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The Columbia Plateau and Its Artists

THE COLUMBIA PLATEAU EN-compasses the watershed of the Columbia River and its major tributaries (excluding the upper Snake River in southern Idaho) and the drainage of the Fraser River in south-central British Columbia (map 2). The region is bounded on the west by the Cascade Range, on the north by the divide between the Mackenzie and Fraser rivers, on the south by the northern Great Basin, and on the east by the Rocky Mountains. The plateau has a mild, dry continental climate with hot summers and cold winters. Temperature extremes range from –30 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Winters often have heavy snows, especially in the mountains; rain falls primarily in the spring and fall with occasional summer thunder-showers.

The northern Columbia Plateau is heavily forested with dense stands of fir and pine. Rushing streams and major rivers flow through narrow valleys that trend north to south. Numerous long, narrow, deep lakes (e.g., Flathead, Chelan, Priest, Kootenay, and Arrow) occupy glacially scoured portions of these valleys in western Montana, British Columbia, northern Idaho, and northern Washington. Mountain ranges throughout the area are often steep and severely sculpted by glacial erosion.

The central and southern portions of the region are an ancient basalt plateau formed by successive lava flows extruded from Miocene volcanos between 10 and 30 million years ago. In some places the basalts are more than ten thousand feet thick. Along the Columbia and Snake rivers successive layers form basalt rimrocks that rise more than one thousand feet above the deeply cut rivers, forming Hells Canyon of the Snake River and the Columbia Gorge. Other major rivers in this part of the plateau, the Deschutes and John Day, also flow through deep, basalt-rimmed gorges. This part of the Columbia Plateau, more arid than the northern section, has typical vegetation of mixed short-grass and sagebrush prairie with scattered forests on uplands like the Wallowa mountains.

In the approximate center of the Columbia Plateau lie the channeled scablands ranging around Dry Falls near Coulee City. These prehistoric water courses, Hells Canyon on the Snake River, and the Columbia Gorge are all relict landscapes formed by immense floods from glacial lakes Missoula and Bonneville, which emptied during the melting and retreat of the Pleistocene glaciers twelve thousand to twenty thousand years ago (U.S. Geological Survey 1973).

Throughout the entire region, the most prominent topographic features are the steep sheer cliffs—basalt in the central plateau and granite, argillite, or metamorphic rocks in the surrounding mountains and foothills. On these cliffs, and in shallow rock shelters along lakeshores, streams, and ridge tops, are found more than 750 sites of the Columbia Plateau rock art tradition.

The Prehistoric Record Clovis Culture

Archaeological evidence indicates that humans first came to the Columbia Plateau approximately twelve thousand years ago (10,000 B.C.). (See fig. 2.) These earliest immigrants, coming across the Bering land bridge from Asia and then moving south along the flanks of the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific coast, encountered a virgin land filled with herds of mammoth, mastodon, giant bison, ground sloths, and camels. They wandered from place to place, stopping to kill and butcher animals and camp in sheltered locations. Evidence of these early hunters—the characteristic Clovis fluted and lanceolate projectile points—has been found at a few sites scattered throughout the region: on the Snake River plain in Idaho, at the Dietz site in the northern Great Basin of central Oregon, at Wenatchee, and along the Columbia and Snake rivers, demonstrating that the hunters lived throughout the area. In the Pacific Northwest, the Manis Mastodon site near Sequim, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula, is a kill and butchering site of these early people. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the mastodon dismembered here was killed more than eleven thousand years ago.

From these sites and others elsewhere in the West, we know that Clovis people were highly successful mammoth and mastodon hunters who had a variety of tools suited to performing the many different activities needed for living in this wild land. Dates for these sites are uniformly between ten thousand five hundred and twelve thousand years ago. Although their mammoth-hunting contemporaries in Europe and central Asia had a well developed artistic tradition that included both portable art and the world-famous cave paintings of France and Spain, the Clovis hunters apparently left no evidence in North America that they made rock art or portable sculptures.

Windust Phase

Following the Clovis hunters’ initial immigration into the New World, a period of relative cultural stability lasted for almost three thousand years, although many of the large game animals, such as mammoth, camel, and giant bison, became extinct by ten thousand years ago. On the Columbia Plateau, projectile points show slight stylistic changes during this period. The characteristic Clovis fluted spear point gave way to a series of leaf-shaped and stemmed points called Windust. Named after a rock shelter in eastern Washington, where they were discovered, Windust points are radiocarbon dated to between approximately eight thousand and ten thousand five hundred years ago (8,500–6,000 B.C.). Living in the numerous rock shelters throughout the central Columbia Plateau, and in open campsites elsewhere, the Windust people, also nomadic hunters, preyed on deer, elk, birds, and small mammals. Salmon bones in the Five Mile Rapid site near The Dalles, dating about eighty-five hundred years ago, are evidence that salmon fishing was added near the end of this period.

Excavated materials from Windust Cave, Wildcat Canyon, Marmes Rockshelter, Lind Coulee, Five Mile Rapid, and other sites show that these early hunters had tool kits fully adapted to their seminomadic life style. Chipped stone tools included projectile points, knives, scrapers, choppers, and drills. Bone and antler artifacts included awls, eyed needles, fleshing tools, barbed points, beads, hammers, flakers, wedges, and atlatls.

Old Cordilleran Culture

After the Clovis and Windust period comes the Old Cordilleran culture (Cascade phase), dating from approximately eight thousand to sixty-five hundred years ago (6,000–4,500 B.C.) and demonstrating stylistic changes in artifact types. The characteristic bipointed Cascade spearpoint and edge-ground cobbles used for food processing best identify this period. Other chipped stone and bone tools remained essentially the same as in the Windust period; hunting and fishing continued to be the primary mode of subsistence, although ground stone tools also indicate the use of plant foods. Old Cordilleran people hunted deer, elk, antelope, mountain sheep, and birds; took salmon and fresh-water mollusks from the rivers; and collected and processed berries and tuberous plants such as camas.

2. A generalized chronology of cultures on the Columbia Plateau, with associated artifacts and rock art motifs.

The Cascade phase provides the earliest reliable evidence for the presence of art on the Columbia Plateau. In Bernard Creek Rockshelter, along the Snake River in Hells Canyon, a pigment-covered spall from the roof was recovered from a level dating to this period, and in south-central Oregon a petroglyph with abstract line designs was found partially buried by a deposit containing ash laid down sixty-seven hundred years ago by the eruption of Mount Mazama (Cannon and Ricks 1986; Randolph and Dahlstrom 1977). These two occurrences clearly indicate that Old Cordilleran people made rock art in the Pacific Northwest.

Cold Springs Phase

Following the Old Cordilleran culture comes a three-thousand-year period of significant change on the Columbia Plateau that archaeologists have named the Cold Springs phase. The earliest Cold Springs phase sites immediately postdate the eruption of Mount Mazama. Archaeological evidence throughout the three-thousand-year span (4,500–1,500 B.C.) indicates that the western United States was somewhat hotter and drier than before or since. Archaeologists refer to this climatic maximum as the Altithermal period.

On the Columbia Plateau, the Cold Springs phase is marked by the appearance of various large, side-notched, projectile points and of microblades in the northern portion of the region. Both of these technological innovations facilitated hunting and butchering. Notched projectile points could be made smaller than lanceolate points, and thus could be more securely fastened to the short spears that were used with the atlatl, the throwing stick that greatly increased a hunter’s power and range. Microblades produced significantly more usable cutting edge for each piece of stone that was flaked.

Archaeologists have characterized this period’s cultural adaptation as one of increased trade and contact among local groups, with a corresponding elaboration of tools used for catching and storing fish, and gathering, processing, and storing wild roots and other plant foods. Sinkers, gorges, hooks, and fishing spears occur in Cold Springs sites, and for plant food processing the more efficient mortar and pestle largely replace the edge-ground cobble tools of the Old Cordilleran culture. Subterranean, rock-lined ovens for roasting camas were first used during this time. Recent archaeological excavations at several sites in the region have shown that people first began to live in pit house villages along major rivers during this period. Likely these villages, and the sedentism they imply, result from increased reliance on camas gathering and fishing as the major means of subsistence.

Although, for dating purposes, examples of portable art objects similar to rock art have yet to be found in Cold Springs phase sites, some of the petroglyphs in the region quite likely date to this period. Elsewhere in the western United States rock art flourished at this time. In the Coso Range of California, thousands of petroglyphs, dated between three thousand and five thousand years ago, show atlatl-using hunters and dogs chasing mountain sheep. Rock art of approximately the same age and similar style occurs throughout the Great Basin, even into south-central Oregon. On the Great Plains to the east, in Wyoming and South Dakota, petroglyphs showing hunting scenes with men pursuing bison and deer herds are called the early hunting style and are thought to be older than three thousand years. Given the widespread occurrence throughout the western United States of pecked, hunting-style petroglyphs that were made more than three thousand years ago, it is likely that some of the mountain-sheep hunting scenes along the Columbia and Snake rivers also date to this period.

Early Riverine Phase

Beginning about thirty-five hundred years ago (1,500 B.C.) and lasting until the time of Christ is a period archaeologists call the Early Riverine phase. During this time, pit house villages became commonplace; roots, salmon, and shellfish were the primary food sources for Columbia Plateau groups. Increased use of adzes, whetstones, gouges, wedges, graving tools, and stone mauls used to make wood and bone items is evidence that wood and bone working became very important in Early Riverine villages. Corresponding to this technology is the occurrence in archaeological sites of portable art objects and the definition of localized art styles. A variety of large, corner-notched, and stemmed dart points dominate the chipped-stone tool assemblages from Early Riverine sites, indicating that hunting with spears and atlatls continued as an important activity.

Long-distance trade, begun in the earlier Cold Springs phase, became increasingly important during the Early Riverine period. Artifacts recovered from sites near The Dalles show that galena and slate were brought from west of the Cascades, obsidian was obtained from south-central Oregon, and nephrite for adze blades was brought from British Columbia. Apparently, even at this early date The Dalles area was an important trade center, as it was situated on the main access route between the Pacific Coast and the interior Columbia Plateau.

Because of the rise of wood, bone, and stone working during the Early Riverine phase, considerably more is known about the artistic traditions of these people than about those of earlier plateau inhabitants. Artifacts recovered from cremation burials—excavated before inundation by The Dalles dam—included atlatl weights, beads, gorgets, pipes, and pendants, along with tools such as adzes, abraders, gravers, and mauls used in shaping wood. Portable art objects from sites of this period include sculpted mountain-sheep heads and a few other objects decorated with carved human and animal motifs. Although most known objects are from The Dalles area, one important painted item is a cylindrical stone with red designs, found at a site in southern British Columbia and dated to two thousand years ago (Copp 1980).

Given the artistic tradition evidenced by portable art from The Dalles, McClure (1984) suggests that some geometric petroglyphs, some of the mountain-sheep hunting scenes, and a few of the simpler human designs in The Dalles area date to this period. Some of the petroglyphs further upstream on the Columbia and Snake rivers are likely also this old. The painted stone from British Columbia hints that pictographs in that region may even date to the Early Riverine Phase.

Late Riverine Phase

The Late Riverine phase began approximately two thousand years ago and lasted until about A.D. 1720, when horses and Old World trade goods were introduced onto the Columbia Plateau. The Late Riverine period represents the material culture and life style of the ethnographically known Columbia Plateau Indians. Sites of this period are more common throughout the plateau than those of any other, and, using logical extensions and inferences from other ethnographically known cultures, we thus know more about these people’s life styles than about those of earlier groups.

Archaeological sites include pit-house villages on most of the region’s major rivers and lakes, and open campsites and rock shelters in the uplands and smaller stream valleys. Some pit-house villages are quite large, with extensive artifact assemblages and storage pits that imply almost year-round occupation. Other settlements were smaller winter villages. Campsites demonstrate seasonal movements to exploit varied upland resources.

Artifacts from both villages and campsites include a wide variety of tools for fishing, hunting, gathering, and food processing, along with tools for working wood and bone and making decorative objects. The adoption of the bow and arrow, at the beginning of the Late Riverine period, with corresponding development of small-stemmed, side-, or corner-notched projectile points represents one major technological change. Exotic materials, such as shells, stone for arrowheads, and minerals, indicate an expanded trade network that undoubtedly also included perishable items—wood, hide, basketry, textiles, and feathers—that have not been preserved.

Accompanying increased sedentism and trade was a significant elaboration of art styles in places like The Dalles. Extensive working of bone and wood is indicated by a diverse assemblage of carving, cutting, and chopping tools and by carved items, often decorated or sculpted, such as bone harpoons, hairpins, pendants, awls, needles, beads, and dice. Stone items, including bowls, mortars, pestles, pendants, pipes, and incised pebbles, were shaped or figured with animal and human designs. Although The Dalles, because of its importance as a trade center and the presence there of a cremation burial complex, has produced the majority of these art objects, sites farther up the Columbia River and occasionally throughout the Columbia Plateau also yield numerous examples.

Soon after A.D. 1700, the historic period begins with the appearance of Old World trade goods in the cultures of the Columbia Plateau. The horse, introduced into the area about A.D. 1720 (map 3), and increasing contact with Old World traders and settlers substantially changed the social and economic patterns of the Late Riverine phase and ultimately destroyed this cultural pattern through decimation of the Indian populations by disease and the relocation of most survivors to reservations. In some respects, social change was greater on the eastern periphery of the plateau, where, for example, the Nez Perce and Flathead adopted many attributes of the Great Plains equestrian bison-hunting culture. Tipis, buffalo hunts, ceremonies, and warfare patterns were borrowed wholesale from neighboring northwestern Plains tribes such as the Blackfeet and Crow. Elsewhere on the Columbia Plateau, the horse culture made less impact, change was slower, and some groups in northern Washington and British Columbia were relatively unaffected until disease and European American settlement took their toll.

Columbia Plateau Culture

We can generally describe the life style of Columbia Plateau Indians in the early historic period if we keep in mind that specific details of customs, ceremonies, and socioeconomic systems varied from group to group (Teit 1928; Ray 1939). However, all Columbia Plateau groups shared basic themes of religion, methods of subsistence, and economics that were more similar to each other than to groups in any neighboring area.

Language and Government

Representatives of five language families inhabited the Columbia Plateau (map 4). North of the Columbia River, in Washington, interior British Columbia, northern Idaho, and western Montana, were groups who spoke Salishan languages: the Flathead, Coeur d’Alene, Kalispel, Sanpoil, Wenatchee, Okanagan, Thompson, Shuswap, and others. In far southeastern British Columbia, extreme northern Idaho, and northwestern Montana lived the upper and lower Kutenai who spoke the Kutenai language. Far to the north, in the upper Fraser River drainage, were the Athapaskan-speaking Chilcotin and Carrier groups.

Map 3. The introduction of horses on the Columbia Plateau, and distribution of the horse motif in Plateau rock art. Each dot indicates a site with a horse shown. Dates indicate arrival of horses in various areas of the region; arrows show probable routes of diffusion. Sources for this map are Boreson (1976), Haines (1938), Keyser and Knight (1976), Leen (1984 and 1988), and McClure (1979a and 1984).

Map 4. Distribution of Indian tribes on the Columbia Plateau. Shoshone, Crow, and Blackfeet are Great Basin and Plains groups living on the southern and eastern edges of the region.

In the central and southern portions of the Columbia Plateau, in a broad band extending from central Idaho across southern Washington and northern Oregon, most groups were Sahaptian speakers. Among these were the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Tenino, and Yakima. At The Dalles lived the Wishram and Wasco, the only interior representatives of the Chinookan language family. These two groups are important primarily because of their strategic location at the major fishing and trading center of the area and the spread of Chinook Jargon—a widely understood trader’s language—throughout the Columbia Plateau and adjacent regions.

Columbia Plateau “tribes” lived in autonomous villages (or bands in areas like western Montana, where partially sedentary villages were uncommon) to whom members gave their allegiance and from whom they received their identity. Villages or bands had chiefs who “governed” through charisma and group consensus rather than through true political power. Chiefs were always men, though a few important women exercised some charismatic leadership. Band chief was a more-or-less hereditary position, usually passed from father to son, or uncle to nephew. People were free to change village membership within their tribe, and even to neighboring tribes, and did so frequently either through marriage or simply from the desire to change situation. Villages controlled local hunting and gathering areas and fishing places, but trespass by other groups was frequent and was not usually considered a serious offense.

Government was by informal council, not a permanent body of people but an open meeting where anyone could attend and speak. Some bands had a casual caucus of elders who presided over council meetings. Intergroup disputes were solved by the chief’s mediation or by movement of one of the protagonists to another group. The councils selected important individuals to lead various activities, usually because of their superior skill and possession of appropriate guardian spirits. Thus, an older woman was put in charge of the major springtime root-gathering expedition, and a man was named as hunt chief—sometimes a different person for each species of big-game animal hunted. Expedition leaders were also named for berry picking, salmon fishing, warfare, and even other tasks. Leaders coordinated the expedition and directed the activities of the participants, and were responsible for conducting the ceremonies designed to insure the venture’s success and for distributing the catch or harvest. Often these two aspects were joined through celebrations: during the First Fruits or First Salmon ceremonies, families in a band would be allotted their share of the products obtained.

Economy and Subsistence

Trade was a key element of the Columbia Plateau economy; it served both to bring in items not obtainable locally and also to redistribute food products to areas of seasonal scarcity. Most trading centers were on rivers, often at major falls with important fisheries. Kettle Falls in northeastern Washington was a significant center for groups to the north in British Columbia and east in Idaho and Montana. Okanagan Falls served the same purpose for groups in southern British Columbia and north-central Washington.

The largest and best known of these trading centers, however, was The Dalles at the east end of the Columbia Gorge. The Dalles attracted people from throughout the Columbia Plateau, up and down the Northwest Coast, and the northern Great Basin. Historic records indicate that travellers came here from as far away as the southern coast of Alaska, northern California, and the Mandan villages on the upper Missouri River in North Dakota. Not only important regionally, The Dalles was one of the major trading centers in all of North America. Items that changed hands here included slaves, obsidian, nephrite for bead and adze manufacture, dentalium and other shells from the Pacific Coast, buffalo hides and skin bags from the Plains, fish oil, carved wooden and bone objects, horses, furs, feathers, woven blankets, baskets, metal utensils, and specialty food items. Because of its importance for trade, The Dalles area was heavily populated. In fact, for the five hundred years before A.D. 1800, major villages at The Dalles were the primary settlements between the Missouri River and the north Pacific coast that approached the status of permanent towns.

The subsistence economy of almost all Columbia Plateau tribes was based primarily on salmon fishing, though gathering of wild roots, nuts, and berries and hunting of various large and small game animals were also very important. Villages had between 50 and 100 inhabitants; a few of the larger contained as many as 200 individuals. At key fishing and trading centers, such as Kettle Falls and The Dalles, as many as 400 to 500 people would congregate for short-term “trade fairs.”

Villages, located along the larger rivers and lakes, usually had a number of permanent pit houses. These semisubterranean structures, often as large as twenty to thirty feet across, were constructed by digging a shallow circular or rectangular pit, erecting a beam framework, and covering it with planks, mats, or brush and, finally a thick layer of earth. Entrance was via a ladder through a hole in the roof that also served as a smoke hole for the central fireplace. In some areas houses were constructed above ground and covered with planks, bark, or mats. In most of the region these were summer houses, made during hunting or berrying trips, but in the northeastern Columbia Plateau such structures were used throughout the year.

The Indians occupied villages primarily during the winter and the salmon fishing season, but old or injured people might remain year-round. In the spring, by late March or April, small groups of several families each would move out from the villages to gather roots. Women gathered camas, bitterroot, wild onions, and lilies, the primary root crops, with digging sticks and baskets and roasted them in large, underground, stone-lined ovens. After roasting, the roots were mashed, formed into cakes, and dried for storage as winter food.

Fishing began at the beginning of May. Salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, and smaller fish were caught—salmon and steelhead with spears, dip nets, and a variety of traps and wires; sturgeon and smaller fish with hook and line. An important communal religious ritual, the First Salmon ceremony celebrated the staple food of so many Plateau tribes. This ceremony and all other aspects of the fishing season were supervised by the salmon chief, who was responsible for controlling the fishing and distributing the catch. Often the salmon chief was a shaman, or someone who had the salmon as his guardian spirit. During the fishing season, which lasted until October, fish were dried and smoked or processed for oil. Most of the catch was stored to provide food for the winter. The Flathead, some of the Kutenai, and the northern Okanagan, who were without dependable salmon runs, hunted in summer or traveled to places such as Okanagan Falls or Kettle Falls to fish.

By September, some of the men in all parts of the region had quit fishing and had journeyed to the uplands to hunt. Indians hunted deer, elk, and mountain sheep throughout the Columbia Plateau; caribou, bear, moose, and mountain goats in the northern forests and mountains; and antelope and occasionally bison on the open basalt plateau. Small game was hunted year-round throughout the region and waterfowl were taken during spring and fall migrations. Hunting involved both individual and communal methods. Individuals stalked game, sometimes wearing disguises to aid in their approach. In communal hunts, groups of “drivers” herded animals—most commonly deer, elk, mountain sheep, and mountain goats—into wooden corrals or woven nets, or to natural areas such as canyons or ridges where archers were stationed. A skilled man having an appropriate guardian-spirit helper was named hunt chief; he controlled the operation and attendant ceremonies and distribution of the catch.

Meat from the hunt, dried or smoked, was frequently ground and mixed with fat and berries to make pemmican, which could be stored. During the hunting season, women picked serviceberries, huckleberries, strawberries, wild cherries, and many other kinds of wild fruits for drying or for combining with meat or salmon in pemmican. Hide bags and bark baskets were used to transport and store berries.