Cascade
Fisheries: Bonneville Dam and Native American Fishing Rights
Behind Bonneville the river would rise sixty feet to
spread over the narrow strip of lowland shrubs and basalt between the
old river bank and the high cliffs of the Columbia Gorge. The dam would
change the Columbia into a mile-wide stream flowing sluggishly, giving
little hint to those eddies, rapids and whirlpools where Indian fishermen
had caught their family's food since time immemorial.
-- Roberta Ulrich, Empty Nets
Return to "Cascade Indian Survival"
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The in-lieu site of the Cascade fishing village of
Underwood on the White Salmon River. In 1951 and 1952 the Bonneville pool
was temporarily raised, destroying Indian property. Courtesy of Gary
Berne
The raised water pool behind Bonneville Dam drowned more
than thirty-five fishing sites in the traditional Cascades fishery, in
addition to inundating and disrupting Native American graves on Bradford
and Memaloose Islands. Local Indian fishermen objected in 1937 that the
dam would deprive them of food and income. In 1939, Cascade Indian Henry
Charley told an Army Corps of Engineers representative that the traditional
fishing places had all been damaged, and that Indian fishermen were no
longer able to sustain their families. The destruction of fishing sites
violated the Native Americans' treaty rights of "... taking fish
at all usual and accustomed places."
Indians do not want money for their fishing sites
... these fishing sites represent food and a means of living for the Indian.
They wanted only similar sites or facilities in exchange for the ones
that had been lost. -- Frank Winishut, of the Warm Springs Reservation,
December 1939
In 1940 the Corps agreed to build six replacement fishing sites -- in-lieu sites -- along with sanitary facilities and incinerators. This represented the only time Native Americans were offered replacement fishing sites instead of money for the damage caused by Columbia River dams. Corps officials said they would increase the combined acreage of the sites to 408, giving the Native Americans more room to camp and dry fish. In the meantime, the Fish and Wildlife Service began delivering dead hatchery fish, their eggs removed, to the Indians for consumption.
Many Cascade area Indians relocated their fishing to Celilo Falls, but that area was drowned when The Dalles Dam was completed in 1957.
In the 1950s the Corps finally made some improvements at some of the in-lieu sites. But, by 1960 the Corps had only provided four sites totaling less than forty acres. In 1963 the Corps purchased and improved one-and-a-half acres at the Lower Cascades Locks. In 1988 Washington State U.S. Senator Dan Evans attached an amendment to a bill that required the Corps to fulfill its 1939 promise by finding 360 acres for thirty-one new in-lieu sites, and to improve the existing sites.
Web site: "Dams of the Columbia Basin & Their Effects on the Native Fishery"
Part I - The Cascade Indians & Early Town History
Part II - Mill Town
Part III - Growth and Change
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