the Cayuse which reduced their numbers further.
The Grande Ronde River is a 210-mile (340 km) long tributary of the Snake River, flowing through northeast Oregon and southeast Washington in the United States. It drains a watershed of about 4,100 square miles (11,000 km2) in the eastern Columbia Plateau, bounded by the Blue Mountains and Wallowa Mountains to the west of Hells Canyon. The river flows generally northeast from its forested headwaters west of La Grande, Oregon, through the agricultural Grande Ronde Valley in its middle course, and through rugged canyons cut from ancient basalt lava flows in its lower course. While it joins the Snake River upstream of Asotin, Washington, more than 90 percent of the river's watershed is in Oregon.
The Nez Perce War was an armed conflict in 1877 in the Western United States that pitted several bands of the Nez Perce tribe of Native Americans and their allies, a small band of the Palouse tribe led by Red Echo (Hahtalekin) and Bald Head, against the United States Army. Fought between June and October, the conflict stemmed from the refusal of several bands of the Nez Perce, dubbed "non-treaty Indians," to give up their ancestral lands in the Pacific Northwest and move to an Indian reservation in Idaho Territory. This forced removal was in violation of the 1855 Treaty of Walla Walla, which granted the tribe 7.5 million acres of their ancestral lands and the right to hunt and fish on lands ceded to the U.S. government.
The Palouse are a Sahaptin tribe recognized in the Treaty of 1855 with the United States along with the Yakama. It was negotiated at the 1855 Walla Walla Council. A variant spelling is Palus. Today they are enrolled in the federally recognized Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation and some are also represented by the Colville Confederated Tribes, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Nez Perce Tribe.
The Umatilla are a Sahaptin-speaking Native American tribe who traditionally inhabited the Columbia Plateau region of the northwestern United States, along the Umatilla and Columbia rivers.
The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are the federally recognized confederations of three Sahaptin-speaking Native American tribes who traditionally inhabited the Columbia River Plateau region: the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla.
The Whitman massacre refers to the killing of American missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, along with eleven others, on November 29, 1847. They were killed by a small group of Cayuse men who accused Whitman of poisoning 200 Cayuse in his medical care during an outbreak of measles that included the Whitman household. The killings occurred at the Whitman Mission at the junction of the Walla Walla River and Mill Creek in what is now southeastern Washington near Walla Walla. The massacre became a decisive episode in the U.S. settlement of the Pacific Northwest, causing the United States Congress to take action declaring the territorial status of the Oregon Country. The Oregon Territory was established on August 14, 1848, to protect the white settlers.
Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau, also referred to by the phrase Indigenous peoples of the Plateau, and historically called the Plateau Indians are Indigenous peoples of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada, and the non-coastal regions of the Northwestern United States.
Tiloukaikt (d.1850) was a Native American leader of the Cayuse tribe in the northwestern United States. He was involved in the Whitman Massacre and was a primary leader during the subsequent Cayuse War.
The history of Washington includes thousands of years of Native American history before Europeans arrived and began to establish territorial claims. The region was part of Oregon Territory from 1848 to 1853, after which it was separated from Oregon and established as Washington Territory following the efforts at the Monticello Convention. On November 11, 1889, Washington became the 42nd state of the United States.
Piupiumaksmaks was head chief of the Walla Walla tribe and son to the preceding chief Tumatapum. His name meant Yellow Bird, but it was often mistranslated as Yellow Serpent by Europeans.
The Sahaptin are a number of Native American tribes who speak dialects of the Sahaptin language. The Sahaptin tribes inhabited territory along the Columbia River and its tributaries in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Sahaptin-speaking peoples included the Klickitat, Kittitas, Yakama, Wanapum, Palus, Lower Snake, Skinpah, Walla Walla, Umatilla, Tenino, and Nez Perce.
The Walla Walla Council (1855) was a meeting in the Pacific Northwest between the United States and sovereign tribal nations of the Cayuse, Nez Perce, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Yakama. The council occurred on May 29 – June 11; the treaties signed at this council on June 9 were ratified by the U.S. Senate four years later in 1859.
Umatilla is a variety of Southern Sahaptin, part of the Sahaptian subfamily of the Plateau Penutian group. It was spoken during late aboriginal times along the Columbia River and is therefore also called Columbia River Sahaptin. It is currently spoken as a first language by a few dozen elders and some adults in the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon. Some sources say that Umatilla is derived from imatilám-hlama: hlama means 'those living at' or 'people of' and there is an ongoing debate about the meaning of imatilám, but it is said to be an island in the Columbia River. B. Rigsby and N. Rude mention the village of ímatalam that was situated at the mouth of the Umatilla River and where the language was spoken.
Cayuse is an extinct unclassified language once spoken by the Cayuse people of Oregon.
The Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs was an official position of the U.S. state of Oregon, and previously of the Oregon Territory, that existed from 1848 to 1873.
The history of Walla Walla, Washington begins with the settling of Oregon Country, Fort Nez Percés, the Whitman Mission and Walla Walla County, Washington.
Roberta "Bobbie" Conner, also known as Sísaawipam, is a tribal historian, activist, and indigenous leader who traces her ancestry to the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Nez Perce tribes. Conner is known for her work as the Director of the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute in Pendleton, Oregon, which seeks to protect, preserve, and promote the culture of the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla Walla peoples. In her role at the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute Conner has worked to educate the public on and preserve Indigenous culture through the "We Are," "We Were," and "We Will Be" series of exhibits, and has mentored young scholars interested in tribal cultural preservation. Conner has also sought to educate the public and fight for Native American rights in her personal life as an activist, with a special emphasis on the impact of the division into Tribal Nations and segregation into boarding schools on indigenous cultures, tribal land rights, sustainability, and the repatriation of human remains and funerary objects to Native American lands.
