Tamástslikt Cultural Institute

Most Oregon Trail museums look west with the wagons. Tamástslikt looks back at them. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla, opened it in 1998 on their reservation in the foothills east of Pendleton, and its name, from the Walla Walla dialect, is given as interpreting our own story. It is the only Native American museum on the trail.

The permanent exhibit comes in three parts. We Were reaches back across the ten thousand years the three peoples have lived in this country before the wagons. We Are covers the treaty, the reservation and the century and a half since. We Will Be sets out the tribal community's own hopes and concerns for what comes next. The trail itself appears here as it looked from the villages beside it, a road that brought disease, settlers and, within a generation, a treaty that took most of the land.

Changing galleries show work by tribal and guest artists, and the shop carries handmade work by tribal members. Outside stands a tule-reed lodge in the prairie grass, and the building draws power from its own wind turbine and solar panels. The institute sits beside the tribes' Wildhorse resort just off I-84 east of Pendleton; allow two hours.