The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation

The Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Cayuse tribes were renowned for their horsemanship. Near the end of the nineteenth century, they had herds estimated at 15,000 to 20,000.

When the leaders of the Walla Walla, Cayuse, and Umatilla peoples signed a treaty with the United States in 1855, they ceded 6.4 million acres of homeland in what is now northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. Today the three-tribe confederation numbers 2,652. The 172,000 acre reservation, almost half of which is owned by non-Indians, includes significant portions of the Umatilla River watershed.

The Umatilla River and Grande Ronde rivers have been the focus of the tribe's fish restoration activities for more than a decade. Under the tribe's leadership, salmon were reintroduced in the Umatilla river in the early 1980s. The tribe, along with the state of Oregon, operate egg-taking, spawning, and other propagation facilities that are helping restore salmon runs. The first fall chinook in some 70 years returned to the Umatilla River in 1984.

In the Grande Ronde watershed, the Umatilla and Nez Perce tribes and state and federal agencies developed a state-of-the-art salmon habitat restoration plan for the U.S.D.A. Forest Service. Other river basins in which the tribe has comanagement responsibilities are the Columbia, Snake, Walla Walla, Tucannon, Grande Ronde, John Day, and Imnaha. In recent times, tribal fisheries have occurred only on the Umatilla and Columbia rivers. The Umatilla are governed by the Board of Trustees composed of nine members elected by the General Council. Tribal headquarters are located in Mission, Oregon.