Confluence - {Print text }
For Sale: Riggins gold claim;
bedrock exposed near channel.
Worked by hand a century ago …
And now, and now, I hope retired
The last few yards of the Salmon River are nearly still. The raft I am on floats toward the Snake, the water quieter than it has been. It’s as if the river is giving in, relinquishing its power to the Snake River.
A motorboat’s engine echoes through the canyon. Boat after boat passes the confluence, a site for tour guides to point out as the boats travel toward Hell’s Canyon.
What does this river say about its confluence? Has it lost its’ special place today?
Of course not. But the Whole Salmon River reminds us about the incredible changes that have happened in the past – and are happening again.
I think, for example, of the Yankee Fork dredge. This mining equipment went up the river and destroyed so much. Yet the power of the river was greater; the river found a way to bring itself back to life.
But that same power cannot restore the silent paddle of a kayak against a jet boat. That same power cannot help salmon lift themselves up over a dam. That same power cannot slow the real estate developers building thousands of one-of-a-kind river views.
Then the river has seen dramatic change before.
So many of the cities along the river were boomtowns – they could have been the next Boise, Denver, or Spokane. Our boom and bust was lucky because the next boom did not return for another round. Or make that has not yet returned. Like I say, we’re lucky.
These boomtowns were multicultural before the word was invented – home to thousands of miners from China. As a child, I remember family members telling me about Chinese trinkets found along the river. And I heard stories about the river’s “Chinatowns.” I figured these villages were just slices of the community; another version of Chinatown in San Francisco or Los Angeles. Then I look at the numbers and see how the Salmon Mountains could have been home to so many Chinese. By 1870 one-quarter of the state’s population was Chinese, forced to pay a special tax just for being here.
“No Chinaman, Malayan or other person of Mongolian race shall be allowed to take gold from the mines of this territory or hold or work a claim … unless they pay the tax,” said the law.
The Chinese, the legislature said, “might have the effect of arresting the progress of civilization.”
Then I think what Idaho could have been. I think about what we could be now – if we’d celebrate this part of the river’s history as much as the other eras. Our intolerance is one thing. But what’s striking to me is how those who remain tell the stories of the river. It’s fair to point out Polly Bemis – perhaps the most famous Chinese woman on the river – but what about her thousands of brothers and sisters?
The history is so faint now – like the ruins of Chinese rock homes on the Salmon’s banks. But the region’s multicultural history keeps coming back because it’s good for business.
Take Salmon, Idaho. A few years ago the city fought with bands of Lemhi Shoshone to push them on the reservation at Fort Hall. The message was clear that Lemhis should go away.
Now the city calls itself “the birthplace of Sacajawea.” It’s eager to associate itself with that band – I suppose as long as too many of them don’t relocate back to Salmon itself.
It seems to me the best way to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Corps of Discovery would be to allow the original occupants to go home. I know folks from the Lemhi band that want nothing else – even now.
I know another hero on the river that I’d like to think about from time to time.
One day I was peering into the mountains near the river’s confluence and wondering if this is where Jackson Sundown once worked? Is this where he learned to ride? Is this where he saw the modern world’s confluence with his people’s past?
Sundown was Nez Perce and he grew up with horses – and as a youth worked on a ranch that bordered the lower Salmon. He made the transition from the era of Chief Joseph to the modern one. Sundown even accompanied the great chief on his journey to Canada, helping with the horses as his people outwitted the U.S. military.
In 1912, when he was 49 years old, Sundown started riding bucking horses in rodeos. Four years later – after he retired from bronc riding – Sundown won the world championship at Pendleton Roundup in what may have been one of the greatest rides ever. Witnesses said Sundown became “one with the horse.”
This multicultural story of the river is our future. We think back to the past and if we remember a picture that’s yet to be complete. We need the stories of all those who have been here so we might better understand what’s coming next.
The Salmon River flows into the Snake River. We need the confluence of the Whole River before we are whole too.
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