The Palouse River
This morning kayaks and Zodiacs were launched from the National Geographic Sea Bird to explore the Palouse River, which was first named by Lewis and Clark Oct. 13, 1805, in honor of George Drouillard. Lewis and Clark called it “Drewyer’s River.” The expedition spent several hours at the confluence of the Snake (Lewis's River) and the Palouse talking with and informing the Indians of their new “Great White Father of the Seventeen Great Nations” and handing out to the chief a Jefferson Peace Medal with Jefferson's image on one side and shaking hands on the reverse. Today's Palouse River changed somewhat when the reservoir was built, which flooded the Palouse village where Lewis and Clark arrived almost 206 years ago.
The bridge we saw that spanned the Snake is the Joso Railroad Bridge built by the Union Pacific RR from 1910 through 1914. The Irish built the railroad span, the Chinese built the grade, and the African Americans dove into the cold, deep waters of the Snake to place the concrete slabs for the bridge abutments. It has been said that one African American drowned each day over the year and half that it took for this part of the process!
The last pure-blood Palouse died in 1916 and his name was Chief Old Bones (according to the white man's terminology). He is buried on the highest point above his village, very near the Heart of the Beaver. He is buried with many of his people who were re-interred when the backwaters of Lower Monumental Dam (1963) flooded their ancestral burial grounds between the Palouse and Tucannon rivers. When these sites were being excavated, a Jefferson Peace Medal was found in one of the graves around the neck of a “chief.” It was on display at the Nez Perce Spalding Museum until the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, when the Palouse asked for it back and reburied it.
The last ferry crossed the Snake River here in 1968, when a bridge from Vantage, Washington was replaced by the current interstate. The Vantage Bridge, which crossed the Columbia River, was still of great value so it was placed at the Snake River crossing where Highway 261 was built in 1969. The old ferry that made the historic “last crossing” is in the lagoon and is a reminder of a day gone by.
The Palouse Falls, a 198-foot plunge, was not noted by Lewis and Clark, as it was eight miles upriver from where they met the Palouse Indians. The falls are a remnant of a cataract or receding waterfall that at one time was at the confluence of the Snake River. Since the last Ice Age and the beginning of the Missoula Floods 18,000 years ago, the falls have receded to where we can enjoy it today.
