Along with Kamiakin and Owhi, Smohalla is easily ranked as one of the more influential Native American leaders in Central Washington.
A Wanapum religious leader, Smohalla proved to be a thorn in the side of the federal government as it attempted to push Native people onto reservations and stamp out their culture. But his religious teachings continue to live on today among the Yakama and others.
Born sometime in 1815 near what is now Wallula, his original name was Wak-wei, which meant “arising from the dust of the Earth Mother.” Some accounts describe him as having been born a hunchback, and that while not appearing to have great physical strength was noted for his skills as a speaker.
Like Yakama medicine woman Kis-’am-xay, Wak-wei had what today we would call a near-death experience that gave him his life’s mission. He later told his family that while on a vision quest in Saddle Mountain near Wallula, he had died and gone to the afterlife, only to be sent back to the mortal realm with a message: Forsake white people’s culture and return to your traditional ways.
It was at this time that he took the name by which he was best known, Smohalla, meaning “dreamer” in the Sahaptin language.
He preached what was known as the Washani religion, urging Native people to shun the encroaching white, European culture and go back to their ways of relying on fish, game and plants as nature provided them.
This religious movement, naturally, did not sit well with the federal government that was trying to push Native people on to reservations so their land could be opened to settlement. Nor did all Natives agree with it.
Smohalla wound up leaving Wallula around 1850 after getting into a disagreement with Walla Walla Chief Homli over allowing white settlers to use their traditional lands.
“Those who cut up the lands or sign papers for lands will be defrauded of their rights and punished by God’s anger,” Smohalla warned Homli.
At that point, Smohalla left and established a village at Priest Rapids on the Columbia River in what is now the Hanford Reach. It was an ideal location in that there was a ready supply of salmon and other food, and it was remote enough to not attract too much attention from white authorities.
While there, he also got into a dispute with Chief Moses, whose Sinkiuse people also lived at Priest Rapids. While Moses did not support the treaties that were forcing Native people onto reservations, he believed that adapting to white culture was the guaranteed way of survival.
After a fight, Smohalla left, traveling as far as Mexico, and returning to Priest Rapids to announce that he again had died and returned with a divine commission to lead the people, renewing his call to eschew white culture in favor of a traditional lifestyle.
He was later joined by other Native people who refused to go to reservations or submit to federal authority. As many as 2,000 people settled with him, with hundreds attending ceremonies in a tule mat longhouse every Sunday.
This did not sit well with the government agents and military officers assigned to the territory, who viewed Smohalla and his people as “renegades” and potential threats to peace and stability in the region. Narcisse A Cornoyer, the Umatilla Indian agent, claimed that Smohalla’s influence was spreading as far as Utah, Nevada and California, and was disrupting what was then called “Manifest Destiny.”
“These Indians, in their present unsettled and unrestricted life, have no earthly mission beyond that of annoyance to settlers and hindrance to the opening of the country,” Cornoyer wrote in the 1875 annual report to the commissioner of Indian Affairs.
There were even rumors that Smohalla and his followers would wage war, prompting Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, commander of the Army’s Department of the Columbia, to call for a meeting April 24, 1877, with Smohalla.
Howard’s primary goal was to get Smohalla’s people to move on to one of the reservations in the area. His secondary goal was to ensure that they would remain neutral should fighting break out with the Nez Perce, who were refusing to leave Oregon’s Wallowa Valley for a reservation in Idaho.
Smohalla was willing to parley, but he wanted to do it on his own terms. Instead of meeting at Wallula, where Smohalla feared that he would put himself at risk of capture by Howard, he insisted that Howard meet him at a fishing camp on the Columbia.
But Howard would not budge, pledging his word that he would not harm him if he came to Wallula. Smohalla agreed and arrived with an entourage of 400 men, women and children. They met in a warehouse where Smohalla asked what the law was and was told that he had to move his people to a reservation.
The meeting ended inconclusively, but a month later a second council resulted in Smohalla agreeing to relocate to the Yakama Reservation by September that year, at the end of the fishing season.
Smohalla didn’t move to the reservation, however, instead staying at Priest Rapids. But Howard was too busy at that point to force Smohalla out.
The Nez Perce War broke out on June 13, 1877, with Chief Joseph and Howard fighting a running battle over almost 1,200 miles until Oct. 5, 1877, when Joseph surrendered 40 miles from the Canadian border, declaring “I will fight no more forever.”
Smohalla remained neutral in that fight, as well as in the Bannock-Paiute War in 1878, preferring to trust that the Great Spirit would eventually deliver them.
Over time, his followers at Priest Rapids dwindled, and Smohalla would die in 1895 at Satus Creek, where he had come to conduct a ceremony.
But his religious teachings live on in the Washat religion that is practiced today, despite efforts to stamp it out that lasted into the 1930s.
He was inducted into Washington’s Centennial Hall of Honor in 1989 as a spiritual leader, only one of three Native people to receive that honor.
Smohalla Cemetery near Toppenish is also named for him.
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