Wasco Women

Pat Courtney Gold
Wasco

We are matriarchal. So when Lewis and Clark were coming up and down the Colombia, traveling up and down the Columbia River and they wanted to trade or they wanted to approach the village in a friendly way, they were always approaching the wrong people. They would pick out someone they thought was the chief and we didn't really have chiefs here. We had councils in which the women sat and also made decisions.

When it came to trade, the women were actually very good at trading, so it was really the woman that Lewis and Clark should have been contacting to trade. But they didn't.

Salmon was very important not only as a food crop but we traded Salmon. And unlike a lot of tribes our food came to us. We didn't have to go out and hunt for our food. And in this climate with the strong east winds we could preserve our food, so we preserve. We caught more salmon than we could consume, and we would preserve it, and this is what we would trade.

Salmon was sacred to us, and when Lewis and Clark's party came down they were meat eaters. They wouldn't eat our sacred food, they would prefer to eat dogs. By not eating the food that we offered to them it was an insult to us, so they didn't impress us at all.