Cloud Hands: Tamastslikt Cultural Institute and Museum, Pendleton, Oregon

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Tamastslikt Cultural Institute and Museum, Pendleton, Oregon

On Thursday, April 20, 2023, Karen and I enjoyed visiting the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute and Museum, near Pendleton, Oregon. The museum was quite large with fascinating exhibits and artwork. It featured the history, culture, and artifacts of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla Tribes of northeast Oregon.

We stayed at the Wildhorse Resort and Casino, eight miles west of Pendleton. There are also hundreds of new motel rooms off of Interstate 84 on a high bluff above the city of Pendleton.

On our first day, we ate breakfast at the old Hood River Hotel Cafe. It featured Scandinavian style breakfast foods. For lunch, we ate at Mazatlán Mexican Restaurant immediately adjacent to the main large Pendleton Stadium for all kinds of large events, powwows, Pendleton Round Up, races, concerts, etc.

The drive from the Wildhorse Resort's golf course out to the Tamastslikt Museum gave us some great views of the Blue Mountains rising up immediately to the west. Interstate 84 from Pendleton 46 miles southeast to La Grande (2,700 feet), up and through the Blue Mountains has some steep grade, and gets closed in winter storms.

We intend to visit La Grande, Baker City, Boise and Walla Walla in a future four day trip.

The City of Pendleton, Oregon (population 17,900) sits in a narrow valley along the Umatilla River at the eastern edge of the Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains and the wide gentle rolling valleys filled with very Spring Green upcoming grains were a spectacular sight. Cattle grazing in many places along Interstate 84. The bright green fields covered with 6" plants were spectacular.

As is always the case, the MAIN FEATURE of our trips to the East of Portland, is the drive along the Columbia River along US Interstate 84 from Troutdale-Gresham, Oregon, to Boardman, Oregon. This is the famous Scenic Columbia River Gorge Area, preserved in various ways. This is a spectacular 147 mile drive! You drive by three Dams: Bonneville, Dalles, and John Day. The views were very good as we drove twice through this scenic Interstate highway along the Columbia River with the steep basalt canyon walls to the south of the highway.

I was impressed with the very large Amazon Data Super-Computer Centers in The Dalles and at Boardman. Hermiston and Prineville are other locations. They draw electrical power from The Dalles Dam and the John Day Dam.

I purchased one book at the Tamastslikt Museum gift shop:

"Coyote Was Going There: Indian Literature of the Oregon Country. Compiled and edited by Jarold Ramsey. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1977, 295 pages. Numerous illustrations. VSCL, Paperback.

"Beyond the literature of other regions in Oregon, these stories [from the northeast Oregon Coastal Tribes like the Tillamook or Nehalem] persistently dwell on the possibility of other worlds, other mediums of life, and strange travels and transformation from one world to another. The imagination of the coastal Indian, living on the brink of the great unknown element of the Pacific, must have been deeply attuned to such possibilities ... Behind such weird episodes, there is always the compelling presence of the sea, both familiar and alien, indifferent giver of life, another, alternative medium of being, limitless - "the river with one bank," the Indians called it - the source of all change."
- Jarold Ramsey, Coyote Was Going There, p. 127.

I sat for a long time in the Museum under a reconstructed Tule Mat longhouse. I listened to recordings of Indian storytellers. I thought of practicing my string figures at home in Vancouver. I thought about the difference between communicating verbally and through printed text.

"This modern long tent community structure is a cotton canvas-covered version of the original Tule Mat Lodge or Longhouse, which is a shelter or house that was constructed using mats made of tule (a type of bullrush or reed) that was abundant along rivers and marshes in the Plateau region of North America and Canada. The reeds were first dried and then woven into mats and used as coverings for pyramid shaped lodges like tepees. Tules were perfect for building temporary, portable structures as the mats could be rolled up and carried away. Tepees were covered with animal skins but the tule-mat lodge was covered with mats of strong, durable, tule reeds. While the Long Tent you see on Whitman College campus has a canvas covering, it still carries the original practices of the Tule Mat Lodge engineering."