Plateau Indians

• CATEGORY: Culture area
• LANGUAGE GROUPS: Penutian, Sahaptin, Salishan
• TRIBES: Coeur d’Alene, Colville, Flathead, Kalispel, Klamath, Klickitat, Kutenai, Lake, Lillooet, Methow, Mical, Modoc, Molala, Nez Percé, Okanagan, Palouse, Sanpoil, Shuswap, Spokane, Tenino, Thompson, Tyigh, Umatilla, Walla Walla, Wanapam, Wauyukma, Wenatchi, Yakima

The intermontane, semi-arid Plateau culture area consists of the low-elevation Columbia River basin of generally low, local relief, bounded on the west by the Cascade Mountains, on the east by the Rocky Mountains, to the north by the Fraser River, and somewhat to the south by the Blue Mountains. The most unique internal feature of the Plateau area is the numerous flood-scoured Scabland channels that are characterized by basalt cliffs, buttes, rock shelters, and thousands of small basins containing small lakes and seasonal wetlands. The Plateau was once viewed by anthropologists as a “transitional area” because of cultural influences from the Plains and the Northwest Coast cultural area. Archaeological evidence establishes an early and successful continuous inhabitation of eleven thousand years. The greatest influences on the Plateau cultures during the protohistorical period (1700-1805) were the adoption of the horse and prophetic religious revival.

The major shared cultural features of the Plateau were relatively simple political organization with leadership through consensus of opinion, riverine settlement patterns, reliance upon aquatic foods, a complex fishing technology, mutual cross-utilization of subsistence resources, extension of kin ties through systematic intermarriage, institutionalized trade, vision quest of a tutelary spirit, and an emphasis on democratic and peaceful relations. The introduction of the horse had a complex effect on the peoples of the eastern Plateau, particularly the Flathead and Nez Percé, who adopted many Plains traits in sociopolitical organization. The most devastating effects were created by numerous European American epidemics that greatly reduced the Indigenous population.

Language

There were two major language families: In the southernmost Plateau was Sahaptin (Dalles, Klikitat, Nez Percé, Palouse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, Wanapum, and Warm Springs), and to the north was Salish (Columbia, Kalispel, Lillooet, Okanagan-Colville, Thompson, and Shuswap). Other dialects were Wasco-Wishram, Carrier, Chilcotin, and Kutenai. Chinook (Kiksht) was a lingua franca (trade language) along the Columbia and Spokane rivers. There was no sign language except what was learned from the Plains. Many dialects were mutually intelligible, and most people were multilingual because of trade, intermarriage between different ethnic groups, and sustained polyadic relationships necessitated by differential resources.

Technology and Subsistence

Implements of hunting were often the same ones used for warfare, and men made their own implements and tools for hunting and fishing. Though various kinds of wood and cordate were gathered locally, lithic (stone) material for knives and Indigenous American projectile points often was traded. Men made mortars, pestles, pipes, beads, fishing weights, axes, and cutting tools. A woman’s most important tools were a fire-hardened digging stick and those implements associated with tanning and sewing deer and elk hides. During the year, women collected and stored great quantities of thinly split lengths of spruce, cedar, pine roots, and willow, which were carefully stored for making baskets. The most common form of transportation between regions was accomplished by canoes made by digging out the middle of a log or canoes made from spruce bark or white pine bark.

Though house types within the Plateau varied, the principal winter structure was, in the late prehistoric period, a tule mat-covered double apsidal pole-constructed lodge that housed one or more extended families who shared a cooking fire. The floor was covered with tule mats, skins, bear grass, or white sage. Tule, a tall reed-like plant, was an important multipurpose plant for making mats, bundle boats, hats, and rain capes. Firewood and kindling were stored in an outside mat-roofed shed. Spring, summer, and fall structures were usually temporary and were built primarily for privacy and inclement weather.

As foragers, Plateau people lived for three to four months in permanent riverine winter villages in areas of low elevation, sometimes supplementing their stored animal and plant foods with occasional forays for land mammals and ice fishing. Winter villages had permanent semisubterranean storage pits, earth ovens, sweathouses, and family menstrual huts. Winter was a time of leisure when people repaired and manufactured predation technology, visited, and listened to elders telling often long accounts of creation and individual exploits. Acclaimed storytellers enjoyed high status. It was not unusual for shamans to conduct power duels in the winter.

Subsistence orientation was hunting, gathering, and fishing, regulated by season and a well-defined annual subsistence round. The southern Plateau diet consisted of approximately 40 percent plant food, 50 percent salmon, and 10 percent land mammals. The percentages varied according to a group’s location, particularly in the northern Plateau. These activities commenced in early spring when groups would dismantle their winter houses and move to higher elevations to establish temporary camps to exploit traditional resource sites. Men would gather in great numbers in the spring to exploit fish stations mutually, using weirs, traps, harpoons, and spears, sometimes fishing until fall to harvest salmon and other fish. Food was preserved by drying and then cached in tree platforms and storage pits.

Indigenous American women visited traditional root fields in late spring to dig bitterroot, camas flower (Camassia esculenta), numerous species of Lomatium (desert parsley, Indian parsley, or biscuitroot), and other roots, which were dried and transported in great number to winter storage areas. In July and August, people would gather and pick numerous berry crops, particularly huckleberries serviceberries, and blueberries. In late summer and early fall, groups would gain elevation—men to hunt deer and elk and women to gather medicines, hemp, and punk wood. After a killing frost, the women cut and gathered tules.

Social Systems

The main feature of Plateau sociopolitical organization was village autonomy. There existed what may be called chiefs, however, men who influenced decisions of consensual opinion through judgment, knowledge, and example and who retained office through generosity, skillful decisions, oratory skills, and the possession of religious power. A chief’s main responsibility was to maintain tranquility by resolving differences of opinion and making final arbitration. This office, sometimes hereditary, was never based on the assumption of accrued wealth or material possessions. A composite band could have two or three petty chiefs. Salmon chiefs, shamans, and war leaders, all of whom had special religious powers, were apparent during specific occasions.

There was gender equality, and a bilateral kinship system existed. Marriage was commonly monogamous, but polygamy, particularly polygyny, occurred. A main concern was to extend one’s kinship ties through marriage. Social control was maintained by threats of sorcery, gossip, high division of labor, myth, public opinion, public whipping, and resident rules.

Pregnant women observed strict dietary and behavioral taboos and were expected to work industriously during their confinement; violations were explanations for congenital disabilities or later aberrant behavior in the child. Women were delivered, if possible, in isolated delivery huts by their mothers, who would ritually dispose of the placentas and make the required prophylactic devices to protect the new child. A berdache or shaman could assist in a difficult delivery. Infanticide and abortions were considered moral transgressions. Naming usually occurred at birth, and an infant was often named for a deceased kinsperson.

Adolescent children were indulged by kinspeople, but prior to puberty rites, children embarked upon rigorous physical training in preparation for adulthood. Grandparents spent inordinate time with grandchildren, and a child’s first exposure to adult activities was frequently supervised by a concerned grandparent who also made prototype toys of adult activities. The most dramatic change in the individual’s life was the puberty ceremony; for a girl, it was her first confinement to the menstrual hut, and for a boy, his vision quest for a tutelary spirit.

Marriage, after a period of courtship, was usually arranged by both families with a feast. Though a man could later take a second wife, usually a widow who demonstrated certain skills, particularly hide processing, the cowives did not share the same dwelling. Divorce was with mutual consent, usually for reasons of laziness or adultery.

Upon death, the individual was immediately removed from the structure, washed, and buried, usually with grave goods. Special rituals and taboos were followed to ensure the incorporation of the soul in an afterlife and to prevent the occurrence of lingering ghosts. The surviving widow or widower observed strict taboos for one year, at which time a feast was held to give away certain possessions of the deceased. A newborn was never named after a deceased sibling for fear of recurrence of death.

Belief Systems

Though there were group differences in the complex Plateau animistic mythical charter, the main concern was one’s daily intimate relationship with the supernatural, which, if violated, could cause personal failure, illness, and even death. Complex notions of how order was brought from chaos during the origins of humankind were based essentially on the supernatural world, theriomorphic forces, and natural forces that controlled humans and animals. Shamans were religious practitioners (male or female) who had acquired their power in a variety of ways, particularly through dreaming, a vision quest, recurring events, special signs, and unique experiences.

Plateau peoples had various elaborate rites of intensification, usually during midwinter, when sacred communal efforts were strictly followed to ensure world renewal, personal well-being, return of migratory animals, and a renewal of one’s power. Shamans were effective as curers, employing medicaments, legerdemain, ventriloquism, massage, sucking, and acupressure. They sought to rid a patient of sorcery-induced spirit or object illness or soul loss; they also heard confessions of moral transgressions. All of these, it was believed, could eventually kill a patient if not attended to. Shamans were capable of transformation, and they publicly demonstrated their power’s flight from their bodies by enduring painful proofs of ordeal.

Bibliography

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