Linda George Meanus, Warm Springs/Yakama, smiles as she stares wistfully at the large, framed, black-and-white photograph showing a little girl standing next to former Celilo Village Chief Tommy Thompson and his wife, Flora.

In the well-known photo, taken in 1956 by Lafie Foster, the three are at the edge of Celilo Falls, wearing traditional tribal regalia, including Chief Thompson in a headdress and holding an eagle feather fan. The falls, called “Wy-Am,” the Sahaptin language word for “echo of falling water” or “sound of water upon the rocks,” are visible in the background as a sheer, white wall behind a maze of fishing scaffolds. It’s a sunny day, and men with long dip nets are scattered atop the platforms competing for migrating salmon gathered in the foaming waters below. Rolling hills tower in the hazy distance above the Columbia River’s northern banks.

Linda George Meanus stands next to the photograph of herself and her grandparents Chief Tommy and Flora Thompson.
The little girl is Linda—5 at the time, she recalls—the granddaughter of Chief Thompson. In the photo, she appears to be trying to cover her face. Her smile evaporating, George, now 56, pauses, then explains.

“I didn’t want to have it taken,” George says of the picture. “I knew something was going to happen. Even as a little girl, I knew something was wrong. You can feel it when you’re young, just like animals can feel it when something’s wrong. I think I was already feeling sad.”

Just months after the photo was taken, on March 10, 1957, the United States Army Corps of Engineers completed work on The Dalles Dam eight miles downstream from the falls, shutting the flood gates and causing millions of gallons of raging river to grind to a halt. The river’s water level slowly rose behind the 1.5-mile-wide dam, eventually reaching the falls, spilling over and filling them in a matter of minutes.

The roar that for time immemorial echoed off the bluffs and canyons soaring from the Columbia River’s restless, treacherous banks, and which some say could be heard for 10 miles, was silenced.

“They didn’t want me to watch it on TV or look at it when they flooded it,” George says of her family. “I was in Marylhurst Catholic School. That’s why they put me in there, so I wouldn’t watch the flooding. But they had it on TV so I watched it and I cried. I still cry, even when I come here because I remember so plainly watching it when they flooded it. When my grandmother showed it, she cut my hair. When we lose somebody in the family, we cut our hair. It’s to mourn, to grieve.”

And the tribes are still grieving. George was one of an estimated 3,000 people who attended a two-day commemoration, March 10 and 11, at Celilo Village and nearby Celilo Park to mark the 50-year anniversary of the inundation of the falls. Most were tribal members, and many of them were elders, like George, who grew up around the falls or were there the day they were flooded. Other attendees included representatives of local, state and federal government, two of which—the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration—had a hand in, or would later benefit from, the falls’ flooding. Many non-Indians, some of whom had their own memories of coming to the falls to buy fish from tribal members at what once was one of the nation’s largest native trading sites, drove from as far as Salem and Seattle to take part in the commemoration as well.

Some tribal members were quick to emphasize the commemoration was not a celebration, or represented anything to be happy about at all. In fact, a number of tribal elders chose to forgo the commemoration altogether because memories of the falls’ loss were too vivid and painful.

“Mom didn’t want to come because she watched the falls get swallowed,” says William Wesley, Yakama, who helped out in the Celilo longhouse for the event. “There are a lot of people who don’t want to be here because it’s so hurtful.”

Some didn’t attend the event out of respect for the falls, he explains. But he wanted to take part “because we want to honor it. It’s just a good honor to be here for my grandfather, my mom, my son and my daughters.”

Despite being born three years after the falls were covered, Celilo Village Chief Olsen “Oly” Meanus says they are difficult for him to talk about because of the pain he sees on the faces of elders who were there.

“I used to see elders looking at the river, crying because they missed those falls,” he says, taking a break from helping prepare for the Saturday morning commemoration ceremony. “It was something for them every morning to get up, take that first breath of air, and hear the roar of the falls. It was a good awakening for them because they knew they were alive.”

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