Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs

The confederation consists of three tribes of the Pacific Northwest:

• The Sahaptin-speaking Tenino people, divided into four subtribes: Upper and Lower Deschutes (the Tygh and the Wyam), the Dalles Tenino, and the Dock-Spus (John Day);
• Two bands (The Dalles a.k.a. the Ki-gal-twal-la, and Dog River) of Wasco Indians who spoke a dialect of Upper Chinook;
• The Northern Paiutes, who speak an offshoot of the Uto-Aztecan language family related to Shoshonean.

The Wasco language, known as Kiksht, has been passed down through generations of Warm Spring Tribe members. There is a concerted effort underway to try to preserve the ancestral language of the Wasco people, through educational programs and language repositories.{{cite news |title=Switzler sees language as key to tribal culture |newspaper=Portland Tribune |place=Portland, OR |url=http://portlandtribune.com/msp/131-features/289647-166253-switzler-sees-language-as-key-to-tribal-culture}} The United States Governmental policy of assimilation (1790–1920) nearly erased this language.{{cite AV media |title=Wasco, Paiute, and Warm Spring Indian boys in uniform at government boarding school, Oregon |date=c. 1925 |medium=photograph |website=G.E.E. Lindquist Native American Photographs |id=box 58, folder 752, negative 1370 |department=Burke Library Archives |publisher=Columbia University |place=New York, NY |url=https://lindquist.cul.columbia.edu/catalog/burke_lindq_058_1370}}{{cite book |first=Frederick |last=Hoxie |year=1984 |title=A Final Promise: The campaign to assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920 |place=Lincoln, NE |publisher=University of Nebraska Press}} The young tribe members that attended governmental educational facilities were only permitted to speak English, and were forbidden to speak in their native tongue.

The loss of tribal elder Gladys Thompson in 2012 – who was the last fully fluent speaker of Kiksht – has caused the language to become nearly extinct.{{cite news |author=Clark, Aaron |date=23 May 2008 |title=Tribes strive to save native tongues |newspaper=The Christian Science Monitor |place=

Boston, MA |url=http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2008/0523/p02s01-usgn.html}} Language preservation efforts include the Central Oregon Community College 100‑level course in the Kiksht Native Language.{{cite web |title=Kiksht Native Language |year=2017 |series=Foreign language courses |publisher=Central Oregon Community College |place=Bend, OR |url=https://selfservice.cocc.edu/2017/201720/FLNG.htm |url-status=dead |access-date=2022-02-27 |archive-date=2021-01-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210128224643/https://selfservice.cocc.edu/2017/201720/FLNG.htm }} The instructor for this course, Ms. Valerie Switzler, was the 2016 recipient of the Linguistic Society of America's Excellence in Community Linguistics Award.{{cite press release |title=Oregon tribal director honored with Excellence in Community Linguistics Award |date=2015-12-08 |publisher=Linguistic Society of America |url=http://www.linguisticsociety.org/news/2015/12/08/oregon-tribal-director-honored-excellence-community-linguistics-award}} The Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS University of London has preserved recordings of conversational Kiksht.{{cite web |title=Conversational Kiksht |department=Endangered Languages Archive |publisher=School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS University |place=London, UK |url=https://elar.soas.ac.uk/Collection/MPI194590}}

These bands are split into different places but are the part of the same tribe. The bands of the Warm Springs tribe consists of Tenino, the Lower Deschutes, also called Wyam, the John-Day or Dock-Spus, and finally the Upper Deschutes or Tygh.{{cite web |series=Member tribes overview |title=The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon |website=critfc.org |publisher=Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission |url=http://www.critfc.org/member_tribes_overview/the-confederated-tribes-of-the-warm-springs-reservation-of-oregon/ |access-date=6 December 2016}}

The Warm Springs band spoke a language called Sahaptin. Today there are only about 50 people who speak it fluently and none of them are under fifty years old.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

The Northern Paiutes had dominated South Eastern Oregon, Southern Idaho, Northern and Southern Nevada, and Northern California, with parts of Montana, and Utah.

The Northern Paiutes' language is an Uto-Aztecan language called Numu, which had around 1600 speakers in 1999.{{cite web |url=http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=pao |title=Report on Northern Paiute |publisher=Ethnologue |access-date=2007-03-29}} It is closely related to the Mono language.{{cite journal |first1=Molly |last1=Babel |first2=Andrew |last2=Garrett |first3=Michael J. |last3=House |first4=Maziar |last4=Toosarvandani |year=2013 |title=Descent and diffusion in language diversification: A study of western Numic dialectology |journal=International Journal of American Linguistics |volume=79 |issue=4 |pages=445–489|doi=10.1086/671772 }}

Before becoming the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs the three tribes; Wasco, Warm Springs, and Paiute, lived along the Columbia River and Cascade Mountains. They all spoke different languages and had their own customs. The Warm Springs and Wasco tribes traded and conversed frequently, whereas the Paiute's language was so foreign to the other tribes that it prevented frequent contact.

In 1800, immigrants from the east first started to arrive, by 1852 around 12,000 settlers crossed the tribes' territories each year. The Warm springs and Wasco signed a treaty with Joel Palmer in 1855 after dealing with their traditional ways of life being disrupted by the settlers for many years. By signing the treaty the Wasco and Warm Springs tribes relinquished 10 million acres of land to the United States and kept 640,000 acres for their own use.

The first people from the Paiute tribe to arrive on reservation were the 38 Paiutes that were forced to move onto the Warm Springs Reservation from the Yakama Reservation in 1879. Soon more arrived and they eventually became a permanent part of the Warm Springs Reservation.{{cite web |title=History |website=Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs |url=https://warmsprings-nsn.gov/history/}}

The Confederated Tribes adopted a constitution in 1938, after the construction of Bonneville Dam flooded the major fishing site at Cascades Rapids. Upon receiving a $4 million settlement in compensation for the 1957 flooding of Celilo Falls by the construction of The Dalles Dam, the Tribes used part of the sum to build the Kah-Nee-Ta resort, which opened in 1964.{{cite web |title = The Oregon Story |year = 2001 |publisher = Oregon Public Broadcasting |url = http://www.opb.org/programs/oregonstory/tribal_econ/timeline.html |access-date = 2008-03-19 |archive-date = March 18, 2008 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080318041442/http://www.opb.org/programs/oregonstory/tribal_econ/timeline.html |url-status = dead }}

In 2001, members of the Confederated Tribes persuaded the Oregon Legislative Assembly to pass a bill mandating that the word squaw be changed in numerous place names.{{cite news |first=Eli |last=Sanders |date=December 11, 2004 |title=Renaming 'squaw' sites proves touchy in Oregon |newspaper=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/11/us/renaming-squaw-sites-proves-touchy-in-oregon.html?sq=pikeminnow&scp=3&st=cse}}

• List of Native American Tribal Entities in Oregon
• Kah-Nee-Ta High Desert Resort and Casino, a resort on the Warm Springs Reservation
• Columbia Gorge casino, the Confederated Tribes' proposed casino in the Columbia River Gorge

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• [https://warmsprings-nsn.gov/ The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs] (official website)

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Category:Native American tribes in Oregon

Category:Federally recognized tribes in the United States

Category:Jefferson County, Oregon

Category:Northern Paiute