Before the arrival of humans, the Wahteetash (Plant and Animal People) put the world into motion and prepared life for the Yakamas. Spilyáy (Coyote) was a primary actor in the creative drama, establishing "laws" by causing the first camas, kouse, bitterroots, and other roots to grow, directing the salmon to travel upriver each spring to spawn, separating certain mountains into singular formations, destroying destructive monsters that ruled the rivers and lands, and establishing rules through which humans could learn to behave. Traditional Yakama Indian "law" is based on lessons learned from the Wahteetash and Indian interaction with these people.
Yakama Indians (who changed the spelling of their name from Yakima to Yakama in 1994) speak the Sahaptin language. Salish-speaking Indian neighbors along the Columbia River called the people who lived along the Yakima River Yah-ah-ka-ma ("A Growing Family"), but Yakamas say their tribal name is a Sahaptin word meaning "the Pregnant Ones." Yakama people were divided into two major groups: the Lower Yakamas, Waptailmin ("Narrow River People"), and the Upper Yakamas, Pswanwapum ("Stony Rock People"). Most Yakamas did not view themselves as members of a "tribe" but identified with their village.
The Yakamas shared a common culture with many Indians living on the Columbia Plateau of present-day Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. They lived through a seasonal round that took them to different areas of the plateau at different times of the year. Throughout the winter, people lived in villages constructed of A-frame tule-mat lodges along inland rivers. In March they traveled (by horse after about 1750) to root grounds, visiting and camping with other Indians until May or June, by which time the salmon had begun to move up the Columbia River. Then Yakamas moved to their fisheries along the lower Columbia, harvesting and preserving salmon in great numbers. In the fall they hunted and gathered berries in the Cascade Mountains, drying their foods for the winter. Yakamas gave thanks for the foods through sacred rituals that tied them to the Creation. This was and is a critical element of their religion.
In 1805 Yakamas met Meriwether Lewis and William Clark at Quosispah, a village near the junction of the Yakima and Columbia Rivers. Less than a year later the British trapper David Thompson traveled down the Columbia. British and American fur trappers introduced manufactured goods to Yakamas, and the Catholic missionary Charles Pandosy instructed the people in Christianity. Yakamas refused to join their Cayuse Palouse neighbors to the south in fighting Oregon volunteers during the Cayuse War (1848). The Yakamas became concerned about the intentions of the United States after 1853, when the government separated Washington Territory from Oregon Territory and Isaac I. Stevens became governor of Washington Territory and Superintendent of Indian Affairs.
In 1854-55 Stevens liquidated Indian title to thousands of acres and created reservations in western Washington. On June 9, 1855, he concluded the Yakama Treaty, but not without opposition from Chief Kamiakin. The treaty created the Yakama Reservation and directed Indians from fourteen tribes and bands—speaking three distinct languages—to remove to the reservation. Kamiakin opposed the agreement and reservation. When miners discovered gold north of the Spokane River, whites invaded the inland Northwest through Yakama lands. After miners killed and raped Yakama people, the Yakama leader Qualchin killed the culprits. Learning of these deaths, the Indian agent Andrew Jackson Bolon rode into Yakama territory, but Kamiakin's brother Skloom warned Bolon that his life was in danger. A few Yakamas killed Bolon at Whak-Shum, triggering the Yakima War (1855-58). In 1858 Colonel George Wright executed the Yakama chiefs Owhi and Qualchin as well as several warriors, ending the war.
Most Yakamas removed to the reservation, but some filed for off-reservation homesteads. In the twentieth century, Yakamas lost all of their homesteads. Life on the Yakama Reservation was precarious. James Wilbur and other agents ruled the reservation like big-city bosses, dictating policies designed to "civilize" and Christianize. The Office of Indian Affairs established a school at Fort Simcoe to assimilate and acculturate Indian boys and girls into white society, jailing recalcitrant parents. Agents forced Indians to cultivate wheat, corn, and oats. Yakamas eagerly raised horses and cattle, but farmed grudgingly. Many continued to fish, hunt, and gather, but with great difficulty.
Non-Indian ranchers and farmers "settled" former Yakama lands. In 1894 P. McCormick began allotting the reservation into eighty-acre parcels. By 1914, 4,506 tribal members retained 440,000 acres (over half of it owned today by non-Indians), with another 780,000 acres tribally owned. During the twentieth century, nearly all agricultural lands fell out of Indian ownership, and government agencies and private companies threatened to take all Indian water. Whites allowed their animals to graze on roots and berries. Their plows destroyed plant and animal habitats, and irrigation projects destroyed salmon runs on the Yakima River. At the expense of Native Americans, state, federal, and county governments supported development, including ranching and the building of roads and railroads as well as the huge Wapato Development Project. Wapato, Toppenish, and other towns emerged on lands purchased from Indian allotments. Whites pressured government authorities to limit the movement of Yakamas on the Columbia Plateau. Yakamas also lost access to territories rich in roots and berries as well as to fishing and hunting lands.
Their confinement to the reservation contributed to ill health, anomie, alcoholism, and other problems among the Yakamas. Tuberculosis, pneumonia, and gastrointestinal disorders killed hundreds of Yakamas, particularly infants. Death rates and infant-mortality rates for the Yakamas skyrocketed in comparison to the rates for other U.S. populations until after World War II, when heart disease, suicide, and diabetes became the leading causes of death among the Yakamas. Politically, the Yakamas refused to participate in the Indian Reorganization Act and instead organized the Confederated Tribes of the Yakama Nation. The Yakama Nation has committees dealing with timber, grazing, housing, education, cultural-resource management, roads, recreation, farming, irrigation, health, and wildlife management.
Since World War II, the Yakamas have emphasized self-determination and economic development. The United States recognized yakima fishing rights in 1855, but state and county officials opposed native fishing rights. As a result of United States v. Winans (1905), Sohappy v. Smith (1969), United States v. State of Washington (1974), and other legal battles, the government reaffirmed aspects of Yakama fishing rights. The tribe maintains and manages 1,118,149 acres, including 600,000 acres of valuable timber. It owns its own furniture business and enjoys 15,000 acres of cultivated tribal farmland. In addition, the tribe irrigates 90,000 acres of Indian-owned lands from the Wapato Project and leases acreage to non-Indians for farming and grazing. The people support their own police force and tribal court. They stress academic excellence, providing scholarships to gifted students. Each summer the Yakamas sponsor Camp Chaparral, motivating their children to continue their education yet maintain their native identity.
The Yakamas proudly retain many aspects of their culture. The Yakama dialect of Sahaptin is taught in public schools for children and in adult education classes. On June 9, 1980, the Yakama Nation opened its Cultural Heritage Center, complete with museum, library, gift shop, restaurant, theater, meeting hall, lodge, and offices. The culture center hosts numerous tribal projects designed to maintain traditional language, literature, crafts, history, arts, skills, and so forth. Yakama people host numerous powwows and celebrations throughout the year as well as sporting events such as rodeos, basketball tournaments, and softball games. More important, Yakama people worship in many ways, remembering the great powers surrounding their homeland. Some participate in First Foods celebrations, partaking of salmon, roots, and berries in sacred rituals. Some worship at the three longhouses located on the reservation, while others participate in the Feather religion. Other Yakamas are members of Christian faiths, including the Indian Shaker Church. Páhto, their sacred mountain (known to Euro-Americans as Mount Adams), towers over nearly eight thousand members of the Yakama Nation, comprising men, women, and children of fourteen tribes and bands, including the Yakamas.
See also
Kamiakin.
Helen H. Schuster, Yakima (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990); Clifford E. Trafzer and Richard D. Scheuerman, Renegade Tribe: The Palouse Indians and the Invasion of the Inland Pacific Northwest (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1986).
Clifford E. Trafzer
Wyandot
University of California at Riverside
