"In time to come the white men will build dams which will close the Columbia River to the salmon.
At Priest Rapids, there is nothing the white people want in our little life,
and there we may live unmolested."
-Prophecy of Smowhala, founder of the Dreeamer Religion (Washane) of the Wanapum people in the mid-1800s, reported by Click Relanderin his book, Drummers and Dreamers. Unfortunately even this portion of the river at Priest Rapids white people also eventually desired. Today the Wanapum have less than 60 tribal members and live in houses built by the PUD.

"It is the water of life, our water,
and it flows now on the dry land across the river in our old horse range.
The White Man has torn deep gashes in the Mother Earth, making her bleed.
There is nothing we can do about it, nothing.
Perhaps there is nothing we should want to do.
Perhaps the Watcher wants it that way,
because the earth freely offers her gifts to be shared with everyone."
-Puck Hyah Toot, Smowhala's nephew and thhe last prophet of the Wanapum People, on the building of Priest Rapids Dam.

Columbia River Near Vantage and Priest Rapids.

This area of the Columbia River was very important to Native American People. While the Columbia River is now dammed and often appears to be more like a lake than a river, the power of the Columbia River and its currents can still be seen in swirling eddies, and in bubbling cold deeps. The area just to the south of where this photo was taken was important for Native Americans, both as a fishery, and as a spiritual place of resistance during the 19th century.

The people who lived in this area, the Wanapum, did not fight in the Indian Wars of the West. Consequently, they recieved no treaty rights, federal recognician or reservation lands. They were able to avoid being removed to a reservation because of disagreements between officials over where they should go (to the Yakima or Colville Reservations), and because white people thought the area they inhabited was barren and useless. In 1943 Hanford Nuclear Reservation was created as part of the Manhattan Project, and many of the Wanapum people moved further upstream near the present day site of Wanapum Dam. Until the 1950's the Wanapum lived in traditional tule mat houses and lived in traditional ways.

Overlooked by many, this small portion of the Columbia River has been an refuge for Native Americans to continue living in traditional ways. In the 1800's this area was the source of a new Native religion- Washane/ Washani- created by Smowhala, a spiritual leader of the Wanapum. 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, people prayed. Instead of becoming renegades in the hills, young men flocked to Smowhala, in the belief that he might lead them out of conflict and return thier lands. No blood was spilled. The Washane religion is still practiced today by members of the Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs, and Nez Perce tribes. When dams were built on this portion of the Columbia River in the 1950's apparently no one even knew that the Wanapum people were there. Because thier traditional hunting and gathering grounds were soon to be flooded, the Wanapum had to give up thier traditional way of life, and today about half of the tribe works for the Grant County PUD at Priest Rapids and Wanapum Dams. Beneath the Columbia River as seen in this photo are thousands of submerged petroglyphs. When the area was flooded because of the dams, a number of petroglyphs were saved and now reside in various museums. One of the best places to look at the salvaged petrogylphs is at Ginko State Park in Vantage. Some of these petroglyphs can be seen on the Ethnobotany of the Middle Columbia River Native Americans web pages on this site.

The Columbia River- the greatest single source for Native Americans in this region for food, building materials, textiles, other supplies and homesites- is a sacred river. With this river people lived well for thousands of years. It gave them almost everything needed to survive. People would find it very difficult to live today on the banks of the Columbia. It is very changed.