removed.html

Newspaper unknown

___OF INDIANS BEING CAREFULLY REMOVED ___ DAM BLOTS OUT ANCIENT CEMETERIES

….two islands, Memaloose and Grave, where Indians for centuries deposited their dead.
Grave, an oddly triangular-shaped rock of perhaps 3½ acres immediately back of the dam, will be covered.
Memaloose, some three miles further up the river and now with a land area of about ten acres, will have its highest point above water, a navigation light will be put their, to replace a monument which at present honors the dead.
The complicated rapids of Celilo falls, where the Indian fished for salmon for so many thousands of years, will disappear under the smoothing waters.
The locks and channel of the half-a-century old Celilo canal will disappear under of some 20 feet of water which will lap at miles of new revetment along the Oregon shore.
The higher Washington shore needs no such protection, but the railroad already has been moved to higher ground.
The burial islands are currently scene of some activity. Just before Christmas Contractor William G. Gross of Auburn, Cal., had workmen disinter from pits on Grave island, the bones of an estimated 650 Indians, some so many centuries old they were paper thin.
In late years Grave island has not been used much. About 20 years ago, the remains that could be found were scooped into large pits and buried. Custom in past centuries had been to leave the dead out to return to the earth and the air. But visitors and the marauders disturb them, and the custom veered to burial for protection.
Memaloose, dark and forbidding in a more treacherous section of water, was much harder to reach. A great many unidentified bodies are in pits there, but the island also has standing on the it at the present time three sheds in which many bodies have been placed.
For centuries shedlike protection has been built over them, and the tribes continued to bring more dead, including a large number of children.
The flood of 1894 and storms disturbed the resting places, but in late years the new weather-beaten buildings have stood, and although some of the bodies are wrapped in blankets and buckskin, some of the more recent dead are in modern-day coffins.
There are about 200 bodies on Memaloose which can be identified. Next week, weather permitting, the contractor will begin putting boxes ashore in which to transport them by helicopter over to the new Wish-am cemetery just west of the dam on the Washington shore.
The high point of the cemetery will bear a tall shaft. To the west of it toward the mountains, three treaty chiefs, Scha-noo-a, Ka-loo-as and Sia-kish, will be buried.

Plaques Honor Indians

A large concrete tomb immediately to the west of the chiefs will contain the remains of all unidentified bodies. It will carry two plaques. One says:
"In memory of all the Indian ancestors who died so long ago their separate identities cannot be determined."
The other will say, "Here lie the Indians of the Yakima and confederated tribes who were removed from the ancient burial grounds on Memaloose Island."
Across the river on a high look out point above the dam, the bones of the 650 from Grave island will be placed in another large concrete tomb, probably Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
There will be a monument there, too, and on the tomb this inscription:
"Grave Island Memorial. At final rest in this common grave overlooking the place they lived and died are the remains of members of a great American people.
"Hunters and fishermen, they were the first to challenge the mighty Columbia on its wild race through the Cascade barrier to the Pacific. Each season they called on the Columbia to pay its tribute in salmon. And when these members of the Indian tribes who fished here died, they went back to the river. On a rocky island of the dead, now buried beneath the water, they joined their ancestors. It was from now-hidden Grave island that the bodies were removed to this memorial.
"From here, the spirits of the first to challenge the Columbia looked down upon the work of those who harnessed the River of the West."
Within a couple more weeks the bodies from Memaloose (which actually is the Indian word for burial island and has been given to several islands in the Columbia) will go ashore in a most modern conveyance, a helicopter, and the island will be alone and deserted.
All the work in removing the bodies is being done under strict surveillance by representatives of the Indians, who allow no unauthorized persons on their islands to disturb the peace there.
Still visible to the traveler in the waters behind Bonneville dam is another burial island, now called lower Memaloose island. It is about even with the 71 milepost from Portland, above Hood River and below The Dalles.
On it is a white channel marker at the point closest to the Oregon shore. The island also has a white marble monument which marks the resting place of the only white man buried on the island.
He was Victor Trevitt, a pioneer of 1851 who was a great friend of the Indian. He died in 1882 and asked to be buried among his friends.