Umatilla 5000 BC
From Ruralite Magazine, 2013
Anchored in fishing and regional trade, the village of Ímatalam spanned four miles along the banks where the Columbia and Umatilla rivers meet.
The Umatilla people – Imatalamłáma – bred horses, collected roots and buried their dead in a 500-acre area from prehistoric to modern times.
Radiocarbon dating on artifacts recovered from the Ímatalam site – once the largest village of the Umatilla people on the Columbia River – have tested as far back as 5,000 BC, according to Teara Farrow Ferman, program manager for Cultural Resources Protection Program of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The village was occupied year-round and flourished for thousands of years, until it met an abrupt end 160 years ago.
“When the reservations were created back in the 1850s, all the tribal members were forced onto the reservations and told they were not allowed to remain in the areas they were accustomed to,” she said. “The people – the Imatalamłáma, the Walúulapam (‘Walla Walla people’), the Weyíiletpuu (‘Cayuse people’) – were all moved.”
The prime river-front property did not stay vacant for long.
In 1862, a city sprang up in the village foundations. First known as Columbia City, then Umatilla Landing, the City of Umatilla boasted a bustling business district by 1864, complete with three hotels, 20 saloons, three dance halls, six mercantile, three grocery stores and more than 3,000 residents.
The city prospered on the riverbanks for a century, until fate turned on the settlers as well.
In the 1960s, engineers estimated the construction of the John Day Dam, 76 miles west of Umatilla, would raise water levels of the Columbia River and flood the city. In response, the Corps of Engineers ordered the relocation and demolition of downtown Umatilla; from 1965 to 1968 the original acreage was abandoned, leaving only paved roads and building foundations behind.
At the completion of the John Day Dam, the river level barely rose at Umatilla, leaving the ghost of a city almost untouched.
“Some of the buildings were moved, but many were destroyed, just knocked down,” said Larry Nelson, facilities manager at the Umatilla Museum. “It’s been closed off, no development, ever since. It’s a shame. There’s a lot of history and a lot of potential down there.”
Today, the Corps of Engineers owns and manages the 80-acre property known in Umatilla as the “Old Town Site.” Locked behind chain-link fences to discourage trespassers, the area is closed to the public.
The departure of the town had a silver lining, however. With no residents to displace, the Mid-Columbia Archeological Society excavated a portion of the property in the 1970s. The group cataloged thousands of artifacts.
Human remains, burial and funerary artifacts were repatriated to the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the remaining artifacts were put into storage across the state as property of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Over time, the CTUIR – and it’s state-of-the-art museum facilities – convinced the Corps to bring the remaining artifacts back home. The special collection is now housed in a climate-controlled room at Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, four miles outside of Pendleton on the reservation.
“I think it’s a significant thing that we have these items here,” Tamástslikt curator Randy Melton said. “It just shows the tribes are committed to taking care of our history, whether it’s physical or oral or policy.”
The Ímatalam collection houses 320 boxes and 21,435 bags of material. Fine tools, such as arrowheads or fishing weights, and crude tools, such as hammer stones and mortars, are bagged individually. Other items, such as mussel shells, were bagged together.
The entire collection is open for study with permission from the tribes and the Corps of Engineers, although no portion of any artifact can be destroyed. In the past five years, permission to view artifacts has been requested only twice.
Melton and Farrow Ferman said the collection remains unstudied primarily because people don’t know it exists.
“People would really be shocked at the number of artifacts in storage,” Farrow Ferman said. “We have one small room. The University of Oregon and Washington State University have multiple buildings of artifacts.”
Movements are underway to increase knowledge of Umatilla’s history, however.
The City of Umatilla and tribal representatives have formed a working group to discuss ideas for opening that site up and harnessing its history. After both groups agree on a plan for the use of the site, together the City and CTUIR will approach the Corps about the proposal. The concept now is to tell the history of this land, according to Farrow Ferman.
The site will never be open for construction or development, but could be used as a park or refuge with walking trails and displays on the land’s rich history.
“In the future we hope to have something accomplished because it is such an important site,” Farrow Ferman said. “This is our history, and it’s a very long history.”
