Like most modern religions, Washat has changed significantly over time as Plateau Indians interacted with outsiders and adapted to shifting circumstances. Its spiritual roots extend nearly 10,000 years into the aboriginal past, when the native inhabitants of the Columbia Basin developed the seasonal round of fishing, gathering, and hunting that characterized their culture at the time of European contact. Their subsistence cycle led to the identification of five sacred foods—salmon, roots, berries, deer, and water—which Plateau Indians propitiated through an annual series of first food feasts conducted to show respect for the resources and ensure abundant harvests. Catholic and Protestant missionaries first observed these ceremonies in the 1830s, and their efforts to convert the Indians set in motion a process of religious borrowing and blending that continued into the late nineteenth century. The bells obtained from fur traders and Jesuit priests quickly made their way into Washat rituals, where the sound of the bell came to represent the heartbeat of all life. Similarly, Indians adopted Sunday as a regular day of worship and attached spiritual meaning to the numbers three and seven. While five retained its ritual importance, appearing frequently in Washat songs and dances, seven became the standard number of drummers for most ceremonies (though fewer often serve now if enough are not available).
The popularity and power of the Seven Drums Religion peaked during the latter half of the nineteenth century, the era of the so-called Dreamer Cult. Riding a wave of Indian anxiety over the effects of American colonization, the Dreamers temporarily infused Washani with a strong millenarian and nativistic message. Their greatest prophet, Smohalla, promised his followers divine deliverance from their oppressors if the Indians would cast off white ways and return to their own traditions. Because this creed interfered with federal assimilation policies and encouraged the retention of "savage" customs, the Office of Indian Affairs tried to suppress Washat services using the Indian police and the courts of Indian offenses on each reservation. Agency authorities banned traditional dancing, spied on tribal meetings, arrested religious leaders, confiscated or destroyed drums, and directed Indians to attend Christian churches. Such measures persisted into the early 1930s, long after the prophets and their visions had faded away, but the faithful kept Washat alive by holding their ceremonies in secret, moving them off reservation, or cloaking them in approved holidays such as the Fourth of July.
The Seven Drums Religion remains active today, although its membership has declined significantly due to Indian acculturation and competition from various Christian denominations as well as the Indian Shaker Church. Washat is not an exclusive sect, however, so many people who participate in it also attend other churches. Currently, there are fifteen permanent longhouses located on five reservations and in several off-reservation communities across the Columbia Plateau. Besides holding Sunday services and seasonal first food feasts, they provide gathering places for naming ceremonies, weddings, funerals, and other community events that define "traditionalism" for contemporary Plateau Indians. Some longhouses are thought to be especially powerful for certain purposes, such as the first salmon feast held at Celilo, and ritual practices vary from congregation to congregation. "Everybody does different things in different longhouses, just like Protestants and Catholics," noted elder Ella Jim, "but we're all worshipping the same Creator."
Andrew H. Fisher
Further Reading
Hunn, Eugene S. 1990. Nch'i-Wana, "the Big River": Mid-Columbia Indians and Their Land. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.; Relander, Click. 1956. Drummers and Dreamers. Caldwell, ID: Caxton.; Ruby, Robert, and John A. Brown. 1989. Dreamer Prophets of the Columbia Plateau: Smohalla and Skolaskin. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
