03/20/03
STEVEN AMICK
The Oregon Live
OREGON CITY -- A unique exhibit highlighting the commercial and cultural wealth of the ancient tribes that lived near the Willamette River, fished in it and traveled on it, will open this spring in the Museum of the Oregon Territory.
The exhibit, "10,000 Years: Indian Art & Trade in the Willamette Valley," will run from May 24 through Sept. 30 on the second floor of the museum, which is operated by the Clackamas County Historical Society at 211 Tumwater Drive.
A $70,000 grant from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde , through the tribes' Spirit Mountain Community Fund, is bankrolling the exhibit, which is -- for several reasons -- the first of its kind.
For one thing, said Ron Petersen, the society's research assistant, the exhibit concentrates on the five tribes -- the Clackamas, Molalla, Kalapuya, Umpqua and Rogue -- that made the valley their home until British and American settlers uprooted and displaced them.
Other tribes, such as those long associated with the Columbia River or the Pacific Northwest coast, have received much more attention, he said, with numerous exhibitions, books and other materials about them readily available.
"Our emphasis is going to be on the tribes of the various Indians that lived in the Willamette Valley and how they came together at Willamette Falls," said Petersen, adding that the extensive fishery and trade centered there created "the supermarket of the falls."
It was not merely local trade, either, he said. Hazelnuts, berries, pelts, baskets, stone, tools and other raw materials and finished goods were exchanged for the products of the coastal tribes, as well as with those to the north, the south and on the other side of the Cascade Mountains to the east. Long before the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached Northwest Oregon in 1804, bringing some trade goods from the east, there already was much for the valley's tribes to use and trade, according to Scott Byram, an anthropological consultant.
In "A Legacy of Wealth," a research report Byram prepared for the society, Byram wrote, "The region's abundant natural resources were maintained through ceremonially structured land, game and fisheries management and shared through widespread social and economic interaction."
Byram goes on to say that "the extensive oak woodlands, wild oat grasses and camas prairies that once blanketed western Oregon valleys were largely the result of natural resource management practices. Native peoples cultivated the plants they harvested through controlled burning, fallowing, selective harvests and pruning.
Some of the most important crops of the region's breadbasket areas, such as the Willamette Valley, were camas (which has an edible bulb), wapato (a starchy tuber, also known as Indian potato), acorns and wild oats.
There were also, Byram continues, "many artists and craftspeople living in the Willamette Valley and nearby along the Columbia River. Some of the finest artwork in Native North America came from this area. These include carvings of wood, bone, antler and stone, fine weaving and delicate knapped-stone work."
Unfortunately, he adds, "the legacy of affluence for western Oregon's native peoples has been written out of history . . . overlooked by the descendants of those who usurped this wealth and by others who have come to live here since."
Settlers' accounts and later portrayals of the native peoples the settlers encountered "often describe local people as wretched, starving and struggling to survive," Byram writes. "But what is left out of most of these writings is that the people depicted were refugees, forced away from their traditional livelihood and cut off from the abundance they had always known."
Patrick Harris, executive director of the Clackamas County Historical Society, said that he, Petersen, Byram and the other members of the exhibition's organizing committee, "are interested in how (the Lewis and Clark Expedition) was a minor thing to the Indians -- understandably: They had had this rich culture going on for thousands of years."
The committee wants to know, and show, "what was the nature of pre-contact" tribal life, Harris said.
Another unusual aspect of the exhibition, he said, will be how information about each artifact -- or, in some cases, photograph of an ancient rock carving at the falls or some other feature of the landscape -- will be described and its significance explained. The committee wants to use written and recorded information garnered from the rich store of oral histories, songs, stories and other native lore, Harris said, instead of the academic texts, usually from a non-native point of view, that often accompany tribal artifacts in other museums.
So, for example, a stone carving of a coyote -- a major player in Northwest tribal culture -- might be identified to museum visitors primarily by having them read or listen to a traditional Coyote-the-Trickster tale.
"Where there is a cultural story," Harris said, "we are going to include that in the exhibit."
The exhibit will include hundreds of arrowheads, stone mortars and pestles and other artifacts from the museum's collection, which will remain there on permanent display.
The exhibit also will include baskets, sculptures, tools and various items from other museums and private collections, to be displayed as the first of what Harris hopes will be a continuing series of similar loans that will periodically enhance the permanent display.
The exhibit will also include a mural of horses, painted by Beth Miles, a well-known Oregon City artist. Harris said the horses depicted in the mural are to be appaloosas, cayuses and other breeds developed by Northwest tribes from the descendants of early Spanish explorers' mounts.