Description
The Cayuse are a Native American tribe in what is now the state of Oregon in the United States. The Cayuse tribe shares a reservation and government in northeastern Oregon with the Umatilla and the Walla Walla tribes as part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The reservation is located near Pendleton, Oregon, at the base of the Blue Mountains. The Cayuse called themselves the Liksiyu in the Cayuse language. Originally located in present-day northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington, they lived adjacent to territory occupied by the Nez Perce and had close associations with them. Like the Plains tribes, the Cayuse placed a high premium on warfare and were skilled horsemen. They developed the Cayuse pony. The Cayuse ceded most of their traditional territory to the United States in 1855 by treaty and moved to the Umatilla Reservation, where they have formed a confederated tribe.
Language
The Cayuse language is a language isolate. Scholars have proposed that it may be related to Molala, making up a Waiilaptuan family ultimately related to the Penutian stock. This proposal is unproven. The language has been extinct since the 1930s.
Culture
The Cayuse were a seminomadic tribe and maintained summer and winter villages on the Snake, Tucannon, Walla Walla, and Touchet rivers in Washington, and along the Umatilla, Grand Ronde, Burnt, Powder, John Day River, and from the Blue Mountains to the Deschutes River in Oregon. The Cayuses were originally river people, living along tributary streams in what is now northeastern Oregon. They fished, traded, and traveled by canoe or on foot. Like other Columbia Plateau peoples, their lives were governed by the "seasonal round." They moved with the seasons in a pattern based on available foods: toward the Columbia River in the spring, when the salmon began running; to other locations when the berries were ripe or the camas roots -- a nutritious mainstay of the aboriginal diet -- were ready to be harvested. In the fall, the able-bodied moved into the mountains to hunt. Hunters used deer-head decoys or elk whistles to lure prey to come within range of bows and arrows.