Passive Complicity recently reviewed Bruce Pascoe’s “Dark Emu”, a work which clearly illustrated the biased and inaccurate reportage of Australia’s indigenous peoples at the time of the European invasion. Then we published an extract which we titled ‘Charles Sturt and aboriginal hospitality‘. Today’s post comes from the other side of the world, the northwest of the United States of America, from the early nineteenth century, and again illustrates First Nation hospitality. The story is part of another ‘invasion’, the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark from St Louis to the Pacific Coast at the mouth of the Columbia River. (An earlier post drew attention to this expedition.)
October 17, 1805 . . . This river is remarkably Clear and Crouded with Salmon in maney places, I observe in ascending great numbers of Salmon dead on the Shores, and in the Bottoms which can be seen at a debth of 20 ft. the Cause of the emence numbers of dead Salmon I can’t account for So it is I must have seen 3 or 400 dead and maney living . . .
William Clark
October 18, 1805 . . . great numbers of indians appeared to be on this Island, and emence quantities of fish Scaffold . . . on the Stard. Side is 2 Lodges of Indians Drying fish, . . . passed an Island Close under the Stard Side on which was 2 Lodges of Indians drying fish on Scaffolds as above . . . on this Island is two Lodges of Indians, drying fish, on the fourth Island Close under the Stard. Side is nine large Lodges of Indians Drying fish on Scaffolds as above . . .
William Clark
April 29th (1806) . . . thought is best to remain on the Wallah Wallah river about a mile from the Columbia until the morning, accordingly encamped on that river near a fish Wear . . . they have also a Small Seine managed by one person, it bags in the manner of the Scooping nets . . . there are 12 other lodges of the Wallahwallah Nation on this river a Short distance below our Camp. those as well as those beyond the Columbia appear to depend on their fishing weres for their subsistance . . .
William Clark
We (the Indian or First Nation people) were resident; Lewis and Clark and all members of the expedition were transient. They saw much they did not comprehend, even when they tried in earnest to understand. In fact, as they travelled in service to President Jefferson’s expansionist fantasy of seeking a direct water route through the continent, they were exploring the place the Creator gave us in which to live. The Creator gave everyone a place to live. Why were they in our country, living precariously in a place they did not belong? Moreover, why would our ancestors be so hospitable to these strangers? Why not? They were thirty three travellers merely passing through, who did not represent a threat to our way of life at the time of their passing and for years to come. Could anyone foresee that, 109 years later, dams on the Umatilla River would prevent fish passage and that our tribe would have to work for years to return water to the riverbed and reintroduce salmon to the Umatilla River after an absence of 70 years? Did anyone envision that, 152 years later, the richest salmon fishery in the West, the magnificent Celilo Falls, would be submerged under the backwaters of the Dalles Dam? That Lewis and Clark were unfamiliar with the anadromous fish teeming in the rivers – fresh, with just as many spawned out lying dead – is not important. What is important is our modern challenge to protect water flows and salmon habitat and restore salmon runs not to 1950’s pre-dam levels, but to the levels Lewis and Clark indubitably witnessed.
From ‘Our People have always been here’ by Roberta Connor, in ‘Lewis and Clark through Indian eyes’ ed Alvin M Josephy, Jr. 2006 Random House. Roberta Connor – Sisaawipam – is Cayuse, Umatilla and Nez Perce in heritage and a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Connor’s essay illustrates the generous hospitality of the first nation people of the Umatilla area, a hospitality that echoes that of indigenous Australians towards europeans at contact – see for example Charles Sturt and aboriginal hospitality
Cecil Poole