Carol Craig

Relocation and the Celilo Village Community

A train passes by the old homes and new longhouse at Celilo Village in spring 2007.

Courtesy of Carol Craig, photographer

ON FEBRUARY 15, 1955, the tribal people who resided at Celilo Falls, about fifty in all, began conducting weekly meetings to discuss their eventual relocation to the new village across the highway. Celilo Village would be disrupted by both The Dalles Dam and a railroad right-of-way relocation that resulted from the dam's construction. The Celilo people wanted to remain by the bones of their ancestors — a cemetery on top of the high bluff overlooking the falls. They wanted to restore their worship pole, which had been destroyed by white vandals, and place it in front of the longhouse. The bird on top of the pole was a symbol of the chief of the village and carried the chief's messages to the Creator.

At a March 16, 1955, meeting, the group adopted the name Celilo Community Club and elected Edward Edmo, Sr., as chairman, Bill Tahkeal as vice-chair, Shirley Bacon, as Secretary/Treasurer, and Edwin Edsall as Sgt-at-arms. Abe Showaway served as interpreter for tribal elders, including the last fisheries chief at Celilo, Tommy Thompson, at whose house many of the meetings were held. Chief Thompson had worried for a long time about what would happen to the people who wanted to stay by the river and not go to the reservations. The meeting minutes and records of correspondence document the people's determination to maintain control over the ancient village, which is located ten miles east of The Dalles, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River. Only a sign on Interstate 84 designates the location of the falls now silent and gone.

This April 1955 photograph of Celilo Village and longhouse shows the Oregon Trail Highway 30 (now Interstate 84) and the Oregon Trunk Railroad bisecting the village. The reservoir created by The Dalles Dam inundated homes closest to the river, north of the highway.

OHS neg., CN 007240

The Celilo Community Club invited officials from the U.S Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Indian Affairs as well as their own attorneys to meetings, where they discussed what was going to take place and how it would affect them. Being un-enrolled on any reservation, many people living at Celilo Falls were considered non-reservation Indians. At a March 8, 1955, meeting, Percy M. Othus of the Corps of Engineers discussed how the agency would address "the general fishing problem":

You have rights by treaties. That problem has been pretty well solved by virtue of tribal rights. We have signed settlement with the Warmsprings [sic], Umatilla and Yakima tribe. They signed with the engineers. We have agreed to pay the tribes $3,750 for each member. So all the Indians in this room and anywhere else take part in that settlement. Now the Indians who are not enrolled and who live here and have interest in the fishing rights will be settled with individually. ¹

He went on to explain that the "other ... problem, namely the acquisition of Indian properties, houses, etc.... is being handled by our Real Estate Division." ²

Children play near Chief Thompson's home, where many Celilo Community Club meetings were held, while he and Flora Thompson look on in October 1949. Many whites dismissed Celilo Village homes as "shacks," and the Army Corps initially assumed that it would be responsible only for their market value. The Celilo Community Club and efforts by concerned citizens like Wasco County Judge Ward Webber persuaded the federal government to provide funds for new homes to villagers who lost them.

OHS neg., CN 07245

One week later, Othus told the group: "We have got to build that dam and railroad. You have got the problems of fishing and relocation." ³ He emphasized that the five or six families in the way of the new railroad right-of-way would have to be moved by July 1955 and the rest would have to be moved by October 1956. At the same meeting, J.W. Elliott, BIA superintendent at Warm Springs, told the Celilo Community Club that if their homes were in the proposed right-of-way of the railroad, then the procedure for buying the houses would take place and, if the government didn't agree with the Celilo people's price, then their property would be condemned and the matter would be taken to court. Othus said that his agency had no legitimate authority to give relocation funds beyond the market appraisal of the buildings themselves. Henry Thompson, Tommy Thompson's son, noted that "the drying sheds are valuable. They butcher salmon, dry it and trade it for cash, blankets, or dry goods. They seem to you to be tumbling down; but they are part of the Indian's livelihood. They're valuable." He went on to ask why so little money was offered for the drying sheds.

On February 25, 1955, Senator Wayne Morse introduced a bill in Congress to provide funds for the relocation of tribal families being flooded out of their traditional homes at Celilo Falls. Steward Whipple, an attorney who represented several members of the Celilo Community Club, read the bill and an accompanying letter from Senator Wayne Morse at the March 8 club meeting. The bill would provide the Corps with authorization to compensate Indians at Celilo who were not enrolled with any tribe. To give the bill a better chance of passing, the Celilo people wrote to their congressmen and senators and enlisted the Yakama and Warm Springs tribes to support their effort.

The club worked to get support from influential people and groups so that the appropriation bill would be passed in Congress. Many people living in the areas surrounding Celilo were appalled that the U.S. government would destroy the tribal fishery and pay enrolled members of the Yakama, Umatilla, and Warm Springs tribes, but those who wanted to stay at Celilo would receive nothing. Wasco County Judge Ward Webber attended several meetings, and the Wasco County Democratic Central Committee helped the group to arrange a meeting with Senator Wayne Morse. A resolution was passed during the 41st Annual State Conference for the Oregon chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, on March 1, 1955, and other women's clubs and civic groups took similar action supporting the Celilo people. "The resident Indians at Celilo Falls," wrote Martha Ferguson McKeown of the Daughters of the American Revolution, "under the leadership of venerable Chief Tommy Kuni Thompson, ask to be housed in a separate village beside the river. They ask that the longhouse, worship pole, and the Chief's dryshack be moved, if necessary for their preservation." ⁴ Congress eventually appropriated the money necessary for relocation.

Celilo Falls was drowned by closing the gates at The Dalles Dam two years after the Celilo Community Club began its meetings. When the fatal day occurred on March 10, 1957, some of the people at the village did not want to witness the drowning and left. Others could be heard wailing at the village with loud moans and crying. Some stood on the hillside, dressed in their regalia, pounding the drums, singing, praying, crying, and mourning the loss of the falls.

As federal agencies, the Corps and the BIA had a duty to protect and uphold the treaties made with the Mid-Columbia tribes, including their reserved rights to fish at all "usual and accustomed places" in perpetuity. Those rights remained intact but, after 1957, almost all of the original places had been blasted away or flooded by dams. The Corps' and the BIA's breach of trust continued.

The longhouse built by villagers in the early 1970s is torn down in preparation to build the new longhouse in 2005.

Courtesy of Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Karen Jim Whitford, who was raised at Celilo Village, said the many promises her parents and the others heard were never fulfilled. "They told us we'd have free train rides all of the time," she said. "That never happened. They told us we'd never have to pay for our electricity, but we still pay our light bill." ⁵ The other promise was constructing a new longhouse for the village, but that never took place, either. So, in 1974, the people at Celilo Village began building their own longhouse. They solicited neighboring cities for donations and built the longhouse by hand, putting the shingles on nail-by-nail. One row of shingles took two days to put in place all around the longhouse. Bobby Begay, who still lives at Celilo Village, was three years old at the time they were constructing the longhouse. "I'd get to carry the shingles that covered the building," he remembered. "And grandma [Maggie Jim] made sure everyone was fed breakfast, lunch and dinner." ⁶ According to Begay, Maggie Jim was always cooking something. No one went hungry. Her husband, Howard Jim, was the Wy-Am Chief and Begay's grandfather. Olsen Meanus was twelve years old at that time. Today, at forty-seven, he is the Wy-Am Chief following his late grandfather, Chief Jim.

A lone eagle flew above the construction site of the new longhouse for several minutes, as if to watch over the work. When Bobby Begay saw the eagle, he said it was a good sign for Celilo Village.

Courtesy of Carol Craig, photographer

With the longhouse completed, residents now had a place to conduct the Wash'ut service on Sundays. Over the years, they held many powwows and Sunday services at the longhouse, and when the spring Chinook came back upriver, they conducted the First Foods Ceremony. Many tribal people attended the ceremony, coming from as far away as New Mexico. That yearly gathering continues today.

Although the new longhouse was a substantial improvement in the village, by the early 1970s, the houses were in disrepair and most were still without proper water and power. Over the years, the four tribes — Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs, and Nez Perce — would hear from the Celilo people, who asked for assistance in rebuilding homes there. Finding funds was the biggest problem.

Lt. Gen. Carl Strock — center, with head to the side — looks over construction work being done on the new longhouse at Celilo Village. Strock made two visits to the village while the longhouse was being built, and he talked at length with tribal leaders about the project.

Courtesy of Carol Craig, photographer

Finally, in the late 1990s, the new Northwestern Division Commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, Gen. Carl Strock, arrived from Washington, D.C., and was taking a tour of the Columbia River. There, he learned a lesson when he listened to villagers talk about the unfulfilled promises. "Is this true?" questioned General Strock to the local Corps office in Portland. "Yes it is," was the reply. General Strock promised the Celilo people he would go back to Washington, D.C., and look into the issue. He traveled back and forth several times and instructed the local Corps office to begin building trust and to communicate with the local tribes and Celilo people by doing their homework in gathering a multi-discipline team, building for the future and fixing past mistakes, and building partnerships for success and then celebrating that success.

When funding was finally found to build the new homes, Strock instructed the Corps to begin construction, and the elders at the village responded by saying they would like the longhouse built first and then the houses. They wanted to conduct their Wash'ut services first. In the spring of 2005, construction began on the new longhouse and the First Foods Ceremony was conducted next to the Columbia River because of the construction. A canvas longhouse was in place at Celilo Park and, as usual, hundreds of people arrived to take part. The new longhouse was completed in July 2005, and a blessing ceremony was conducted. General Strock and other officials were special guests. Brightly colored wing dresses and scarves were worn by the women while the men dressed in their best regalia, beaded vests and moccasins.

It was a memorable day for the Celilo people, and the federal government finally kept its word.

This essay is adapted from a talk Carol Craig gave at the "Celilo Stories" conference in The Dalles, Oregon, in March 2007.

Notes

This history is drawn mainly from records kept by the Celilo Community Club. For more on relocation, see Katrine Barber Death of Celilo Falls (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005).

^1. Typewritten minutes, March 8, 1955, in possession of the author.

^2. Percy M. Othus to Shirley P. Bacon, acting secretary, Celilo Community Club, March 11, 1955, in possession of the author.

^3. Typewritten meeting minutes in possession of author.

^4. Martha Ferguson McKeown, Memo Regarding Non-reservation Indians living in the Columbia River Gorge, in author's possession.

^5. Personal communication with the author, March 2007.

^6. Personal communication with the author, 2005.

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