The Meaning of Falling Water: Celilo Falls and the Dalles in Historical Literature

Abstract

WILLIAM L. LANG The Meaning of Falling Water Celilo Falls and TheDalles in Historical Literature NO PLACE STANDS STILL INMEANING. Human experiences, per ceptions, and purposes attached to geographical locations change over time and alter theways places relate to the lives of individuals and communities. Our connection to place is constantly changing as itsphysical composition changes, its cultural references alter, and individual connections revise. Understanding place, as one prominent historical geographer has argued, is not a problem but a riddle. Place is a riddle because it accommodates human experience and expression, while itexists as a physical location. We can best wrestle with the riddle by paying attention to our conversation about place, especially why we identify itaswe do and how we have thought about itover time. Physical structure and location dominate our references ? amountain locale, desert expanse, or specific urban district ? and so it iswith Celilo Falls and The Dalles on the Columbia River. Much of the conversation has been about a place of fallingwater, about a locale where a great river is constricted and tumult rules. Not surprisingly, what meaning is attached to that dramatic place depends on who sees the falling water, when they view it,and what difference it makes to their lives. There is no singular viewpoint on places ofmeaning.1 In 1825, those distant from theWest coast of North America knew about the Columbia River, but not a great deal. Mariners had spread the word about the river's rough sea entrance, and the few published explor ers' reports included an outline of the river's course and the remarkable basalt gorge that cut through the Cascade Mountains about 120 miles upriver from themouth. One extended place along that stretch of river in OHQ vol. 108, no. 4 ? 2007 Oregon Historical Society the 3,000-foot-deep gorge drew special attention ? Celilo Falls and The Dalles, a series of cataracts that squeezed the river's great flow to a narrowed width and dropped it precipitously, creating one of the most productive fishing sites inNorth America. Celilo Falls and The Dalles ? or the "Great Falls of the Columbia," as explorers Meriwether Lewis andWilliam Clark labeled iton theirmaps ? were farmore complex places than even themost knowledge able nonresident could have understood in 1825.The image of the place, though, was unmistakable in the published lit erature.Writers highlighted itsphysical drama as a spectacular landscape and its social and economic function as an enormously productive fishery and a dynamic trading place. On thewhole, the earliest published descriptions of the Celilo Falls-The Dalles landscape offered an accurate, if incomplete, description of the place and hinted at its important role on the Columbia River. The descriptions came from visitors, people who passed by and perceived the place in transit, as a living tableau. Cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan characterizes all visitors' descriptions of place as "essentially aesthetic," the result of looking at the landscape and noting novelty, narrowly perceived use, or rec ognizable beauty. Those descriptions are Clark's sketch map of theLong and Short Narrows, dated October 22-28,1805, shows theriver fromWishram Village, at the top, topresent-dayCrates Point near The Dalles, at thebottom. Lt especially simple when compared to descriptions that could be offered by residents. The firstpublished descriptions of Celilo Falls-The Dalles docu ment Tuan's point. They focus on the unusual and the instrumental, on what a powerful place it seemed to be and how it might bring great benefit to anyone who could possess it. In 1807,Patrick Gass, a sergeant in the Lewis & Clark Expedition, published thefirstaccount of the expedition's travel on the Columbia River, including the firstwritten description of Celilo Falls and The Dalles. Gass's journal, which his publisher in Pittsburgh polished forbetter reading, met an avid audience, selling out quickly and justifying succeeding editions in 1808,1810,1811, and 1812.A French edition appeared in 1810, and at least one westering fur trapper,Andrew Henry, took a copy of Gass's journal with him into theRockies that year. The Gass description of Celilo Falls invoked experiential understanding: "About the great pitch [Celilo Falls] the appearance of the place is terrifying, with vast rocks, and the river below the...