of the rise of wood, bone, and stone working during the Early Riverine phase, considerably more is known about the artistic traditions of these people than about those of earlier plateau inhabitants. Artifacts recovered from cremation burials—excavated before inundation by The Dalles dam—included atlatl weights, beads, gorgets, pipes, and pendants, along with tools such as adzes, abraders, gravers, and mauls used in shaping wood. Portable art objects from sites of this period include sculpted mountain-sheep heads and a few other objects decorated with carved human and animal motifs. Although most known objects are from The Dalles area, one important painted item is a cylindrical stone with red designs, found at a site in southern British Columbia and dated to two thousand years ago (Copp 1980).
Given the artistic tradition evidenced by portable art from The Dalles, McClure (1984) suggests that some geometric petroglyphs, some of the mountain-sheep hunting scenes, and a few of the simpler human designs in The Dalles area date to this period. Some of the petroglyphs further upstream on the Columbia and Snake rivers are likely also this old. The painted stone from British Columbia hints that pictographs in that region may even date to the Early Riverine Phase.
Late Riverine Phase
The Late Riverine phase began approximately two thousand years ago and lasted until about A.D. 1720, when horses and Old World trade goods were introduced onto the Columbia Plateau. The Late Riverine period represents the material culture and life style of the ethnographically known Columbia Plateau Indians. Sites of this period are more common throughout the plateau than those of any other, and, using logical extensions and inferences from other ethnographically known cultures, we thus know more about these people’s life styles than about those of earlier groups.
Archaeological sites include pit-house villages on most of the region’s major rivers and lakes, and open campsites and rock shelters in the uplands and smaller stream valleys. Some pit-house villages are quite large, with extensive artifact assemblages and storage pits that imply almost year-round occupation. Other settlements were smaller winter villages. Campsites demonstrate seasonal movements to exploit varied upland resources.
Artifacts from both villages and campsites include a wide variety of tools for fishing, hunting, gathering, and food processing, along with tools for working wood and bone and making decorative objects. The adoption of the bow and arrow, at the beginning of the Late Riverine period, with corresponding development of small-stemmed, side-, or corner-notched projectile points represents one major technological change. Exotic materials, such as shells, stone for arrowheads, and minerals, indicate an expanded trade network that undoubtedly also included perishable items—wood, hide, basketry, textiles, and feathers—that have not been preserved.
Accompanying increased sedentism and trade was a significant elaboration of art styles in places like The Dalles. Extensive working of bone and wood is indicated by a diverse assemblage of carving, cutting, and chopping tools and by carved items, often decorated or sculpted, such as bone harpoons, hairpins, pendants, awls, needles, beads, and dice. Stone items, including bowls, mortars, pestles, pendants, pipes, and incised pebbles, were shaped or figured with animal and human designs. Although The Dalles, because of its importance as a trade center and the presence there of a cremation burial complex, has produced the majority of these art objects, sites farther up the Columbia River and occasionally throughout the Columbia Plateau also yield numerous examples.
Soon after A.D. 1700, the historic period begins with the appearance of Old World trade goods in the cultures of the Columbia Plateau. The horse, introduced into the area about A.D. 1720 (map 3), and increasing contact with Old World traders and settlers substantially changed the social and economic patterns of the Late Riverine phase and ultimately destroyed this cultural pattern through decimation of the Indian populations by disease and the relocation of most survivors to reservations. In some respects, social change was greater on the eastern periphery of the plateau, where, for example, the Nez Perce and Flathead adopted many attributes of the Great Plains equestrian bison-hunting culture. Tipis, buffalo hunts, ceremonies, and warfare patterns were borrowed wholesale from neighboring northwestern Plains tribes such as the Blackfeet and Crow. Elsewhere on the Columbia Plateau, the horse culture made less impact, change was slower, and some groups in northern Washington and British Columbia were relatively unaffected until disease and European American settlement took their toll.
Columbia Plateau Culture
We can generally describe the life style of Columbia Plateau Indians in the early historic period if we keep in mind that specific details of customs, ceremonies, and socioeconomic systems varied from group to group (Teit 1928; Ray 1939). However, all Columbia Plateau groups shared basic themes of religion, methods of subsistence, and economics that were more similar to each other than to groups in any neighboring area.
Language and Government
Representatives of five language families inhabited the Columbia Plateau (map 4). North of the Columbia River, in Washington, interior British Columbia, northern Idaho, and western Montana, were groups who spoke Salishan languages: the Flathead, Coeur d’Alene, Kalispel, Sanpoil, Wenatchee, Okanagan, Thompson, Shuswap, and others. In far southeastern British Columbia, extreme northern Idaho, and northwestern Montana lived the upper and lower Kutenai who spoke the Kutenai language. Far to the north, in the upper Fraser River drainage, were the Athapaskan-speaking Chilcotin and Carrier groups.
Map 3. The introduction of horses on the Columbia Plateau, and distribution of the horse motif in Plateau rock art. Each dot indicates a site with a horse shown. Dates indicate arrival of horses in various areas of the region; arrows show probable routes of diffusion. Sources for this map are Boreson (1976), Haines (1938), Keyser and Knight (1976), Leen (1984 and 1988), and McClure (1979a and 1984).
Map 4. Distribution of Indian tribes on the Columbia Plateau. Shoshone, Crow, and Blackfeet are Great Basin and Plains groups living on the southern and eastern edges of the region.
In the central and southern portions of the Columbia Plateau, in a broad band extending from central Idaho across southern Washington and northern Oregon, most groups were Sahaptian speakers. Among these were the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Tenino, and Yakima. At The Dalles lived the Wishram and Wasco, the only interior representatives of the Chinookan language family. These two groups are important primarily because of their strategic location at the major fishing and trading center of the area and the spread of Chinook Jargon—a widely understood trader’s language—throughout the Columbia Plateau and adjacent regions.
Columbia Plateau “tribes” lived in autonomous villages (or bands in areas like western Montana, where partially sedentary villages were uncommon) to whom members gave their allegiance and from whom they received their identity. Villages or bands had chiefs who “governed” through charisma and group consensus rather than through true political power. Chiefs were always men, though a few important women exercised some charismatic leadership. Band chief was a more-or-less hereditary position, usually passed from father to son, or uncle to nephew. People were free to change village membership within their tribe, and even to neighboring tribes, and did so frequently either through marriage or simply from the desire to change situation. Villages controlled local hunting and gathering areas and fishing places, but trespass by other groups was frequent and was not usually considered a serious offense.
Government was by informal council, not a permanent body of people but an open meeting where anyone could attend and speak. Some bands had a casual caucus of elders who presided over
