To fish, a fisherman dipped his net into the white water of the river, lifted it, and dipped again until he caught a salmon. Depending on his spot in the river, he might also use a larger dip net and hold it, rather than move it against the current, and wait for salmon to swim in. He then lifted the salmon to the platform, clubbed it with a wooden bat, and then relinquished his place at the platform to the next fisherman in line. This ancient method yielded over 2.6 million pounds of salmon a year at Celilo.

Fishermen used a network of 480 platforms perched along the riverbanks and across Celilo’s rocky islands. Families owned some of the platforms, but others were open for rotating use. Eventually most fishing platforms were fitted with rope that the fishermen could slip over their waists so they wouldn’t fall into the turbulent river. In the early years, Indians canoed across the river to reach platforms on Kiksa and Big islands and to haul their catch back to the Village for drying. Later, fish buyers constructed cables to prime fishing spots with baskets attached to carry the fisherman and his catch.

Often it was job of the women to haul burlap sacks of salmon, sometimes weighing as much as two hundred pounds, to the village to clean and hang in the drying sheds. When a platform was empty, boys might grab a dip net to catch a salmon or two, sometimes leaving them to rot in the sun. Other Indian children caught lamprey and cooked them on sticks. The fishing operations at Celilo became a tourist attraction, and after the Pendleton Round-Up each year, truckloads of people stopped at Celilo on their way home.

The Army Corps of Engineers knew from the beginning that a dam at The Dalles would destroy Celilo, and knew too that according to treaties from the mid-19th century, Indians there had the right to use Celilo Falls for fishing in perpetuity. To build the dam, the Corps bought out the tribes’ fishing rights for a payment of $3,754.91 per person — less than many fishermen earned in a season. In protest, some people, including Wyam Chief Tommy Thompson (who ruled for an astounding 82 years, from 1875 through his death in 1959), refused to cash their checks. When Chief Thompson died, more than a thousand people came to his funeral, and his widow cashed the government’s check at last to pay for his burial.

In 1987, for the thirty-year anniversary of the inundation, the Bonneville Power Administration looked into opening The Dalles dam to lower the Columbia and reveal the falls for a day. Since then, other people have campaigned to bring back Celilo, but they, like the BPA, discovered that the tribes wanted Celilo left alone. “Why bring back the pain?” many of the Indians who remember Celilo say. After all, on their last day of fishing, many fishermen threw their dip nets into the water as they left their platforms.

When Ian McCluskey went to Celilo Village in 1999 to make his documentary, Echo of Water Against Rocks: Remembering Celilo Falls, he learned that the pain runs so deep that some of the Indians don’t even want to talk about the falls. But one woman told him this: “I used to hear the roar of the falls when I woke. The roar of the falls when I went to sleep. The roar of the falls when I went to the bathroom. Now all I hear is silence, and I can’t get the silence out of my head.”

It is unlikely that Celilo Falls will ever reappear. According to the Army Corps of Engineers, even if the dam at The Dalles were opened full bore, the river could never drain low enough to bring the falls back again. And even if the dam disappeared, Celilo Falls wouldn’t be the same; before the dam gates closed, the Corps dynamited the rocks of the falls to even out what would become the river’s bed.

An old Wasco story tells of two wicked sisters living on an island in the Columbia who dammed the river to steal salmon before they reached Celilo Falls. Coyote saw what was going on and disguised himself as a baby floating in the water so that the sisters would take him home. When the sisters left for the day to fish, Coyote worked feverishly to dig away the dam.

Coyote won that one; but fifty years ago, when the dam at The Dalles closed its gates, the River People were not so lucky.

Angela Sanders is a writer in Portland whose wonderful essay on the Paul Bunyan statues of the West graced the Summer 2004 issue.