Umatilla people

Sahaptin tribal representatives in Washington D.C. c.1890. Back row: John McBain (far left), Cayuse chief Showaway, Palouse chief Wolf Necklace, and far right, Lee Moorhouse, Umatilla Indian Agent. Front row: Umatilla chief Peo, Walla Walla chief Hamli, and Cayuse Young Chief Tauitau.

The Umatilla are a Sahaptin-speaking Native American tribe who traditionally inhabited the Columbia Plateau region of the northwestern United States, along the Umatilla and Columbia rivers.^[1]

History

Early development

Umatilla maid, 1909, Edward S. Curtis

The Umatilla nation was bordered by the Teninos to the West and the Klickitats to north, across the Columbia River.^[2] Also by their northern border were the Wasco-Wishrams.^[2] Because of their homeland lacked natural defenses, the Umatillas were attacked from the south by groups of Bannocks and Paiutes.^[2]

Linguistically, the Umatilla language is part of the Sahaptin division of the Penutian language family — closely related to other peoples of today's Eastern Oregon, Eastern Washington, and the Idaho panhandle.^[1] These included the Nez Percé, Cayuse, Walla Walla, and the Yakima.^[1] These peoples were ravaged by smallpox and other infectious diseases contracted from European colonists during the first half of the 19th century and their populations depleted, as they had no immunity.^[1]

In 1855 the inland Sahaptin-speaking nations were forced to surrender their historic homelands under treaty to the United States government, in exchange for territorial set-asides on reservations.^[1]

Reservation period

Today the Umatilla share land and a governmental structure with the Cayuse and the Walla Walla tribes as part of the federally recognized Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Their reservation is located near Pendleton, Oregon and the Blue Mountains.

A number of places and geographic features have been named after the tribe, such as the Umatilla River, Umatilla County, and Umatilla National Forest. The impoundment of the Columbia River behind the John Day Dam is called Lake Umatilla.

Notable Umatillas

• Shoni Schimmel - WNBA Player
• Cisco Minthorn, Esq. - Counsel and Senior Advisor on Native American Affairs, Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs U.S. Department of Commerce
• Acosia Red Elk, Jingle dress dancer

See also

• Kennewick Man

Footnotes

1. "Umatilla," in Barbara A. Leitch, A Concise Dictionary of Indian Tribes of North America. Algonac, MI: Reference Publications, Inc., 1979; pp. 490-491.
2. Hines, Donald M. The Forgotten Tribes, Oral Tales of the Teninos and Adjacent Mid-Columbia River Indian Nations. Great Eagle Publishing. Issaquah, WA. 1991, p. 55.

Further reading

• Humphrey, Seth K (1906). " The Umatillas". The Indian Dispossessed (Revised ed.). Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Wikisource. OCLC 68571148. 

External links

• Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation homepage