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The Wishram inhabited a particularly salmon-rich stretch of the Columbia River later known as The Dalles, occupying 20 large wooden houses that each accommodated three families.
The name of the Wishram village Nixlúidix means "trading place" and was the center of the regional trade system. An annual trade festival drew tribes from the Pacific coast and the foothills of the Rockies. Eastern tribes brought buffalo skins and horses; western bands provided roots and berries in exchange for salmon.
When Lewis and Clark arrived among them on October 24, 1805, the Indians had just completed an intense trading period that had begun six months earlier. Clark's journal records huge mounds of dried salmon—as much as five tons—piled up alongside the river.
The Wishram referred to themselves as the Ita'xluit, which Lewis and Clark heard as "Echeloot." Journal entries and maps reflect that transliteration.
Today the Wishram live on the Yakima Reservation in Washington State.
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