Throughout time, these falls have played a key role in the development of the area. Long past is the days of the Molalla Indian fishermen. It is now the center of a very industrialized, thriving city. In this paper, I will take a look into how this transition took place and what made this area such a special place to all those who have come into contact with it.
The Willamette Falls are a three-hundred-yard-wide, thirty-foot-high wall of sheer stone. The Falls stretch the width of the Willamette River. These falls were virtually impassable by boat until the construction of the Willamette Locks in 1868. The Molalla Indians, who were the first to call the falls home, believed that the Falls were placed at this spot in the Willamette by God to trap the fish traveling upstream so that the Indians and their ancestor, the bear, could easily catch them. To this day, the Falls still serves as a blockage for migrating salmon, shad, and other various fish runs, although today there is a fish ladder that allows the fish a way of passage through the falls.
The surrounding area of Willamette Falls was once a rich and thriving ecosystem. The banks of Willamette Falls were part of a dense forest that was riddled with Molalla villages. The area was also full of wildlife and became a center of the fur trade as early settlers arrived. Bear, elk, deer, beaver, and other animal skins were traded through these early settlements. Settlers soon found the draw of the fishing industry as its primary wealth.
The draw of the plentiful fish is something that the Native Molalla Indians had discovered much earlier. The birth of the Molalla Nation, according to an old Molalla legend, sprung from the grizzly’s demise. This came about when he met Coyote, who was on his way to making the world. The Great Bear demanded a fight, but Coyote cunningly challenged him to a red-hot rock-swallowing contest instead. But Coyote cleverly swallowed strawberries while Grizzly gulped down hot stones that burst his heart.
After much thought, Coyote skinned and cut up Grizzly and, while scattering his body to the winds, from a place near the summit of Mount Hood, Coyote scattered the heart of Grizzly Bear, whom he had just slain. To what would become Molalla Country, he threw the heart and said, “Now the Molalla will be good hunters; they will be good men, thinking and studying about hunting deer.” A lot has changed for this nation of good men and thinking hunters since their emergence from the land where Grizzly’s heart was placed. This includes a mid-19th century treaty with the U.S. government and their relocation to a reservation in the Grand Ronde Valley.
By 1876, the Northern, Upper, or Valley Molallas had winter villages from their legendary birthplace near Mount Hood to present-day Oregon City and just east of Salem to the foot of Mount Jefferson. During the warmer months, these mostly nomadic people left their mud, cedar, and hemlock bark homes to freely roam parts of the Willamette Valley. Like their neighbors to the north, the Upper Chinook, the Molallas used dugout canoes, and they were also using horses by the early 1800s. Their population was estimated to be about 500 at that time.
The Molallas had strong ties with the Klamath peoples, whom they regularly traded with. Despite the distinction between the northern and southern bands of the Molalla Nation and the lack of information on the southern band, the general history and culture are said to be mostly similar. The general difference was more regional than anything else, and all Native people adapted to the region they were in as a means of survival.
Molallas of the mountain region adapted to hunting the larger game of that area, and those in the valley were more similar to the Kalapuya people, whose primary diet was roots and small game, common in the valley. Whether hunting large or small game, the prowess of Molalla hunters was well-known and respected by all of the surrounding tribes. Hunters would camouflage themselves with deer heads while stalking their prey and were renowned amongst neighboring tribes for their use of skillfully trained dogs for tracking and hunting as well. Along the Willamette, the Molalla expertise also extended to fishing salmon and steelhead.
The tribe developed a tradition of both spear and basket fishing. The baskets were 10-by-12-foot vine baskets suspended on poles to catch fish under Willamette falls as they were herded into the baskets with brush fences or by throwing stones. The Molalla emphasis on hunting skills was also embodied in competitive target practice games such as Kakalinpasa, where the object was to hit a rolling wheel of maple bark and grass with an arrow. Like a number of other traditional Molalla games, Kakalinpasa involved betting with stakes such as money, skins, or slaves.
By the mid-1800s, the Molalla tradition of hunting and fishing became seriously threatened by encroaching white settlers, and it would not be long before their very lifestyle was under siege. As more pioneers pushed westward, Native hunting grounds began shrinking, causing tensions between Indians and settlers. Dwindling Native resources combined with settler prejudice and fear of Indian retaliation escalated the strain, and in 1846 the peace between the two communities was nearly lost. It was preserved only by last-minute negotiations.
Two years later, inevitable violence broke out near Abiqua Creek in present-day Silverton. According to Molalla elders, during the same period in 1848, approximately six months after a Cayuse attack on the Whitman Mission, settlers in the Willamette Valley were afraid that there would be an Indian uprising. When a horseback mailman happened upon Klamath travelers camping with their Molalla hosts, he sounded the alert that an Indian group was preparing to attack.
What pioneers thought was an army of male warriors was, in fact, a group of women, elders, and children. It is said that the mailman probably mistook the group for a band of Indian men because Molalla men, women, and children traditionally wore deer-hide trousers. Blinded by fear and ignorance, the settlers took up arms and attacked the group, killing about 13 and wounding one. Women and children fled as the aggressors pursued them around Abiqua Creek, slaughtering them as they fled. Partway into their pursuit, they realized what they had done and retreated in shame.
On May 6 and 7, 1851, the Indian Affairs Superintendent secured treaties with the Northern Molallas at Champoeg, Oregon, as part of a U.S. campaign to acquire the entire Willamette Valley. The original intent was to relocate all Native tribes east of the Cascade Mountains, but Molalla peoples, like many other Western Oregon nations, refused to move so far from their traditional homelands.
Tensions between the Molallas and settlers soon could no longer be ignored. In 1854, the Oregon Territorial Legislature enacted a ban on the sale of firearms to Indians, disallowing the capacity of the Molalla and other tribes to hunt competitively with their new neighbors for the scarce game on rapidly shrinking hunting grounds.
The next year, in 1855, an Oregon proclamation sought to confine Willamette Valley Indians to temporary reservations, charging them to account for their whereabouts at all times or be imprisoned. By the end of the year, diminishing resources and mounting conflicts helped the BIA Superintendent persuade Southern Molalla tribal leaders to move to the Umpqua Reservation. Only a few months later, they were again moved to the Grand Ronde reservation. Some Molalla Indians, unhappy with their new life on the reservation, tried to return to their traditional lands near the Molalla River, only to find the landscape so changed by the fences and factories of the white man that they could no longer call it home.
The Molallas lived on the Umpqua reservation for only two months before beings removed to the Grand Ronde reservation. In a May 1955 federal register showing that 141 of the 882 members then enrolled in the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde were of Molalla descent, by the middle of this century non-Indian sources began proclaiming the near-total extinction of the Molalla was imminent.
Willamette Falls is where the Oregon Trail ended, and a new civilization began. The white settlers found the natural resources of Willamette Falls too tempting, and much to the Molalla Indians’ dismay, the White Man was here to stay.
By the mid-1800s, white settlers had successfully overrun all Indian threats in the area. The once peaceful fishing grounds of the Native Americans soon became the grounds for a massive industrial boom, creating what is now Oregon City. As mentioned before, the first order of business was the creation of the locks and harnessing the river’s power to create electricity.
The locks project was started in 1868, and the electricity project was in place by 1879. The addition of electricity allowed for further expansion of the city, as it became a hub of the resource shipping market. Once this foundation was laid, the rest is pretty standard; the booming economy helped new businesses and more settlers arrive. The expansion was quick, and many of the buildings were poorly erected.
This would soon prove catastrophic as the floods of 1980 hit. This flood was one of the worst floods on record and decimated the fragile town. Most of the town was forced to rebuild, and this time much more thought and time was put into the construction, and many of the post-flood structures still stand today.
As you can see, the history of Willamette Falls and its surrounding areas is somewhat of a two-pronged story. There is the age of the Molalla Indian Nation, which then faded into near-eradication as the white settlers sprung onto the scene. As I have discussed, these stories only add to the importance and interest of this area. Willamette Falls were formed long before man had ever set eyes on them and will be there long after we are no longer here. This monument of nature has been special to all those that have come into contact with it.
The Falls have yielded many gifts to all those who have chosen to accept them. Only in modern times has this area come into disarray. The Willamette River, including the falls, has become a dumping site for industrial and suburban waste. It is because of this blatant disrespect for these ancient waters that have made this once-majestic river one of the most polluted rivers in the United States. In my research for this paper, I have learned how important it is that we restore the lost respect for this special place.
