Umatilla (tribe)

The Umatilla are a Sahaptin-speaking Native American tribe who traditionally inhabited the Columbia Plateau region of the northwestern United States, along the Umatilla and Columbia rivers.

The Umatilla nation was bordered by the Teninos to the West and the Klickitats to north, across the Columbia River. Also by their northern border were the Wasco-Wishrams. Because of their homeland lacked natural defenses, the Umatillas were attacked from the south by groups of Bannocks and Paiutes.

Linguistically, the Umatilla language is part of the Sahaptin division of the Penutian language family — closely related to other peoples of today's Eastern Oregon, Eastern Washington, and the Idaho panhandle. These included the Nez Percé, Cayuse, Walla Walla, and the Yakima. These peoples were ravaged by smallpox and other infectious diseases contracted from European colonists during the first half of the 19th century and their populations depleted, as they had no immunity.

In 1855 the inland Sahaptin-speaking nations were forced to surrender their historic homelands under treaty to the United States government, in exchange for territorial set-asides on reservations.

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