Plateau Peoples

The Plateau Peoples are the indigenous nations of the Columbia Plateau, the interior region between the Cascade and Rocky Mountains spanning present-day eastern Washington, Oregon, Idaho and southern British Columbia, including the Wanapum, Yakama, Nez Perce, Umatilla and related nations. Traditional Plateau subsistence centered on seasonal salmon fishing, root gathering and hunting, and the region became, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the source of a series of related prophetic religious movements, among them Smohalla's Washani or Dreamer religion, that taught renewal of the land and resistance to allotment and forced agricultural settlement. Anthropologists including James Mooney documented these movements as directly influencing prophetic religion among nations well beyond the Plateau itself.