Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/195



ADDRESS OF WELCOME AT THE DALLES

CELILO CANAL CELEBRATION,

WALLULA, MAY 4th

By WILLIAM D. LYMAN.

Officials and representatives of the National and State gov- ernments, and fellow citizens of the Northwest, it is my honor to welcome you to this historic spot in the name of the people of the Walla Walla Valley; the valley of many waters, the location of the first American home west of the Rocky Moun- tains and the Mother of all the communities of the Inland Empire. On the spot where we stand the past, the present and the future join hands. Here passed unknown generations of aborigines on the way from the Walla Walla Valley to ascend or descend the Great River, to pass in to the Yakima country, or to move either direction to the berry patches or hunting grounds of the great mountains; here the exploring expedition of Lewis and Clark paused to view the vast ex- panse of prairie before committing themselves to what they supposed to be, the lower river ; here flotillas of trappers made their rendezvous for scattering into their trapping fields and for making up their bateaux loads of furs for sending down the river. On this very spot was built the old Hudson's Bay fort, first known as Nez Perce, then as Walla Walla; here the immigrants of '43 gathered to build their rude boats on which a part of them cast themselves loose upon the impetuous current of the Columbia, while others re-equipped their wagon trains to drive along the banks to The Dalles. Each age that followed the mining period, the cowboy period, the farming period entered or left the Walla Walla Valley at this very point. Here the first steamboats blew their jubilant blasts to echo from those basaltic ramparts, and here the toot of the first railway in the Inland Empire startled the coyotes and jackrabbits from their coverts of sage brush. Wheresoever we turn history sits enthroned. Every piece of rock from yonder