The Wanapum (also Wanapam) tribe of Native Americans formerly lived along the Columbia River from above Priest Rapids down to the mouth of the Snake River in what is now the US state of Washington. About 60 Wanapum still live near the present day site of Priest Rapids Dam. [1] [ verification needed ] The name "Wanapum" is from the Sahaptin wánapam, meaning "river people", from wána, "river", and -pam, "people". [2]
In prehistoric times, the tribe's territory was (and still is) an excellent salmon-fishing area. It is unknown which tribes were overthrown by the Wanapum tribe when they claimed their ancestral land, or what happened to the original settlers that migrated from NE Asia centuries before the Wanapum and other tribes finally settled in the area. Because of the lost primitive and scarce archeology of the region, these secrets may never be known, and those people never acknowledged.
The tribe made houses from tule and cut over 300 petroglyphs into the basalt cliffs. [1] In 1805, according to the journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Wanapum, led by their chief Cutssahnem, greeted the expedition and treated its members well, sharing food and entertainment. [3] Captain Clark’s journals provide descriptions of their dwellings, clothing, and physical characteristics.
In the 1800s, a new Native religion, called Washane, Washani or "Dreamer Religion", was created by a spiritual leader of the Wanapum named Smohalla. [4] Adherents to this religion believed that the white man would disappear, if rituals and traditional life was adhered to; instead of participating in armed conflicts, the people prayed. Whether due to this religion or for other reasons, the tribe never fought white settlers, did not sign a treaty with them, and as a result retained no federally recognized land rights.
In 1942 Franklin Matthias allowed about 30 Wanapum to remain in their winter camp, with access to their customary fishing ground in the middle of the federal reservation for the Hanford Engineer Works (part of the Manhattan Project), and provided daily trucks to transport them from their winter camp on the Columbia River. He did not believe that their loyalty could be questioned. But after WWII they were sealed off from graves and cultural sites on the Hanford site. [5]
In 1953 the construction of the Priest Rapids Dam and the Wanapum Dam flooded the riverbanks where the Wanapum had lived in traditional tule houses.
About 60 Wanapum petroglyphs were blasted from the rock before being flooded; they may be viewed at Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park.
The Wanapum Heritage Center Museum displays artifacts of the time before the dams, [6] while the Wanapum River Patrol keeps watch over the ancestral lands, monitoring locations of special significance to the Wanapum to protect those places from depredation, and also providing information to visitors.
The Washane religion is still practiced by some members of other tribes. [7]
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river forms in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. It flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. The river is 1,243 miles long, and its largest tributary is the Snake River. Its drainage basin is roughly the size of France and extends into seven states of the United States and one Canadian province. The fourth-largest river in the United States by volume, the Columbia has the greatest flow of any river entering the Pacific outside of Asia, and the 36th greatest discharge of any river in the world.
Vantage is a census-designated place (CDP) in Kittitas County, Washington, United States. The population was 74 at the 2010 census.
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Wanapum Dam is a run-of-the-river hydroelectric project located on the Columbia River downstream (south) from Vantage, Washington where Interstate 90 crosses the Columbia from Grant County into Kittitas County. It is owned by the Grant County Public Utility District. Its reservoir is named Lake Wanapum.
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The Dalles Lock and Dam is a concrete-gravity run-of-the-river dam spanning the Columbia River, two miles (3 km) east of the city of The Dalles, Oregon, United States. It joins Wasco County, Oregon with Klickitat County, Washington, 192 miles (309 km) upriver from the mouth of the Columbia near Astoria, Oregon. The closest towns on the Washington side are Dallesport and Wishram.
Kettle Falls was an ancient and important salmon fishing site on the upper reaches of the Columbia River, in what is today the U.S. state of Washington, near the Canada–US border. The falls consisted of a series of rapids and cascades where the river passed through quartzite rocks deposited by prehistoric floods on a substrate of Columbia River basalt. The river dropped nearly 50 feet (15 m), and the sound of the falls could be heard for miles away. Kettle Falls was inundated in 1940, as the waters of the reservoir Lake Roosevelt rose behind Grand Coulee Dam, permanently flooding the site.
Celilo Falls was a tribal fishing area on the Columbia River, just east of the Cascade Mountains, on what is today the border between the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington. The name refers to a series of cascades and waterfalls on the river, as well as to the native settlements and trading villages that existed there in various configurations for 15,000 years. Celilo was the oldest continuously inhabited community on the North American continent until 1957, when the falls and nearby settlements were submerged by the construction of The Dalles Dam. In 2019, there were calls by tribal leaders to restore the falls.
Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park/Wanapum Recreational Area is a geologic preserve and public recreation area covering 7,124-acre (2,883 ha) on the western shoreline of the Columbia River's Wanapum Reservoir at Vantage, Washington. Petrified wood was discovered in the region in the early 1930s, which led to creation of the state park as a national historic preserve. Over 50 species are found petrified at the site, including ginkgo, sweetgum, redwood, Douglas-fir, walnut, spruce, elm, maple, horse chestnut, cottonwood, magnolia, madrone, sassafras, yew, and witch hazel.
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The Ringold Formation is a geologic formation in Eastern Washington, United States. The formation consists of sediment laid down by the Columbia River following the flood basalt eruptions of the Columbia River Basalt Group, and reaches up to 1,000 feet (300 m) thick in places. It preserves fossils dating back to the Neogene period.
Sentinel Gap is a water gap formed by the Columbia River in the Saddle Mountains, near Mattawa in Washington state. The gap is "a water gap where erosion by the Columbia River was able to keep pace with folding, faulting and uplifting across the Saddle Mountain anticline". During Ice Age floods in which waters from the Channeled Scablands found passage to the Pacific Ocean here and at Wallula Gap, this opening was "repeatedly reamed out, which probably widened and steepened the walls of the gap". Strandlines from the floods can be seen on the basalt walls of the gap.
Locke Island is an island located in the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River in Washington, United States. The island is protected as part of the Hanford Reach National Monument, which was created out of lands surrounding the Hanford Site. The island is an important archeological site and is on the National Register of Historic Places. These cultural resources are being threatened by erosion resulting from a landslide changing the river's course.