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The Oregon Journal, Portland, OR., September 7, 1956, page 4
Includes photographs on page 1, Features

INDIANS FISH CELILO ROCKS FOR LAST TIME
By Walter Mattilla, Journal Staff Writer

THE DALLES, Sept. 7. - Lloyd Pinkham, 10-year-old Yakima Indian boy from Toppenish, was born to enjoy everlasting rights to fish from the Celilo rocks, is playing hooky from school to catch his first and last Chinook salmon in the roaring waters of Celilo falls.
Tony Charley, a 9-year-old Yakima from Wapato, and Eugene Stahi, a 10-year-old Umatilla from Pendleton, and numerous other school-aged Indians are playing hooky to wield dipnets in the white waters which will be flooded out next spring by filling of The Dalles dam reservoir.
These young Indians share equally with their parents in the more than $25,000,000 authorized by the federal government for Celilo claims.
One of the best dipnetters on the historic rocks where Indians have gathered to fish from time immemorial was a 21-year-old Gonzaga university senior in political science, Anton Minthorn of Pendleton, a Umatilla Indian.
BY NOON Thursday after a few hours of dipnetting he had caught more than 30 salmon from a springboard some 10 feet above the fiercely charging Columbia.
"This is the first time I have never dipnetted here," the former Pendleton high school basketball player said.
The run was fair with about 10,000 salmon and steelhead, about 70 percent Chinook, counted daily since Sunday at Bonneville. This is about half of the normal fall volume before the slump in this fishery some years back. It takes salmon two days to swam from Bonneville to the falls.
COMMERCIAL buyers are not permitted to purchase Indian fish until Monday when the White Man's season opens on the Columbia. Until then the salmon is sold to tourists, placed in cold storage and trucked off to buyers who can't wait until the legal season Monday.
Hundreds of Yakima, Umatilla and Warm Springs tribesmen have moved to Celilo to catch the last season.
"The Indians will have to live out of the can like everybody else," a Yakima dipnetter said when asked what would he do next year, fishing time.
Mrs. Maggie Jim, mother of eight children who are entitled to almost $4000 Celilo compensation paid each tribesman, said she did not believe the Indians would be able to catch salmon anywhere after the dam pool fills.
SHE WAS in happy mood at her Celilo home because her hard-fishing husband, Howard, had already brought to sackfuls of salmon home.
Mrs. Jim and her mother, Mrs. Elsie Tom, were roasting Howard's fish lightly and removing the bones. The flesh was placed out to dry in the wind and sun for winter fare.
The White Man's influence was pronounced in the dress and even the gear of the Indians on the famous rocks. Only a few wore their hair long in braids and fewer still wore the soft black felt hats of old Indians.
Younger Indians had "store moccasins," but most of their fishing fathers wore work shoes. Many of the women, however, had on home-made moccasins.
The mats on which they placed their fish to dry were made by hand of home-grown weeds. All the older women gossiped in their native dialects.
THE LONG ROD on Anton Minthorn's dipnet was formed of sections of aluminum tubing. Many of the vigorously fishing young Indians - dipnetting is strenuous work in swift water - had such handles for their dipnets.
To while away time when the fish didn't show up, the younger Indians in particular drank soda pop. Indian boys were selling pop on the various fishing rocks which are reached by overhead cable cars. Some of the downstream rocks are accessible by motor-boat. Young Indians read comic books beside their fishing fathers.
Until the Seufert Brothers salmon cannery was built in The Dalles 70 years ago, the Indians dipnetted at the rocks entirely for their own table and trade needs. It was always possible to use the dried salmon "flour" in trade.
The Seufert cannery and later the coming of lower Columbia fish buyers to Celilo created a market for fresh fish. This resulted in more intensive fishing and brought on invasion by Indians who did not come under the treaty of 1855 which granted the site to those people who had fished it from time immemorial. Eventually the tourist bought fish, too.
SALE OF the salmon opened to the principal packers during the closed season on the Columbia river has been frowned on by state police. But during the open season the Indians sell some 2,000,000 pounds to canneries and fresh market byers.
The Oregon fish Commission has already announced it would not permit gillnetting in the dam reservoir. Indians point out, however, they did not give up any treaty rights but merely accepted compensation for flooding out of their fishing rocks. But even if not denied to treaty Indians, gillnetting does not look promising in the dam pool.
A survey made by the commission several years ago revealed that fewer than half of the treaty Indians fished the rocks.