Salmon are the centerpiece of our culture, religion, spirit, and indeed, our very existence. As Indians, we speak solely for the salmon. We have no hidden agenda. We do not make decisions to appease special interest groups. We do not bow to the will of powerful economic interests. Our people’s desire is simple — to preserve the fish, to preserve our way of life, now and for future generations.
Donald Sampson, former chairman of Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla
Umatilla, Walla Walla and Cayuse Indians fished from platforms with dip nets, used gaff hooks, small spears, and hook and line to catch salmon and steelhead, eels, sturgeon, suckers and white fish. The Umatilla fished from the Columbia River and two of its tributaries, the Umatilla River and Willow Creek. The Walla Walla also fished from the Columbia as well as the Walla Walla and Snake rivers. The Cayuse, whose territory lay further to the southeast, utilized the Columbia, Grand Ronde, Tucannon, and Tochet rivers.
In 1855 the Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Cayuse ceded 6.4 million acres in a treaty negotiated by Isaac Stevens at Camp Stevens in the Walla Walla Valley. In that treaty Indian leaders reserved the right to fish “at all other usual and accustomed stations in common with citizens of the United States.” Similar treaty phrases protect most native fishing in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
Estimates for pre-contact harvest by the Umatilla, Walla Walla and Cayuse number at 3,500,000 pounds of fish annually. By the mid-1800s the annual harvest dropped to 1,600,000. Today, Umatilla and Warm Springs tribes together catch only 77,000 pounds annually. Bonneville Dam, completed in 1938, and other habitat destruction curtailed the salmon runs of the mid-Columbia. McNary Dam (1953), The Dalles Dam (1957), and John Day Dam (1971) further diminished the Columbia River runs fished by the confederated tribes. Three Mile Dam, an irrigation dam on the Umatilla River which flows through the Umatilla Reservation, has curtailed the fishery on this Columbia River tributary. The tribes estimate that the dams in the Columbia Basin, along with other factors, have reduced salmon and steelhead runs by 15.5 million fish annually.
The United States government is killing salmon because of the dams…there’s actually an abrogation of treaty rights, a taking of a treaty right without compensation…The cycle the salmon go through when they come up, spawn, and give birth and die and give life to other animals…similar to the cycle that we live through our laws. And you ruin that cycle, you take the salmon out, then the Indian people will be the next to go.
Jeff Van Pelt, Cultural Resouces Protection Program Manager, CTUIR
The Umatilla River originates in Oregon’s Blue Mountains, winds through Eastern Oregon’s most populous county and travels through the Umatilla Reservation. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) worked with irrigators, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bonneville Power Administration, the Oregon Water Resources Department and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to develop the Umatilla Basin Project in 1988. The project allows irrigators to use water from the Columbia River rather than the Umatilla River, thereby increasing salmon habitat in the Umatilla. Success is evident in a growing salmon population. In 1995, scientists counted 1600 salmon for the entire Snake Basin. In 1996, 2300 Chinook salmon returned to the Umatilla Basin.
The tribes have also called for the breaching of four dams on the lower Snake River.
