Indians at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River.  Before the falls were submerged, I used to love watching the aboriginal people fishing with long-handled nets from platforms attached to the bare stone river bank.  Again and again, the salmon would leap upwards, their broad tails flapping back and forth as they flew through the misted air. 

 The Indians would get some, but most would finally launch themselves far enough to reach the brim, and then with a sweep of those tails clear the greatest of hurdles on their journey towards the spawnng grounds.

As Spencer Tracy said in Inherit the Wind, everything has a price.  If Man wants to fly, the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will stink of gasoline.  Celilo Falls and at least ten centuries of Indian custom were the price of the electric power to run a great modern city. 

One day far in the future, perhaps we'll find a substitute for some of the dams.  It would be grand to see the falls of the great river of the west, again -- to reconnect the Indians to their ancestors and the little boys of other races to the wonder of the experience. .(LL)

Photo from the Oregon Historical Society 

(C) 2002 Oregon Magazine