Pacific Northwest Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Through the centuries, Native American women of the Pacific Northwest have been known as the " gatherers " of their tribes, picking berries, digging roots, and cutting grasses, plants and bark for medicinal remedies. They have collected wapato and aquatic plants from their canoes and prepared their harvests for winter storage. They have woven beautiful baskets, beaded buckskin and created moccasins for utility and for trade. Later, with men, they harvested domestic fruits and hops for field wages. Most important were the seasonal gathering rounds or journeys. It was a time of sharing travel and trade expeditions among families, often traversing the land for several hundred miles in a few weeks. The women prepared the hides during great hunts and cleaned the fish along Pacific Northwest rivers. Using handmade scrapers and ancient methods, they prepared the skins for use or trade. They sun-dried the fish and eel or berries, placing them into sealed hand woven baskets for secure winter storage. A lesser known fact true to many of the Columbia River people was that women conducted most of the barter and trade. Through trade, they often acquired beads and shells for the elegant work that decorated their family's clothing. They created moccasins, shirts, dresses, harnesses and teepees and huts made of animal skins and woven tullies. Collection and trade was central to the seasonal lives of Columbia River peoples and women were often the key figures who bore the knowledge, talent and traditions through many generations. Seasonal gatherings were a marvelous adventure for young people and adults but also a great deal of work. There was the ever-present risk of the unsuccessful hunt or the shortfall in abundance of wild berries that would carry families and villages through the winter. Leah Conner, an elder with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, recalled one such adventure many years ago when her mother was a young woman in the early 1920's: " All summer long they would take off with their uncle and father and his sister and Elsie and Vera and a couple of dogs and a cat. Cats rode on my mother's saddle… And dogs [they] made boxes [moccasins?] for the dogs, so they could travel and not get sore feet. And then they got to Heppner and started digging roots. [And they went] on to the mountains and they'd stop at Sumpter and traded for coffee and sugar. And they traded what they had made on the way-a dried deer tan hide and made moccasins and gloves and things they could sell or trade for….It was their life on the seasonal rounds. They collected all their food in the summer time and by the time they got to Vale on the Snake River they'd dry all the fish and they'd come home with dried fish, dried deer meat, and dried all kinds of roots and berries. And they would have all this food and even though they had all this food, small portions, packs of this food, they would still take in people, relatives, who didn't have a home. And they lived this way all their lives. And it was beautiful how they took care of each other-the dogs survived and the cat survived, all the way from Heppner to Vale and back. " i