title: Bonus Episode: Celilo Memories
author: Timber Wars Season 2: Salmon Wars
contenttype: podcast
publication: Timber Wars Season 2: Salmon Wars
published: 2024-04-24T08:00:00-04:00
sourceurl: https://pds.cdnstream1.com/p/opb/timber-wars-season-2-sal-760bb5/bonus-episode-celilo-mem-fec127/audio.mp3
word_count: 1741
Federal funding for public media has been eliminated. That means KMHD is entirely community-funded and your support is more important than ever. Go to KMHD.org and join as a rhythm section member with your ongoing monthly contribution now. Thank you. It's hard to overstate how spectacular saliva falls was. In the spring time, more water spilled over saliva than passes over Niagara Falls today. The falls and surrounding village were a cultural hub for Native people long before white settlers came to the area. I continued into the modern era before the US government built the Dallas Dam and silenced saliva falls. I'm Tony Schick and this is a bonus episode of Sam and Wars. You heard a bit about saliva falls in the impact of its loss in some of our episodes. There's a loss of fishing and there's a loss of homes because they were flooded out. We wanted to take some time to remember this place that was so central to Columbia River tribes. We collaborated with Confluence, a nonprofit focused on the Columbia River system. The organization has collected oral histories from native people, many of whom remember saliva falls before the dam. On this bonus episode, we're bringing you some of their memories. The falls had a hard that was so loud you could hear it from miles and miles away. That's a sound I'll never forget. Every time they go with their dip, they get something. One or two, sometimes three salmon. Every time. Yes, saliva falls to the Wall Street in North America one time. William Gallup Jr. is a tribal elder and Yakima chief. He was a young child when saliva was flooded. He grew up hearing about what the place meant to his ancestors and to tribal people from around the region going back many generations. There are people in Canada who have certain things that are part of their religious ceremonies. Maybe you understand it as like a sacrament, like wine and bread and a sacrament. These people, the way in Canada, they have no salmon, no eels, no smell. But those are part of their sacraments. They have to have those things. They came here and got those things and taken back as part of their ceremonies. All that is based upon trade. Salilo functioned as a pivotal trading spot for tribal people, with salmon as a kind of currency. Everything derives its value from the salmon. You bring something here. I honor your gift. What does it bring? Let me see. What do you have? Okay. Those things will get you this much salmon. That's how you base the value of all your commodities, all your goods, all your trade. How much are your stocks worth? Your trade. Salilo Falls continued to be a place for native people to trade and gather in the first half of the 20th century. Linda Miannis has a lot of memories of Salilo from her childhood. That's a lot of the energy of the water was really powerful. Miannis is a member of the Warm Springs tribe. She grew up in Salilo village. She's the author of My Name Is La Mush, which chronicles her early life in Salilo village. I could just feel the mist in my face even if I stood far away. The falls had a hard that was so loud you could hear it from miles and miles away. Even in the next town over the doubts you could hear it. It was a echo that you could feel in your heart. That feeling of the powerful sound feels like the truth of our way of life. In the smell of the fall you could smell the salmon, the saltiness of it. It smelled so fresh. The smell of salmon cooking, it was beautiful. Miannis said that because she was a young child she wasn't allowed down by the river by herself. But she has strong memories of a culture built around river life. Gampa would get everybody up at 4.30 in the morning. The woman would prepare lunch and a man like my dad and my uncles and grandpa would go out on the river with the nets to fish for the day. I would see all of them down their catching fish. The salmon worked too big to have to fight to get food. I think it didn't bother the men to be on the scaffolds. Those are wooden platforms they built. Just above the water I think for them. The salmon was a fight in itself all day long. They would fish. Salmon fishing at Salado Falls was, by all accounts, an awesome thing to witness. With some of those scaffolds, they were our contextual wonders. Bryson Liberty is a tribal elder of the confederated tribes of the Yumatila Indian reservation. He told Confluence about the native fishing operation at Salado Falls. As Linda Miannis was saying, fishermen built scaffolds on the rocks to get as close as they could to the rushing water. Like those guys right underneath the big falls had these hanging scaffolds. The cliffs went down right here. They put these platforms out here and they'd hang these big heavy four-but-fourths down. Then on these four-but-fourths, they'd build a platform. But when they dip, they could walk along the platform. The fishermen used dip nets to catch fish from these wooden platforms. The nets look like giant butterfly catchers. They're these 30-foot poles with big mesh bags on the ends. Usually though, at that spot where they were, they didn't have to do any walking. Because when an official were running, I'd see those guys every time they'd go with their dip, they'd get something. One or two, sometimes three salmon. Over time, boy, they'd just get them out, hit them in the head, kill them, put them in the box, and man, get back there and get another load. This is as fast as they could. They had guys over here hitting them in the head, putting them in a gunny sack, take them up, ship them over to. But those guys, man, when the salmon were running, it was Buku Money City. Money City. Guys could make a load of money down there, made more into $3,000, the government gave her flooding, saliva falls. That's the money the US government offered to tribal people when it completed the Downstam and flooded saliva falls. The money didn't even begin to make up for the enormous loss. Linda Miannis remembers the effect it had on her grandfather, Tommy Thompson. He was the chief at saliva village at the time. And so when my grandfather, his uncle had passed who was chief then, became chief when he was 20 and lived to be 114 when he died. They lived on salmon every day. That was the importance of trying to keep our keeps a lot of falls because of our salmon, because it was our way of life. It was our survival. And so when they took that away, my great grandma, Flores said that my grandfather died of a broken heart because that's what he lived for. It was to keep the salmon. Wilbur Slokish has been a part of that fight for decades. He's a traditional river chief of the click-a-tat band of the Accommodation. He's been shot at, had rocks thrown at him, and even spent time in prison, all for exercising his fishing rights. As a boy, he fished at saliva falls. He spoke to confluence about how he carries his memories of Salilo with him. I was on my way to Albuquerque for a meeting and I saw this sign, Shoshone Falls, so I went there. And I heard the sound of that water falling. It wasn't loud as Salilo. And I spread a blanket out and I just laid there listening to it. The park ranger come over and asked me, are you okay? He says, yeah, I'm okay. I'm just listening to this ball. He said, ask me how old I was. Oh, you must be thinking of Salilo. That's it. Yeah. So we find places like that to remember the sounds. That's a sound I'll never forget. Up until a few years ago, there was an open question about whether or not the US Army Corps of Engineers destroyed Salilo Falls with dynamite prior to the flooding. New research shows that that was not the case. The Corps used LiDAR technology to survey the river 50 years after the Dow's dam was completed. The images they generated show the falls are essentially intact underneath the water. I'm happy though, the falls are still there. It shifted like everything else is shifting. This means there is a small amount of hope that if the dams are ever removed, the falls will flow again. It either has its own intelligence, it flows wherever it wants, it does what it wants. It's like they say water is life. That's it for this bonus episode of Sam & Wars. If you missed any of the episodes in our series, they're all available in this podcast feed. Sam & Wars is brought to you by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica, thanks to all the members who make podcasts possible at OPP. I'm your host, Tony Schick. I produce this podcast along with Julie Sabatier, Katie Campbell at ProPublica, contributed to the reporting. Our editor for this project is Anna Griffin. Our sound engineers are Nelline Silva and Stephen Craig. Original music for Sam & Wars was created by Keeley Goodwin and Sean Oglevy. Additional music comes from Audio Network. Thanks to Charles Hudson for reviewing our episodes prior to publication with an eye toward cultural context. Thanks to Sarah Blusen, Lillian Carebake, and Sage Van Wing for their input. Thanks to Confluence for sharing some of the oral histories they've collected with us so that we could share them with you. You can find a lot more information about the underwater mapping of Salilo Falls in the Oregon Field Guide episode is Salilo Falls still intact. Visit our website, OPP.org, for more in-depth reporting on Sam & Dam's and Pacific Northwest tribes. If you like this podcast, please follow us on your favorite podcast app. There will be more seasons about controversial environmental issues in the Pacific Northwest for you to listen to in the future. Thanks for your support.