to this Study
I believe that "cultural affiliation" requires a direct link via traditional means of transmission of "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" (Tylor 1871:1). This includes language both as a part of culture and as the primary means for its transmission, while recognizing that culture and language "are not necessarily correlated" (Sapir 1921:212-220). Culture also should be understood as a means of human adaptation, and thus will correspond in many ways to the particular habitat and means of subsistence of the social group. Julian Steward identified what he called the "cultural core" as, "The constellation of features which are most closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements. The core includes such social, political, and religious patterns as are empirically determined to be closely connected with these arrangements.. (1955:37). I will focus on evidence for linguistic continuities or discontinuities, on the one hand, and for linguistic evidence of continuities or discontinuities in features of the "cultural core." As I have noted above, continuities in the cultural core are to be expected as a consequence of a group's continuous occupation of a common habitat while conserving basic technological and economic means. To the extent that the evidence suggests continuites rather than discontinuites, the evidence "reasonably leads to [such] a conlcusion" of "cultural affiliation."
I will proceed as follows:
Indians Groups Lived Near the Site at First Euroamerican Contact?
It is necessary to address here a persistent problem in Plateau ethnography relevant to the question of "a shared group identity." Anthropologists and other commentators (including treaty negotiators) have applied terms which originally referred to specific village groups to larger groupings, attributing a spurious unity to the larger units so designated. A case in point is "Palouse." The Palouse are often spoken of as a Plateau "tribe" (cf. Sprague 1998 in the HNAI) inclusive of all Sahaptin-speaking Indians resident on the Snake River at and above its mouth. It is in this sense that the "Palouse" count as one of the 14 Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. However, Rigsby (following Jacobs) argues that the term properly applies only to Indian people identified with the village of Pelúus (Palúus in other Sahaptin dialects) located historically at the junction of the Snake and Palouse Rivers. Rigsby (1965:38-40) restricts the Palus dialect of Northeastern Sahaptin to that village and mixed Palus-Nez Perce villages located upstream as far as Alpowa. He specifically distinguishes the Palus dialect from what he calls the Lower Snake River dialect (naxiyamláma), spoken at Wawyuk'má, K'wsís, and Chamná villages. These are located respectively on the Snake River at Fishhook Bend and on the Columbia at the mouths of the Snake and Yakima Rivers. He bases his conclusion on personal interviews with Indians who were raised in these villages. In short, there is no evidence of "a shared ["Palus"] group identity" inclusive of all Snake River Sahaptins. The same arbitrary extension of reference from the people of a single village to those living along a whole stretch of river may be observed with the terms "Walla Walla" and "Tenino" (cf. Stern 1998, Hunn and French 1998).
I believe it is reasonable to assume that the fundamental bases for the recognition of shared group identities at first Euroamerican contact are likely essentially the same as those basic to defining that "earlier group" with which Kennewick Man would have identified. In particular, this "earlier group" would not have been a "tribe" in the sense defined above, since such "tribes" are characteristic of more densely and permanently settled groups than there is reason to suspect occupied the Columbia Plateau at any time during the past 12,000 years. If we are to identify an "earlier group" with "a shared group identity" attributable to Kennewick Man's, that would be a local residential group similar to the historic village or villages located nearest the site where his bones were recovered or an ancestral group sharing a "way of speaking."
The site where the remains were found is on the boundary between the ceded areas of two treaty tribes, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Indian Nation. Specifically, the boundary described in the treaties with those tribes runs down the middle of the Columbia River past the Kennewick Man site. The remains were located on the right bank (facing downstream) in the ceded area of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, however, the historic, ethnographic, and linguistic evidence indicates that this treaty boundary does not reflect any locally-relevant political or cultural distinction. As noted above, it is generally agreed among anthropologists who have worked in this area that contemporary "tribes" were created by the treaty process (in 1855) and that they do not correspond to pre-contact Native groupings. Rather, it is agreed that the Native American peoples of the Columbia Plateau region were organized by and identified with politically independent villages (Ray 1936:111-112; Rigsby 1965:29; Hunn and Selam 1990:211-214). Local groups so-defined were typically named (in Sahaptin) by appending a suffix meaning 'person/people of' to the village name, e.g., sk'in-láma or sk'ín-pam 'people of the village of Sk'ín [literally 'cradle-board']', located at the foot of Celilo Falls; cf. the "Skin-pah," one of the fourteen tribes and bands signatory to the Yakama treaty (cf. Schuster 1975:41-44).
The Kennewick Man site is most closely associated with contact-period Native American groups referred to by Lewis and Clark (October 17, 1805) as "Cho-pun-nish," "So-kulk," and "Chim-nâ-pum" (Moulton 1988:287).
"Names of this nation above the mouth of the Ki-moo-e-nim [Snake River] is So-kulk Perced noses. The Names of the nation on the Kimoenim River is Cho-pun-nish Pierce noses at the Prarie the name of a nation at the Second forks of the Tape tete [Yakima] River, or Nocktock fork Chim-nâ-pum, Some of which reside with the So kulks above this." (Moulton 1988:292).
The "Cho-pun-nish" properly applies to the Nez Perce only (Aoki 1967). There is disagreement as to the proper identity of the "So-kulks." Some scholars equate them with the contemporary Wanapum community centered at Priest Rapids (Schuster 1975:31), understood to include residents of villages downstream at White Bluffs and Hanford (Relander 1986 :301-305). However, it has been suggested that "So-kulk" is a corruption of shkúlkul, Sahaptin name for a variety of the edible root Lomatium canbyi that is particularly associated with the Wanapam community at Priest Rapid (Hunn and French 1981). Others equate them with the residents of the historic village of Kw'sís, at the mouth of the Snake River (Rigsby 1965:39-40; Moulton 1988:284). The "Chim-nâ-pum" are the people of the village of Chamná, described below, a group distinct from the Yakama proper that occupy the Yakima River above Horn Dam.
Lewis and Clark were met on their arrival at the mouth of the Snake River on the Columbia by a chief (subsequently named "Great Chief Cuts-Sâh- nim" [Moulton 1988:294]) and 200 men from a village ¼ mile up the Columbia from the mouth of the Snake (Moulton 1988, vol. 5, pg. 278). This is certainly the historic village of Kw'sís, identified with Lewis & Clark's So-kulks by Rigsby 1965:39-40. The village name is spelled variously, e.g., "Kosith" by Relander 1986:296; "k'u'sis" by Ray 1936:144; Qosispah by Trafzer and Scheuerman 1986:4-6, and its residents have been variously identified as "Yakima" (Ray 1936:144), "Palouse" (Trafzer and Scheuerman 1986:4-6), and as naxiyamláma (Rigsby 1965:39-40). Ray subsequently changed his view to accord with Rigsby's, while I have already criticized above the broad use of the term "Palouse" employed by Trafzer and Scheuerman. All these peoples were clearly identified as speakers of Sahaptian languages (Sahaptin and Nez Perce). Rigsby quotes Meriwether Lewis as follows: "The language of both of these nations [Sokulk and Chimnapum], of which we obtained a vocabulary, differs but little from each other, or from that of the Choppunish who inhabit the Kooskooskee [the Clearwater River] and Lewis's River [the Snake River]" (1965:25).
The next European explorer to travel past this point was David Thompson. He identified the Indians he encountered on the Columbia River between the mouths of the Yakima and the Snake Rivers (July 9, 1811) as "Skaemena" (Glover 1962:349), which is most likely an alternate spelling of Chamná. In July 1811 the "Skaemena" were living at a village on the banks of the Columbia River just upstream from the mouth of the Snake. This village would have been nearly immediately opposite the Kennewick Man site and may have represented a summer fishing camp associated with the primary village of the chamná-pam, which, as noted above, was located a few miles upstream of the site Thompson describes.
The village known as Chamná is located at a later date on the Columbia River at the mouth of the Yakima River (Relander 1986:299-300). The people of that village were known in the Sahaptin language as chamná-pam' people of Chamná'. It is clear that this village group is equivalent to Lewis and Clark's "Chim-nâ-pum" and Thompson's "Skaemena." Bruce Rigsby classifies this group, as well as residents of the village of Kw'sís (the Sokulks?) in his Lower Snake River dialect group (naxíyampam or naxiyamláma) within his Northeast Sahaptin dialect cluster of the Sahaptin language (1965:39-40). Descendants of individuals who lived in these two villages are now enrolled with the Yakama and Umatilla Tribes. In sum, the earliest historic records clearly identify Sahaptin-speaking peoples in the area of the Kennewick Man site and that these people are affiliated with village communities with which contemporary Umatillas, Yakamas, and Wanapams are linked. I will evaluate the linguistic evidence that might establish a connection between these contemporary people and a community resident at the same location some 9,000 years ago, a community to which Kennewick Man presumably belonged.
for Sahaptin Occupation of the Columbia Plateau
Sahaptin distinguishes two varieties of mule deer as yáamash (the Rocky Mountain mule deer) and tl'álk (the black-tailed deer of the Cascade Mountains), as well as the white-tailed deer, mountain goat, bighorn sheep, and pronghorn antelope (Hunn and Selam 1990:139-141). There are few places in the world where these animals occur in close proximity. Sahaptin vocabulary is thus shown to be peculiarly adapted to its historic location and habitat. By contrast, there is no Sahaptin term for caribou and the term for moose (shashík) is likely borrowed from Interior Salish through Nez Perce (cf. Aoki 1994:624). Similarly, bison are known as músmustsin or tsúulim, loans from Cree and Flathead respectively. This suggests that Sahaptin was not spoken, at least not at all recently, much to the north or east of its historic location. The prominence and apparent antiquity of terms for rattlesnake (waxpúsh), burrowing owl (papú), yellow-bellied marmot (chikchíknu), Western gray squirrel (qánqan), and tick (ách'pl) all point to a long-term association of Sahaptin with the semi-arid Plateau environment, as these species are limited in distribution west of the Cascades and north of the Canadian border. A nearly obsolete Sahaptin term for the California Condor, pachanahú, further bounds the traditional Sahaptin habitat, as the northern limit of the condor's historic range was the Columbia Gorge (Hunn and Selam 1990:311-332).
It is noteworthy that Coyote (spilyáy) is the Sahaptin "culture hero," not Raven, as is characteristic of cultures to the north and west (Jacobs 1929, 1934; Beavert 1974). Sahaptin people consider the golden eagle of far greater mythological significance than the bald eagle (Hunn and Selam 1990:146-147), which matches the relative prominence of golden and bald eagles in the Columbia Plateau.
Lexical gaps provide additional evidence for the habitat specificity of Sahaptin language and culture. Arrowhead (Sagittaria), better known locally as "wapato," a key staple of Indians living west of the Cascades on the Columbia, is not recognized in Sahaptin. Likewise, "wokas," the yellow pond-lily (Nuphar polysepala), key staple of Klamath peoples in south-central Oregon, is known in Sahaptin as kalamát, like a corruption of "Klamath." In other words, two key staple foods of neighboring groups to the south and west do not have "old" Sahaptin names. Maize, staple of the agricultural economies on the lower Missouri River and in the Southwest, is known in Sahaptin as sit'xws-wáakul, literally, "resembles hyacinth brodiaea." Hyacinth brodiaea (Brodiaea hyacinthina) is a favorite Sahaptin root food common in the Pacific Northwest. Maize, apparently, was unknown to Sahaptin-speakers until recent times. The peachleaf willow (Salix amygdaloides) is singled out as haháw, distinguished from all other willow species. It was preferred as the frame for Columbia River winter lodges, just as the "lodgepole pine" was preferred for Indian lodges east of the Rocky Mountains. Peachleaf willow is largely restricted to the banks of the lower middle Columbia River in eastern Washington, again suggestive of the specificity of Sahaptin habitat associations. Several place names on the lower middle Columbia River are named for this plant (Hunn n.d. 1).
Can we judge the antiquity of the Sahaptin occupation of the Columbia Plateau from features of Sahaptin place names? Quite recent population movements may be traced by analyzing the provenience of local names, as Kinkade has done for Salishan place names in the Methow Valley (tributary to the Columbia just downstream of the Okanogan River). He was able to show that many Methow place names were originally from the Okanagan-Colville language, though the historic occupants of the valley spoke Columbia Salish (1967). However, Kinkade estimated that the displacement of Okanagan-Colville by Columbia Salish occurred within the past few hundred years. The fact that most recorded place names for the Warm Springs Reservation are clearly Sahaptin argues against the theory of the ethnographer, George Murdock, who claimed that that area was controlled by Northern Paiute peoples until the 18th century (Murdock 1938). French and Rigsby (Rigsby 1969) adduce additional evidence that there was no such recent population shift. In sum, I find no evidence in Sahaptin environmental vocabulary to support the view that Sahaptin occupation of the Columbia Basin habitat is recent. However, it is not possible to state with certainty that these place names demonstrate local occupation of the area beyond several hundred years past.
The weight of the evidence from the consideration above of the Sahaptin environmental lexicon contradicts one once popular hypothesis of recent population shifts in this region. This is the claim first published by James A. Teit (1928) and later repeated with elaborations by Joel V. Berreman (1937). Teit reported that several of his Columbia Salish consultants asserted that Columbia Salish-speaking Indians occupied the entire Columbia River region downstream as far as the Dalles in the mid-18th century, citing supposed "Salish" place names in what is historic Sahaptin territory. Rigsby refers to this as "the Teit-Berreman hypothesis." He is at pains to refute it (1965:221-228), as were Verne Ray (1938) and George Peter Murdock (1938) thirty years earlier. I need not restate their objections here, but only note that my own data on Sahaptin plant, animal, and place names, summarized above, provide no support whatsoever for the view that Sahaptin is recently intrusive in the Plateau.
It should be noted that "linguistic affiliation" is not equivalent to "cultural affiliation," though language and culture are closely connected. As noted above, though language is both an aspect of culture and the means by which cultures are understood and transmitted from generation to generation, there are many contemporary examples of peoples that share a language but whose cultures are quite different (Sapir 1921:212-220), e.g., Mexican Indians who speak only Spanish. There are also examples of neighboring communities that speak very different languages yet share basic cultural orientations as a consequence of close and long-established contact and shared ecological adaptations (Bright and Bright 1965). However, if a contemporary group can be shown 1) to be linguistically affiliated with an earlier group and 2) to occupy the ancestral habitat of that earlier group by similar technical means, these factors would support an inference of shared group identity between the earlier group and the modern group.
Watkins argues that, "The methods of historical linguistics provide critically important tools for the culture historian concerned with the reconstruction of ancient ways of life.. A language necessarily implies a society, a speech community, and a culture; a proto-language [that is, a hypothetical ancestral language reconstructed on the basis of comparisons of contemporary "daughter" languages, ESH] implies a 'proto-culture' -- the culture of the users of the proto-language." Furthermore, "Reconstructed lexicon [i.e., vocabulary, words and their associated meanings, ESH] is indispensable when archaeological evidence is lacking or ambiguous" (Watkins 1992a: vol. 1, pg. 318). Rigsby adds that, ". linguists. have powerful methods and techniques for probing the pasts of people who have left no written records." (1996:141). What are these methods and how might they be used to address the present question?
PIE was reconstructed with the help of written records over 2,000 years old, but such reconstructions do not depend on such records. For example, Proto-Mayan has been very substantially reconstructed based on comparisons among the 30 contemporary languages of the Mayan family (of southern Mexico and Guatemala) and is thought to date to at least 4200 years ago (Kaufman 1976) and to have developed initially in the highlands of western Guatemala. It has also been possible to reconstruct a set of vocabulary closely tied to Mesoamerican civilizations and to show that these terms originated within Proto-Mixe-Zoque, which was spoken ca. 3,000 years ago in the northern lowlands of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Campbell 1979). Proto-Mixe-Zoque is a distant relative of Proto-Mayan (and possibly also of languages ancestral to Sahaptian, as discussed below: Greenberg 1987:143-144). Closer to home, Proto-Salishan reconstructions suggest the ancestral Salishan language was spoken perhaps 5,500 years ago, likely on the streams that drain from the Cascade Mountains into Puget Sound (Suttles and Elmendorf 1963, based on lexicostatistical data from Swadesh 1950).
Suttles and Elmendorf, in this same paper, argue that there is a fairly strong association between the historic distribution of the Salishan languages and habitats associated with river valleys that drain into Puget Sound and the Straits of Georgia. This "proto-Salishan habitat" contrasts with the presumed proto-Wakashan habitat on the outer coasts of this region. If such broad environmental associations may be attributed to language families, a "proto-Penutian habitat" could be described as a relatively drier, more open grassland or savannah habitat, such as characterizes the Columbia Plateau, Willamette Valley, and California Central Valley, historically occupied by the core Penutian languages.
Connections by Lexical Comparisons
Greenberg's method is similar to the linked methods of lexicostatistics and glottochronology (Swadesh 1959). Lexicostatistics involves measuring the percentage of cognates [that is, similar words with similar meanings in two languages where the similarity is attributable to descent from a common ancestral form in an ancestral language, ESH] in "basic word lists." The larger the percentage of cognates, the more recently the two languages being compared are presumed to have separated. Glottochronology extrapolates from the lexicostatistical measure to an estimate of how long ago the languages diverged. It is analogous to the use of C14 dating of organic materials in that a "lexical half-life" is estimated and used to extrapolate to the time the two languages being compared diverged. The method presumes that the basic vocabulary may be used as a sort of clock, on the assumption that basic vocabulary changes at a more-or-less constant rate through time. The method is highly controversial (cf. Bergsland and Vogt 1962, Teeter 1963), though if one controls for the effects of borrowing it is generally conceded that lexicostatistical methods may provide reliable relative ages for linguistic affiliations.
Whether or not we accept glottochronology as a valid method for establishing absolute dates, the question remains of its potential temporal range. "Swadesh himself did not consider the method [of glottochronology, ESH] reliable for periods of more than 8000 years" (Greenberg 1987:335). However, Greenberg argues that one may greatly enhance the power of the method of lexical comparison by means of multilateral comparisons (Joos 1964), as noted above, though many historical linguists remain skeptical of Greenberg's claims. However, I will sketch below his model of the linguistic history of the Americas.
Greenberg next recognizes a number of Amerind subgroups. These correspond in many cases with groups proposed much earlier, for example, by Sapir (1929). Three such major subgroups are relevant to the present case: "Almosan," "Penutian," and "Central Amerind" (see Map 2). Greenberg's "Almosan" includes the Salishan family, which in turn includes the Interior Salishan subfamily of seven languages. These occupied the northern Columbia-Fraser Plateau region at first contact. He groups Kootenai -- often treated as a linguistic isolate -- within this subgroup. Greenberg's "Central Amerind" includes the Numic language family, inclusive of the Shoshone and Northern Paiute languages spoken on the southern margins of the Plateau. Finally, his "Penutian" includes the languages of the Sahaptian family (Sahaptin and Nez Perce), as well as Klamath-Modoc, first cousin to Sahaptian, and Wasco-Wishram, a Chinookan language spoken downriver from Sahaptin from below Celilo Falls into the Columbia Gorge. The puzzling little-known Cayuse and Molala languages also fit here. One additional language is reported from the Plateau region, Nicola Athabaskan (a Na-Dene language), which is general considered a late intrusion from the north (see also Kinkade et al. 1998).
of Plateau Languages
Elmendorf (1965) used lexicostatistical and glottochronological methods to address the antiquity of Interior Salishan languages in the Plateau. He concluded that Proto-Interior-Salish was most likely spoken in the Fraser Canyon region, perhaps as early as 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. He suggests that the distribution of the seven contemporary Interior Salishan languages is consistent with a subsequent colonization of the Plateau via movements up the Fraser and the Thompson Rivers (Lillooet, Thompson, and Shuswap) and into the upper Columbia basin via the Okanogan River valley (Okanagan-Colville, Columbia Salish, Kalispel, and Coeur D'Alene) (see Map 3). Elmendorf suggests that this Interior Salishan expansion coincides with a climate shift toward increasing precipitation which would have encouraged the spread of forests -- presumably the Proto-Interior Salishan preferred habitat -- within the Plateau. Rigsby concludes that, "recent archaeological work and synthesis by Charles Nelson [ca. 1973] provides strong confirmation for Elmendorf's model." (1996:142). The most recent phase of this expansion brought the Flathead subgroup of the Kalispel language into western Montana, perhaps less than 1,000 years ago. Thus we may confidently rule out an earlier Salishan occupation of the territory in question. (It is possible that Kootenai represents a remnant of a once more widespread Almosan-speaking population that may have occupied the northern Plateau. However, it is more likely that Kootenai originated east of the Rocky Mountains [Kinkade et al. 1998:51-52].)
Kinkade has analyzed Salishan relationships from a variety of perspectives and is of the opinion that the Proto-Salishan language was spoken on salt-water (1991), which supports Elmendorf's conclusions in broad outline. Rigsby presents comparative and historical linguistic evidence to show that Sahaptin has long been in contact with adjacent Interior Salishan languages: "It is. clear that Sahaptian has been in contact with Interior Salishan for a long period of time, perhaps for several millennia." (1996:142). Thus, the most reasonable conclusion from this evidence is that Proto-Sahaptian was spoken in the central Columbia Plateau before the expansion of Interior Salish, perhaps as early as 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.
and the Penutian hypothesis
A genetic connection between Sahaptian and the Klamath-Modoc language has long been suspected, and this suspicion is well supported (Rude 1986). The position of the extinct Cayuse and Molala languages in this broader "Plateau Penutian" pattern is still not clear (Rigsby 1966, 1969), though it is certain that they do not constitute a "genetic unit" in their own right. However, both are certainly "Penutian," and thus related to Sahaptian at a somewhat greater time depth. Molala apparently occupied a peripheral geographic position within the Oregon Cascade range since well before European contact, well away from our target area (Rigsby 1969:82; Kinkade et al. 1998:62). Cayuse was absorbed via intermarriage and language replacement by adjacent Sahaptin and Nez Perce dialects by the beginnings of the 20th century (Rigsby 1969:73-75; Kinkade et al. 1998:61-62; Zenk and Rigsby 1998). Ancestral Cayuse speakers could have occupied the lower middle Columbia, though it is more likely to have been occupied by speakers of some language ancestral to Proto-Sahaptian and Cayuse.
Beyond the Plateau, we find Penutian languages in western Oregon (Kalapuyan languages in the Willamette Valley, etc.), throughout much of California ("California Penutian"), down the Columbia River from The Dalles to the coast (Chinookan), and represented by the northwestern outlier, the Tsimshian family up along the Northwest Coast to southeastern Alaska. Greenberg spreads the Penutian net wider, to include Mixe-Zoque and Mayan languages in Mexico and Central American (briefly noted above) and the Gulf language family concentrated in the southeastern United States. To date there has not been a systematic attempt to reconstruct Proto-Penutian. Rigsby, however, is convinced of its validity and states that, "It is probable that in Penutian studies we are dealing with a grouping of languages with a time-depth at least as great as that within the Indo-European family of languages" (Rigsby 1969:70). Given the wide range of the Penutian group today, it is difficult to be certain where the Proto-Penutian homeland might have been. However, given the concentration of distinct Penutian subgroups between central California and the Columbia Plateau and the probable predominantly north-to-south movement of early human settlement of the Americas, it is more than likely that Proto-Penutian was spoken in the Columbia Plateau region, perhaps as early as 8,000-9,000 years ago. At least, no other language group can establish as strong a claim as Penutian. In any case, though contemporary Mayan peoples might claim "linguistic affiliation" with Kennewick Man, it is clear that there is no justification to assert a "cultural affiliation," given the fact that the Penutian-speaking ancestors of the Maya colonized Mesoamerican where they participated in the development of Mesoamerican civilization, at a far remove culturally from that of their Proto-Penutian forebears. Sahaptin-speakers, by contrast, retained not only their ancient Penutian linguistic connections but did so without radical core-cultural discontinuities.
The Legend of Lalíik
"thence down the Snake River to its junction with the Columbia River; thence up the Columbia River [past present-day Kennewick, ESH] to the "White Banks," below Priest's rapids; thence westerly to a lake called "La Lac;" thence southerly to a point on the Yakama River called Toh-mah-luke; thence, in a southwesterly direction, to the Columbia River, at the western extremity of the "Big Island," between the mouths of the Umatilla River and Butler Creek; all which latter boundaries separate the above confederated tribes and bands from the Walla-Walla, Cayuse, and Umatilla tribes and bands of Indians;.." (Treaty between the United States and the Yakama Nation of Indians, Article I).
There is no lake at that location, while Lalíik stands out most prominently. Lalíik is reported to have where the Wanapum prophet Smohalla encountered wawshuklá, the oriole, one of his spirit allies (Relander 1986:70). Lalíik is also sacred in that spirits ascend to the sky from the summit after death. Lalíik is said to mean "standing above the water," which alludes to a great flood in ancient times that surrounded the summit, leaving it an island in an inland sea. Following is a free translation of a text I recorded in Sahaptin in 1977. The person who recorded the story does not wish to be named, however the veracity of the account is confirmed by James Selam (personal communication, December 1999):
Long ago I used to hear the elders say that Lalíik was the biggest. When the earth was destroyed by flood, the waters rose but did not reach its summit. Lalíik remained above the flood. Thus the elders used to say in their stories long ago. In this way they spoke: When you die you step first upon Lalíik. There on the summit is a beautiful shining circle of light, like silver. A drum sounds. There to the spirit drum they would step, there to be judged finally and sent wherever. You can never see this while you live. You must first die; then you will see it. That's all that I know, just that ancient story. There is no other way...
It is intriguing to contemplate that this legend may record an actual historic event, the great late-Pleistocene Bretz floods (Allen, Burns, and Sargent 1986), which periodically scoured the Columbia Basin between 13,000 and 18,000 years ago. At the height of these floods a huge lake over 1000 feet deep was formed north of Wallula Gap. Map 4 (from Allen, Burns, and Sargent 1986:102) shows how Lalíik would have appeared at that time. One additional detail in this context is the fact that Gable Mountain, which sits on the bench above the bend of the Columbia River opposite the White Bluffs, is called nuksháy, that is, "river otter," in Sahaptin. It is also held sacred as a vision quest site. "The Otter" would, in fact, could have been seen to swim in the Bretz flood waters. Could people ancestral to the present Sahaptin Indians have witnessed these floods, inscribing their memory of that event in their names for a sacred place at the center of their homeland?
Of course, a legendary flood is a very common theme of global mythology, of which the story of Noah's ark is no doubt the best known. The linguistic context of the present flood story argues strongly against interpreting it as a biblical borrowing. However, it could as well represent a primal fear rather than a specific historical memory.
I have summarized linguistic evidence relevant to the question of the cultural affiliation of Kennewick Man with contemporary Native American peoples. That evidence clearly establishes the fact that the Sahaptin language or its direct "genetic" predecessors was spoken in the Columbia Basin 2,000 to 5,000 years ago. This follows from the fact that Proto-Sahaptian may be located in that region, plus the strong inference that Proto-Sahaptian was spoken in the Columbia Basin prior to the expansion of the Interior Salishan languages, which dates initially to between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago. I speculate on the basis of the Penutian affiliation of Sahaptian that Proto-Penutian may well have been spoken in the Plateau as well, which should date to 8,000 or more years ago. However, as there is as yet no reconstruction of Proto-Penutian we cannot determine with confidence whether Proto-Penutian speakers occupied and exploited an environment like that of the Columbia Plateau. However, the geographical pattern of linguistic differentiation within Penutian suggests that the Pacific Northwest, including the Columbia Plateau, is the most likely region of initial Penutian dispersal. In sum, I believe there is a strong possibility that Kennewick Man spoke a Proto-Penutian language. However, I cannot rule out other possibilities, in particular, that the group to which Kennewick Man belonged spoke a language which was not Penutian -- a language now extinct or ancestral to languages spoken outside the present region -- and that the Penutian-speaking predecessors of the historic occupants of this region of the Columbia Plateau either displaced this earlier group or arrived after that group had moved elsewhere or had died out. However, there is no evidence to suggest such an alternative.
With respect to the cultural correlates of language, it seems even more likely that Kennewick Man participated in a culture fundamentally like that practiced by the historic Southern Plateau Indians (i.e., those resident south of the Canadian border in east central Washington and Oregon). This follows from the fact that Plateau peoples throughout the intervening millennia made their living by harvesting a diverse suite of local resources, including salmon and other fish, shellfish, a range of roots and berries, and game (Hunn, Turner, and French 1998). As indicated above, extant Sahaptin vocabulary shows how closely linked are language and specific local environmental features. The contemporary Sahaptin ethnobiological vocabulary gives no suggestion whatsoever that the Sahaptin-speaking peoples ever lived elsewhere than in their historic homeland. Furthermore, Sahaptin place names provide a meticulous map of the local territory and clearly indicate a cultural focus on riverine resources, an emphasis that is evident throughout the Plateau archaeological record. However, it is possible that the demonstrated close association between Sahaptin vocabulary and local environmental features could have developed in a matter of centuries rather than millenia, leaving open the possibility that Kennewick Man spoke some non-ancestral language. However, even if Kennewick Man spoke a non-Penutian language, historic Sahaptin-speakers might nonetheless have inherited their "cultural core" of knowledge, belief, and practice with respect to their environmental relationships from the earlier group to which Kennewick Man belonged. Only clear archaeological evidence of cultural discontinuities within this region could suggest otherwise. However, the assessment of that evidence is beyond the scope of my report.
In conclusion, I note the legend of Lalíik, a summit that is said to have stood above the waters of an ancient flood. I suggest that this story might link Sahaptin-speaking contemporary residents to a group that witnessed the Bretz ice-age floods, that a "cultural memory" of events long pre-dating Kennewick Man is embodied in the Sahaptin language.
Allen, John Eliot, and Marjorie Burns, with Sam C.
Bergsland, Knut, and Hans Vogt
Berreman, Joel V
Bright, Jane, and William Bright
Chatters, James C.
Glover, Richard, editor
Greenberg, Joseph H.
Hewes, Gordon W.
Hill, Jane H.
Hitchcock, C. Leo, and Arthur Cronquist
Hunn, Eugene S.
Hunn, Eugene S.
Hunn, Eugene S.
Hunn, Eugene S.
Hunn, Eugene S.
Hunn, Eugene S.
Hunn, Eugene S.
Hunn, Eugene S., and David H. French
Hunn, Eugene S., and David H. French
Hunn, Eugene S., Nancy J. Turner, and David H. French
Hunn, Eugene S., with James Selam and Family
Kinkade, M. Dale, William W. Elmendorf, Bruce Rigsby,
and Haruo Aoki
Kinkade, M. Dale
Kinkade, M. Dale
Landeen, Dan, and Allen Pinkham
Lyman, R. Lee
Miller, Wick R.
Moulton, Gary E., editor
Moulton, Gary E., editor
Murdock, George P.
Ray, Verne F.
Ray, Verne F.
Rigsby, Bruce J.
Rigsby, Bruce J.
Rigsby, Bruce J.
Schuster, Helen H.
Suttles, Wayne, and William W. Elmendorf
Teeter, Karl V.
Teit, James A.
Trafzer, Clifford E., and Richard D. Scheuerman
Tylor, Edward B.
Zenk, Henry B., and Bruce Rigsby
Person's interviewed or consulted in preparing this report:
Russell Billy, Jr., Yakama Tribal Council