The Atfalati Indians

Who am I? As far as I know my name is Jasmine Blue Sky Marie Starbright. I am a 16 year-old Atfalait Indian. I was born and raised on the Grande Ronde Indian reservation near Lincon City Oregon, and as of Jan. 1 2007 I am one of about 20 remaining Atfalati (Tualatin) Indians. My family is the last remaining link to our culture. I chose to speak with Amber McCabe, a student researcher with the University of Oregon, because I feel that it is important that the history of the Atfalati Indians survives fro may generations to come. My parents and grandparents believe in teaching they ways of our people but I think that telling the history is just as important. Our culture is slowly dying out.

The life of an Atfalati youth in the 1800’s is vastly different form my life now. In the time of my ancestors the women and girls made baskets from willow and hazel shoots. They used the fluff form cat-tail heads to stuff the buckskin padding of the baby cradles. They cooked, cleaned, gathered berries, wapato, camas and other nuts. They skinned the animals that were brought back form the hunts and they cared for the children.

The men and boys made fishhooks, scrappers, awls, and needles from animal bone. They made the canoes my people used for river travel and for fishing. They hunted all the wild game and were responsible for the trading of goods and they were the ones who went to battle.

My people thrived for hundreds of years before the white people came into our land. During the winter months we settled in large villages and built long houses that were strong enough to withstand even the harshest winters. Our summer huts were made from mats of hand woven cedar. These huts sheltered my people during the short summer treks to gather food. My People ate mainly plant foods: Camas (Water Lilly Bulbs), Wapato (Indian Potato), acorns, hazelnuts and tarweed seeds. We ate barely any fish. And only select animals were hunted for meat: deer, elk, rabbit, squirrel, raccoon, duck, geese, swans, grouse and quail as well. The only type of agriculture that was practiced by my people was the growing of Tobacco. We depended on stone, wood, animal bones, hide and plant fibers. These items allowed us to do many things such as: needles, hammers, fishing weights, mortars and pestles, arrow heads (made form Obsidian), bows and arrow shafts.

My people were almost completely annihilated by the mid 1800’s due to European diseases and the tremendous influx of white settlers into the Atfalati lands. The diseases that the white people brought with them were diseases my people had never been exposed to. Smallpox, syphilis and malaria killed thousands.

My ancestors were not allowed to hunt the white men’s cattle even though it competed with the deer and elk for grass. The pigs the white men brought with them uprooted the camas bulbs and the wapato. The land that had been my peoples for generations became the settlers “Property” and my people were no longer allowed to live or hunt of that land.

During the 1850’s the Atfalati were placed on a small reservation at Lake Wapato, near what is now Gaston Oregon. This three-mile-long lake, which is now drained, was an important wapato gathering site. However, the white denied my people even this small piece of their land, claiming it for the white men. My people were then