Since time immemorial, the Columbia River has provided the Indian nations living along its banks with an abundance of food in the form of fish and has served as a superhighway enabling the different nations to trade with each other. For the tribes living along the Upper Columbia River, salmon made up about 70% of the diet. The fish were dried and stored for sustenance between harvests. It has been estimated that each person consumed more than two pounds of salmon per day.
During the twentieth century, the United States viewed large hydroelectric dams as signs of progress, and as symbols of American technological superiority and modernity. In 1932, the Army Corps of Engineers submitted a 2,000-page report which called for the construction of 10 large dams on the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington. The report described the benefits of these dams, including improved navigation routes, electric power, irrigation water, and flood control. Boosters of the project promised that the electricity generated by the dams would change the culture of the area and bring in new, innovative industries. There was no concern for any possible impact on the Indian nations which have lived along the river for thousands of years.
While the courts had long recognized that Indians have superior fishing rights along the Columbia River which they reserved under their treaties with the United States, the authorization of dams by Congress effectively took this resource from the Indians. Economic benefits for non-Indian communities—hydroelectric power, irrigation water, improved transportation—were more important that Indian resources (fish) and spirituality. In assessing the costs of the dams, the Corps of Engineers ignored any cultural costs, particularly any spiritual or religious values of the Indian nations.
In 1934, Congress authorized the construction of Grand Coulee Dam which would flood Spokan and Colville tribal lands in Washington.
The Colville Indian Reservation had been established in 1872 by executive order of President Ulysses S. Grant. The reservation was originally established for the Salish-speaking Indian nations in north central Washington. These tribes had traditionally occupied the tributaries of the upper half of the Columbia River. The people spoke closely related Interior Salish languages, with the Lakes, Colviles, Sanpoils, Nespelems, southern Okanogans, and Met-hows forming on dialect chain and the Chelans, Entiats, Peskwaws (Wenatchis), and Columbians forming a second dialect chain. Today these tribes plus the Joseph Band of Nez Perce and the Palus form the 12 bands of the Confederated tribes of the Colville Reservation.
In 1940, the dam was completed, and the reservoir began to fill. The waters behind the dam rose 350 feet, 10 towns and 1200buildings had to be razed or moved for the reservoir. The new reservoir flooded12,500 acres of Indian land, including the town of Inchelium where the Indian school and hospital were located. In his book Northwest Passage: The Great Columbia River, William Dietrich writes:
“A sheep herder named Cul White was hired by the Bureau of Reclamation to find Indian graves, and the Spokane Mortuary Company was enlisted to move them uphill above the reach of the water.”
The Indians of the Colville Reservation had not been notified and soon many Indian homes were flooded. The Indian agent sent an urgent telegram to the President asking for action. In an emergency measure, Congress provided funding for the relocation of cemeteries; it acknowledged the Colville hunting, fishing, and boating rights on Roosevelt Lake; it called for just compensation for land inundated; and it assured the Colville that 25% of the lake would be for the paramount use of the Indians.
The tribes gathered for a “Ceremony of Tears” to mourn the loss of ancestral fishing grounds and fertile homelands. According to a display in the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane:
“The removal of this primary food source came at a great cost to the region’s indigenous cultures, comparable in scale to the decimation of the bison on the Great Plains. In addition to the loss of salmon, Plateau people also lost many acres of food-producing lands.”
William Dietrich writes:
“Grand Coulee Dam inundated thousands of acres of prime Colville Reservation land and fishing sites, blocking salmon access to more than one thousand square miles of productive river. The tribe had to move their school at their own expense, lost telephone service along the shore that was not restored until 1975, were stuck with some of the highest electricity rates in the state, and got no compensation for their lost salmon.”
The dam destroyed the salmon fishery, something that had been economically and spiritually important to the Indian people in the area. William Dietrich writes:
“Grand Coulee was built without any fish passage facilities for a number of reasons. The Reclamation Act of 1902, unlike the Federal Power Act of 1920, made no mention of fish passage—and Grand Coulee was a reclamation dam. Besides, the resource that far upriver seemed insignificant to everyone but the Native Americans upstream.”
Indian people had lived along the Upper Columbia River for more than 10,000 years and the reservoir formed by the Grand Coulee dam destroyed sacred sites, rock art (pictographs and petroglyphs), and the archaeological record of their long presence.
What is the meaning of Grand Coulee Dam? William Dietrich writes:
“Damming rivers for water and power would free agriculture in the West from monopolization by huge ranches and big business, giving new life to Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a democracy grounded on the values of yeoman farmers. Electricity would also bring to rural America the labor-saving machines, already enjoyed by the city, and would allow the dispersal of industry to smaller towns, reducing pollution and crowding.”
For American Indians, however, the dams of the twentieth century have meant a loss of their heritage and a continuation of the poverty instilled on them by the United States government.
More American Indian histories
Indians 101: Boulder Dam and the Navajo Reservation
Dam Indians: The Flathead Reservation
Indians 101: Fishing on the Columbia River (Old Photos)
Indians 101: American Indians and the Korean War
Indians 101: Dissolving Cherokee Government
Indians 101: Suppressing Dissent on the Crow Reservation
Indians 101: Changing Federal Indian Policies Through the Indian Reorganization Act
Indians 101: The Hopi Reservation, 1900-1936