Line drawings on this page were generously
supplied by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Special
thanks to Kay Barton and Anne Pressentin Young. Sharon Torvik
and the late Harold Cramer Smith are the artists, and their
work is displayed here with respect and gratitude.
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Cecilia Bearchum
Food Storage
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Sandhill crane |
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Blue Camas, along side
the Zumwait-Buckhorn Road above the Wallowa Valley.
K. Lugthart photo
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 Northern
shoveler |
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Swan
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Martha Franklin
On the Return of the Salmon |
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Otters
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Chewing
beaver |
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Blue
winged teal |
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Umatilla > Culture > Camp Life & Seasonal Round
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© Lynn
Kitagawa -used with permission
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The yearly cycle for Natítayt reflects
the intimate relationship that they share with the
land. Before being forced to live a sedentary life
confined to the reservation, they moved seasonally
throughout a vast region, in a pattern based on
available foods. Year after year the many riverine
villages were occupied when the salmon were running,
and other locations were favored when berries were
ripe, or when roots were ready to be harvested,
or when elk or other animals were available. |

Curlew
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Winter |
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In the days before dams, when snow began to
fall, many Umatilla, Walla
Walla and Cayuse set up large villages, nisayct,
along the Columbia River. In the largest villages, several
hundred people gathered to spend the winter season fishing,
hunting, making clothing and tools, and listening to
the stories of the elders and adventurers. |
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Women were responsible for setting-up and dismantling the tule,
tk'ú, (Great bulrush, Scirpus lacustris)
mat longhouses,
which varied from a 20 foot circle and up to 150 feet long.
The winter lodges could accommodate an entire extended family
unit. They also constructed small round storage huts in shallow
pits, to store dried roots, berries, meat, and fish. Mud baths
and sweathouses, used separately by the sexes, were also an
important part of village life. Some of these structures also
served as seclusion for elder women to instruct young girls.
Men used dip nets, twaluut'as, from their canoe-like
vessels, wasas,
and from platforms
to catch steelhead (šušaynš), lamprey
eel (k'suyas), coho salmon (sinxw), whitefish
(simay), sturgeon (wilaps), suckers (xuun),
and other fish. Some brought out their bearpaw snowshoes and
went in parties to hunt elk (wawukya) and deer (yaamas),
and occasionally antelope (wawataw), big horn sheep
(tnuun), bear (yaka), and other game in the
Blue Mountains. Hunting provided meat for food, hides to make
clothing, and bones and antlers to be shaped into tools.
Winter is a time to celebrate, dance, sing, and to tell stories
of their families, history and beliefs. The winter solstice
is celebrated as the beginning of the new year. Paica?sa,
the winter solstice gathering, is a time for prayer, dancing,
and singing. There were also Winter Spirit Dances, wánptša,
where shamans and young apprentices sang and danced.
From the dark of winter, new life emerges with the first shoots
of wild celery. This is a time of celebration. In March, Umatilla
peoples hold a xásya feast to welcome the ka`uyit,
"in the beginning, when new things start", of wild celery
(Lomatium grayi). Today, this annual tradition continues.
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Spring |
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Cecilia Bearchum
The Spring Run |
By the time of the vernal equinox many
important roots and salmon are ready for harvest.
Each April a thanksgiving feast, kauite,
is held to celebrate the return, or the beginning,
of the salmon and roots. April is known as the moon
of the gegi`t roots (Lomatium canbyi).
Soon the roots of the cous,
xamsi, (Lomatium cous) along
the Blue Mountains are ready to be harvested. Until
the reservations were established, the men had to
keep a lookout for raiders from surrounding tribes
while women and children dug the roots out of the
ground with their digging sticks. |
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The waters of spring were teeming
with salmon, in one run after another. Many large
villages, sprang up along the shores and
islands of the Columbia River to harvest the abundant
salmon. Friends and relatives from various bands came
together for this effort.
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Cecilia Bearchum
The Root Feasts |
Along the shores of the raging river,
the men moored canoes together to use them as platforms
from which to catch spring Chinook, nusux,
(Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). They used harpoons
(tayxay), dip nets (twaluut'as), and
gaff hooks (kiyák). Elder men repaired
and made fish traps, sapaxaluutas, and other
equipment for the younger men to use. A good day's
catch for each fisherman was approximately 100 fish! |
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Women worked hard to dry the vast
numbers of fish brought in each day. They cleaned them,
then dried them using smoke, sun, and wind. 
Drying
eels
Maj. Lee Moorhouse. PH 36, Special Collections &
University Archives, University of Oregon, #M5555. |
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As the days grew longer and the snows of the high country melted
into the valleys, the women took down the steep-roofed tk'ú
mat lodges and, in their place, families constructed flat-roofed
structures on raised platforms. The raised platforms kept their
houses protected from the high waters of the spring runoff and
the flat roofs provided lots of space for drying salmon. Because
wood was a scarce commodity, timbers for the platforms were re-used
year after year. |
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Summer |
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Camas
field in bloom
K. Lugthart photo |
Salmon fishing continues in early summer, and the
men also catch lamprey eel, a favorite food. Women's
work shifts from fish-drying to root-digging. Everyone
celebrates the ripening of blue
camas, xmaas, (Camassia quamash)
roots.
Xmaas was such an important food in the days
before grocery stores, that the fields were well
maintained and vigorously defended. |
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Using crutch-handled hardwood digging sticks women pried up
the entire plant, took only the large bulbs, and then replaced
the plant so that they would be able to return to the stand
again. Poisonous death
camas (Zigadenus elegans) was weeded out when
the plant was in bloom, the white blossom could easily be
distinguished from the blue flower of the edible form.
In the old days, a woman could gather up to 90 pounds of camas
bulbs, two sacks full, in a half-day! The root was
baked into bread or biscuits in a stone-lined earth oven along
with wild onion and/or berries. It was also cooked into a
mush in baskets with hot stones for boiling. Other roots,
such as bitterroot,
pyaxi, (Lewisia rediviva) and Indian
carrot were gathered as well. An edible black lichen,
collected off pine and fir trees, was also baked in a stone-lined
earth oven to make a cheese-like substance. Women still gather
roots and lichen, but not nearly so many.
Everyone welcomes the sweet fruits of summer. A sequence of
berries ripens from mid-summer into the fall. Women and children
pick wild strawberries, serviceberries, raspberries, blackberries,
elderberries, blueberries, huckleberries, gooseberries, chokecherries,
and wild currents. These fruits are eaten raw or spread on
mats to dry in the sun or before a fire. In the past, dried
berries were used in mush, soups, or made into pemmican by
pounding berries into dried fish and meat for flavoring.
Out from the summer camps, in pre-reservation days,
groups of hunters would form lines and drive prairie
chickens, sage hens, or jackrabbits into net enclosures.
They would then club the small prey, which added wonderful
variety to the daily fare and the soft skins of rabbits
were used to make clothing and blankets.
Some of the Umatilla, Cayuse and Nez Perce took their horses
and joined relatives and allies from other Sahaptin and Salishan
bands on summer expeditions to the plains to hunt the buffalo.
The horse provided them the means to travel many hundreds
of miles over difficult terrain, and to become part of the
world of buffalo people.
Trade was greatly enhanced by the horse. Throughout the fishing
season, people from all over the Northwest, from the shores
of the Pacific to the Great Plains, gathered at major fishing
areas to trade goods. At Celilo
Falls, near the junction of the Deschutes River on the
lower Columbia River, buffalo meat was traded for dried fish
and goods such as obsidian projectile points or knives and
marine shells. Celilo continued to be one of the largest trade
sites and a great fishing spot until 1957 when a The Dalles
Dam was built, flooding the falls. Despite the loss of the
falls, fishing and the annual First Salmon Feast continues,
usually celebrated on the second weekend of April, and is
open to the public.
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Fall |
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Gathering
tule |
Weaving
tule |
Constructing
tule mat lodge |
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Photos
courtesy of the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute |
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Cecilia Bearchum
Tule Mat Lodges |
After months of intense work to procure
food on the Columbia, fall was a little more restful
and fun. As huckleberries ripened in the high country,
extended families followed them. They set up camps
at the edges of the Blue Mountains where the women
and children collected berries and the men hunted.
With deer-head decoys, they lured in their prey.
They also hunted elk, which they enticed to come
within bow range by the magical flute-playing of
a man endowed with those particular powers. Teams
of hunters would burn underbrush in the forests
to drive deer, antelope, bear, and other game toward
those waiting with bow and arrow in stands or mounted
on horseback. Each family needed the meat from 20-30
deer and 6-10 elk to meet their winter needs. When
the hunter had killed enough for his family and
contributed to the needs of widows and elders, he
took no more. |
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Women were responsible for butchering the game animals, drying the
meat, and packing it into parfleches for storage. They tanned and
smoked hides for clothing, moccasins, and parfleches. They also
continued to pick berries and dig roots. |
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Intertribal groups gathered for trade,
fishing, gambling, and games. Young men and women
courted and women told each other of their lives
since they were last together. Everyone enjoyed
watching or competing in foot races and horse races.
Everyone played games. They gambled and traded.
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"Indian
Horse Race"
Courtesy of Washington State Univ. Libraries
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Cecilia Bearchum
Preperation of Foods for Winter |
During the fall these bands would send
out horse-raiding parties to their traditional enemies,
especially the Bannock, Northern Shoshone, and Northern
Paiute. They also had to be on the lookout for raiders
from other tribes, out on their own horse-raiding
expeditions. These enemy tribes also came to take
captives for the slave trade. |
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Maj.
Lee Moorhouse. PH 36, Special Collections &
University Archives, University of Oregon, #5419 |
When heavy frost greeted them in the
morning, and the snows began to blanket the high
peaks of the Blue Mountains, it was once again time
to set up the large winter villages along the Columbia
River. The cycle of life continued as it had since
time immemorial, until the people were confined
to reservations and the rivers were dammed. Even
now it continues. |
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Snow
on the Blue Mountains (from the Wallowa Valley)
K. Lugthart photo |
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