Johnny's bobby soxers, raging river mark Indian life The Dalles Chronicle March 12, 2007 Page A7 By George W. Aguilar Sr. For these river people, life was easy. They worked hard to secure and maintain their supplies, but for them the natural world was kind. They wove complicated decorated sally bags, basketry with designs from dogbane and bear grass. The upper Eastern Kiksht Peoples were regarded as a gathering place for spiritual sings, guardian spirit inaugurations, and winter ceremonials, as well as the spring and summer trade mart of the Pacific Northwest. As had been the case for thousands of years, this was wholly an Indian land. Then came silence. The backwaters of The Dalles Dam are now called Lake Celilo. The lake consumes all the prized fishing stations. A ghastly silence has remained and reigned at this place for half a century. Nowadays a deathly stillness hangs around; the laughter and joyful expression of the native children of the Wascopum, Wishram and Celilo during the fish season are no more. The hand waving, body language and sign gestures to other fishermen across the inaudible river are no longer seen. Half a century ago, river icons the likes of James Palmer, Albert Stahi, Samson Tullie, Johnny Tanawash, Chinky Johnson, Chief Jobe Charley and other Wishram residents had family-owned fishing stations on the northern bank of the Five Mile Rapids. Today they live only in my mind's eye. Today, my travels up Interstate 84 bring back many memories of when the river rumbled. With a choked testimonial, I tell my grandson, pointing out where we camped when we fished the boulder-spitting Five Mile Rapids. The old J.C. Penney clothing store, near the new J.C. Penney store in The Dalles, is where I was born 77 years ago. While traveling through The Dalles one day, I shout, "Hey! That's Washington Street, where my grandparents came to visit me when I was then a recent born grandchild; born on George Washington's birthday, Feb. 22, 1930." When my grandparents came, they brought me a stuffed Peter Rabbit. George Washington Aguilar Sr. Tribal enrollment No. 0008 Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs of Oregon. Incoming and Outgoing messages protected by Trend Micro PC-cillin program