The Columbia River Trade Network
How goods moved through the great trading center at The Dalles and Celilo Falls. This excerpt uses three paragraphs of the essay. It leaves out the opening description of an 1811 trade gathering, the reading list, and the ending about The Dalles Dam.
This page is a simplified version of the original text (leveled toward 800L). Photos, maps, and other images are not on this page — use the original link above to see them.
Words with a dotted underline have a Word Help card pinned beside the paragraph.
Trade was an important part of the Native economy of the Pacific Northwest before white settlement. A network of trade routes connected the major trading sites and the sites where people got resources across the region. It is sometimes called the Columbia River trade network. The most important of these sites was The Dalles-Celilo area. It was the largest trading center in the Northwest, and perhaps in all of western North America.
Native peoples came from every direction to trade at The Dalles and Celilo Falls. From the north, Indian traders brought coiled baskets that were richly decorated, skins, and berries. From the south came obsidian, bows, and slaves. People from the east brought horses, camas, and buffalo hides. People from the west brought wapato, whale oil, and shells. The shells included the highly prized dentalium shell, which worked as a common currency. The people who lived at The Dalles specialized in salmon. They prepared an estimated one million pounds a year for trade alone. The salmon trade was an important part of the area’s economy and probably had been for several thousand years.
Gambling was one of the more popular ways of deciding the terms of an exchange. It was an effective, though unpredictable, way of distributing wealth. Other forms of exchange, such as bartering and gifting, were also widely practiced.