COLUMBIA (Sinkiuse)

The Columbia River, coursing through territory in present-day southwestern Canada and northwestern United States, along with its tributaries, was central to the life of PLATEAU INDIANS. One Salishan-speaking tribe living along or near the east side of the river between Fort Okanogan and Priest Rapids in what is now central Washington State came to be named for it. The Native name Sinkiuse, probably originally referring to one band in the Umatilla Valley, is also used for them. In some texts the tribal name written as Sinkiuse-Columbia Isle de Pierre was also applied to some among them by non-Indian traders. Another band became known as the Moses band or Moses-Columbia Indians after a famous leader.

The Columbia, like other Interior Salishan river tribes, depended on fishing, hunting, and gathering and lived in semisubterranean circular earth-covered lodges in the wintertime and temporary cone-shaped tents covered with tule mats in the summertime. Their animistic and shamanistic belief system held that natural phenomena and inanimate objects possess spirits, and Columbia shamans drew on them to help make decisions and heal the sick.

In the first part of the 19th century, the Columbia coexisted with the early traders and later settlers who arrived in their homeland. With increasing pressures from outsiders, some among the Columbia joined the YAKAMA and other tribes in the Yakama War of 1855-56, and the COEUR d’alene, SPOKAN, and other tribes in the Coeur d’Alene War or (Spokan War) of 1858. The Columbia-Spokan Indian known to his people as Quelatican, for “blue horn,” and to non-Indians as Moses, a name given to him in a Presbyterian mission school, participated in these conflicts as a war chief. In 1858, he became the principal chief of the Columbia and, during the 1860s, gained influence throughout the region. During the uprisings of the NEZ PERCE and BANNOCK in the 1870s, he helped keep most of the region’s Salishans at peace.

In 1879, Moses was arrested because he refused to settle his people on the Yakama Reservation near the Big Bend of the Columbia. An Indian agent named James Wilbur obtained his release. Through Wilbur’s further efforts, Moses traveled to Washington, D. C., for negotiations, and his band was granted a tract of land west of the Columbia next to the Colville Reservation. In 1884, however, his band was forced to settle on the Colville Reservation with the Colville and other Salishans, including his mother’s people, the Spokan, as well as the Coeur d’Alene, Entiat, FLATHEAD, KALISPEL, Lake (Senijextee), Methow, Nez Perce, OKANAGAN, PALOUSE, SANPOIL, and other bands. In 1938, the various tribes organized themselves as the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, headed by a 14-member business council.