Yakama


The Yakama are a Native American tribe with nearly 10,851 members, based primarily in eastern Washington state.
Yakama people today are enrolled in the federally recognized tribe, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. Their Yakama Indian Reservation, along the Yakima River, covers an area of approximately 1.2 million acres. Today the nation is governed by the Yakama Tribal Council, which consists of representatives of 14 tribes.
Many Yakama people engage in ceremonial, subsistence, and commercial fishing for salmon, steelhead, and sturgeon in the Columbia River and its tributaries, including within land ceded by the tribe to the United States. Their right to fish in their former territory is protected by treaties and was re-affirmed in late 20th-century court cases such as United States v. Washington and United States v. Oregon.

Etymology

Scholars disagree on the origins of the name Yakama. The Sahaptin words, E-yak-ma, means "a growing family", and iyakima, means "pregnant ones". Other scholars note the word, yákama, which means "black bear," or ya-ki-ná, which means "runaway".
They have also been referred to as the Waptailnsim, "people of the narrow river," and Pa'kiut'lĕma, "people of the gap," which describes the tribe's location along the Yakima River. The Yakama identify as the Mamachatpam.

Historic Yakama Band and Territories

″Yakima″ or ″Yakama″ was first a collective term for five regional bands who spoke the same language or dialect of Sahaptin, also known as Ichishkíin Sɨ́nwit. Usually they named the individual bands, village groups, local groups, and rivers after a specific rock formation, their main camps, or after an important village or fishing site.
The English names of the following local rivers were derived from Sahaptin: the Klickitat, Umatilla, Walla Walla, Palouse, Yakima, Satus, Toppenish, Tieton, and Wenatchee :
Their lands lay within the Yakima Rivers watershed and for the most part east of the Cascade Range, to the south along the northern tributaries of the Columbia River , to the southwest along the Lower Snake River and Columbia River, to the northeast their tribal territories ranged up to the Wenatchee River, in the north to the lakes of Cle Elum Lake, Kachess Lake and Keechelus Lake at the headwaters of the Yakima River, in the west across the Cascade Range to the headwaters of the Cowlitz River, Lewis River and White Salmon River.

History

The Yakama people are similar to the other native inhabitants of the Columbia River Plateau. They were hunters and gatherers well-known for trading salmon harvested from annual runs in the Columbia River. In 1805 or 1806, they encountered the Lewis and Clark Expedition at the confluence of the Yakima River and Columbia River.
As a consequence of the Walla Walla Council and the Yakima War of 1855, the tribe was forced to cede much of their land and move onto their present reservation. The Treaty of 1855 identified the 14 confederated tribes and bands of the Yakama, including "Yakama, Palouse, Pisquouse, Wenatshapam, Klikatat, Klinquit, Kow-was-say-ee, Li-ay-was, Skin-pah, Wish-ham, Shyiks, Ochechotes, Kah-milt-pay, and Se-ap-cat, confederated tribes and bands of Indians, occupying lands hereinafter bounded and described and lying in Washington Territory, who for the purposes of this treaty are to be considered as one nation, under the name 'Yakama'…". The name was changed from Yakima to Yakama in 1994 to reflect the native pronunciation.

Language

Yakama is a northwestern dialect of Sahaptin, a Sahaptian language of the Plateau Penutian family. Since the late 20th century, some native speakers have argued to use the traditional Yakama name for this language, Ichishkíin Sínwit. The tribal Cultural Resources program wants to replace the word Sahaptin, which means "stranger in the land".

Notable Yakama people