Indian Delegates to Join Parade

WAITSBURG - Long before the Lewis & Clark expedition made its way through the Touchet River Valley in the early 1800s, the site of the state park named in their honor was a fall hunting camp for the Palus, Nez Perce and Walla Walla tribes.

This place between Waitsburg and Dayton was called Tapash Itxachika, where the tribes said "the ponderosa pine tree fell and was raised again." And the river was called Tu-se, meaning roasting.

It's one of the closest Native American historical references to the town of Waitsburg, which was founded some six decades after the Lewis & Clark expedition and evolved into a major settlement.

But to the Indian visitors in this weekend's Waitsburg Celebration parade, these "later" changes in the landscape don't change their longheld relationship to the land. They still call it home.

"This is not a foreign area to us," said Debra Croswell, deputy executive director of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. "This is part of who we are as a people."

The tribes, a community of Cayuse, Walla Walla and Nez Perce not far from Pendleton, will be sending a small yet high-level delegation to help Waitsburg's celebration the 100th anniversary of the Days of Real Sport, on the invitation of Mayor Walt Gobel.

At least two officials from the community are planning to join the ceremony starting at 10 a.m. on Saturday: Woodrow Star, a Board of Trustees member of the Confederated Tribes, and Aaron Hines, general council chairman. The two men, who represent two of the tribes' nine elected officials, are expected to ride in the parade on horseback and be dressed in the traditional regalia of the Columbia plateau Indians, Croswell said.

She put the significance of the tribes' historic participation in the Main Street parade in perspective.

"They do this only two or three times a year," Croswell said about the delegates' participation in non-Indian community parades. "As elected officials, they have many duties and it isn't their job to represent us in parades."

Yet, the visit during the town's historic festivities shouldn't be seen as a foreign diplomatic trip either, she said. "Waitsburg is in our traditional homeland, where our ancestors lived and traveled."

Gobel reached out to the tribes months ago when he wrote a letter inviting them to join in the parade and other festivities. Waitsburg Celebration organizers discussed the possibility of bringing Indian relay races to the fairgrounds and perhaps a cultural display to Preston Park, but neither of those ideas came together in time for this year's third May weekend.