Native Arts of the Columbia Plateau

The Doris Swayze Bounds Collection

by Susan Harless

Colorfully beaded handbags, superbly tanned and deco-rated deerskin shirts, finely woven baskets, exquisitely beaded and fringed horse trappings — these distinctive Native arts of the Columbia River Plateau have been overshadowed in the public eye by the arts of the North-west Coast, Great Plains, and American Southwest. But Indians in the region where present-day Washington, Oregon, and Idaho share boundaries have for centuries combined function and beauty in the items they made for even the most mundane of uses, and their traditional arts are still vital today.

This book brings overdue recognition to the artistry and craftsmanship of the Plateau Indians by focusing on the remarkable collection amassed by the late Doris Swayze Bounds, a banker in Hermiston, Oregon, who grew up with and deeply loved Native people and their culture. She was loved in return, and many of the nearly one thousand Plateau items in her collection came to her as gifts from her Indian friends who expressed their respect and affection in their time-honored tradition of gift-giving.

In five essays, both Native and non-Native experts describe the art styles and the uses and cultural mean-ings of the items; two others recount Doris Bounds’s life, collecting practices, and relationships with Native Amer-icans. The essays are handsomely illustrated with fifty color plates, nearly one hundred black-and-white pho-tographs, and line drawings of items from the Bounds collection. Native Arts of the Columbia Plateau offers an introduction to this visually stunning art tradition.

136 pp ~ 50 color photos ~ 100 b/w photos — ©1998