Archaeologists have characterized this period’s cultural adaptation as one of increased trade and contact among local groups, with a corresponding elaboration of tools used for catching and storing fish, and gathering, processing, and storing wild roots and other plant foods. Sinkers, gorges, hooks, and fishing spears occur in Cold Springs sites, and for plant food processing the more efficient mortar and pestle largely replace the edge-ground cobble tools of the Old Cordilleran culture. Subterranean, rock-lined ovens for roasting camas were first used during this time. Recent archaeological excavations at several sites in the region have shown that people first began to live in pit house villages along major rivers during this period. Likely these villages, and the sedentism they imply, result from increased reliance on camas gathering and fishing as the major means of subsistence.
Although, for dating purposes, examples of portable art objects similar to rock art have yet to be found in Cold Springs phase sites, some of the petroglyphs in the region quite likely date to this period. Elsewhere in the western United States rock art flourished at this time. In the Coso Range of California, thousands of petroglyphs, dated between three thousand and five thousand years ago, show atlatl-using hunters and dogs chasing mountain sheep. Rock art of approximately the same age and similar style occurs throughout the Great Basin, even into south-central Oregon. On the Great Plains to the east, in Wyoming and South Dakota, petroglyphs showing hunting scenes with men pursuing bison and deer herds are called the early hunting style and are thought to be older than three thousand years. Given the widespread occurrence throughout the western United States of pecked, hunting-style petroglyphs that were made more than three thousand years ago, it is likely that some of the mountain-sheep hunting scenes along the Columbia and Snake rivers also date to this period.
Early Riverine Phase
Beginning about thirty-five hundred years ago (1,500 B.C.) and lasting until the time of Christ is a period archaeologists call the Early Riverine phase. During this time, pit house villages became commonplace; roots, salmon, and shellfish were the primary food sources for Columbia Plateau groups. Increased use of adzes, whetstones, gouges, wedges, graving tools, and stone mauls used to make wood and bone items is evidence that wood and bone working became very important in Early Riverine villages. Corresponding to this technology is the occurrence in archaeological sites of portable art objects and the definition of localized art styles. A variety of large, corner-notched, and stemmed dart points dominate the chipped-stone tool assemblages from Early Riverine sites, indicating that hunting with spears and atlatls continued as an important activity.
Long-distance trade, begun in the earlier Cold Springs phase, became increasingly important during the Early Riverine period. Artifacts recovered from sites near The Dalles show that galena and slate were brought from west of the Cascades, obsidian was obtained from south-central Oregon, and nephrite for adze blades was brought from British Columbia. Apparently, even at this early date The Dalles area was an important trade center, as it was situated on the main access route between the Pacific Coast and the interior Columbia Plateau.
Because 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 (