Various religious revitalization movements developed before and after the settling of tribes on the reservation. One of them was the Waashat (or Washat) Religion. The origin of the Waashat Religion—also called the Washani Religion, the Longhouse Religion, Seven Drum Religion, Sunday Dance Religion, or Prophet Dance—is uncertain, but it is possibly associated with the epidemic of the 1820s. One of the best-known practitioners of the movement was the Klickitat Lish-wailait, who oversaw such rituals as the Waashat Dance with seven drummers, a feast of salmon, the ceremonial use of eagle and swan feathers, and a sacred song to be sung every seventh day. Lishwailait was a contemporary of the Wanapam shaman Smohalla, founder of the Dreamer Religion, who drew on Waashat ritual and is known to have influenced and perhaps was related to the Klickitat Jake Hunt.
Hunt was born along the White Salmon River in or near the village of Husum. Growing up, he was influenced by the Dreamer Religion. He later converted to the Indian Shaker Religion, founded by John Slocum of the SQUAXON, a Salishan tribe. A vision concerning the prophet Lishwailat that both Hunt and his daughter experienced independently, led to Hunt’s shaping a new religion in 1904, drawing on prior religious revitalization movements, traditional Klickitat beliefs, and Christianity. His movement was called Waptashi, better known as the Feather Religion or Feather Dance because eagle feathers were a central part of the ritual. Another name for it was the Waskliki or Spinning Religion, because of a spinning initiation ritual. Hunt built a ceremonial longhouse at Husum, and with his four sisters spread word of the new faith. He gained converts from various tribes and built a longhouse among them at Spearfish on the Columbia. Hunt also spent time on the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon, where the Interior Department’s Office of Indian Affairs (renamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1947) became aware of his practices and suppressed them, ordering him to destroy his sacred objects and cut his hair. But he continued to promote his beliefs until his death in about 1912.
World History
