Wanapum Dam Brochure

The Grant County Public Utility District issued this saddle-stitched pamphlet during active construction of Priest Rapids Dam on the Columbia River — Congress had authorized the project in 1955 and bond financing began in July 1956. The pale blue-green cover carries a halftone reproduction of a sculptural relief portrait of a Wanapum figure, braided hair and one hand raised, set within a sun-halo disc, above the issuing authority: the PUD headquartered in Ephrata, Washington.

Inside, a two-column spread tells the history of the Wanapum, or River People, who fished and camped along the Columbia from Pasco north to Vantage for "untold centuries," wintering at Priest Rapids in mat houses built of tules (a bulrush that grows in marshy Columbia shallows). At the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition roughly 2,500 Wanapums lived in the area. By 1956, four remained: Frank Buck, Rex Buck, Harry Wyena, and Bobby Tomanawash — all employed on the Priest Rapids Project by the District itself. The pamphlet notes the Wanapum were "unique among native peoples in that they never fought the whites — so never signed a treaty."

The dam's reservoir was set to cover Whale Island, just upstream from Priest Rapids, where more than 125 rock carvings and paintings had been cut into boulders over centuries — hunters, bear paws, deer, sunbursts. The District hired the surviving Wanapums to walk the island and locate every carving; each was mapped, numbered, and photographed. A representative selection was moved to the Wanapum burial ground and set in concrete to protect the pieces from vandalism; the rest were earmarked for a future permanent museum.

Puck Hyah Toot — Johnny Buck to his white neighbors — was the Wanapum prophet and band leader, nephew of the 19th-century Columbia River visionary Smohalla. He died in 1956, the year this pamphlet appeared; the back cover refers to him as "the late Puck Hyah Toot" and records that in recognition of his people's acceptance of the project — "they realized that progress was inevitable" — the upper dam was named Wanapum. Nearly all the pamphlet's text was drawn from Drummers and Dreamers (Caxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho, 1956), Click Relander's history of Smohalla and Puck Hyah Toot published that same year, used "by special permission of the copyright owners."