Interpretive Site: Berry Fields

This site is located in an area traditionally used by Native Americans for huckleberry picking. The site offers interpretive signs that focus on the harvesting and drying of huckleberries.

Since time immemorial, Native people have been traveling to what we now know as Indian Heaven Wilderness and nearby berry fields. Archaeological evidence and historic records tell us the area provided a wealth of resources for Northwest Tribes. The Sawtooth Berry Field in the northern part of Indian Heaven Wilderness is world renowned for its wealth of huckleberries. The area was burned in the late 1890's and again in the Great Fires of 1902. The fields were subsequently maintained by later fires, which may be attributed to Native Americans whose berry-drying fires would escape.

From 1902 to the mid-1920's, the area served as a famous summer gathering place for Northwest Tribes. Much festivity, trading, and ritual surrounded the annual huckleberry feast. The tribes would pick and dry huckleberries, race horses, play games, make baskets, dry meat, tan hides, and fish in many lakes. The local tribes included the Yakima, Klickitat, Wishram, Wasco, Cascade, and Umatilla. Tribes from as far away as Montana and Wyoming also participated.

A council in 1932 between the Yakima Nation and the Forest Service resulted in a handshake agreement, thereby designating part of the Sawtooth Berry Fields (east of Road 24) as an area of exclusive use to the local Indian peoples. The annual huckleberry harvest is still an important part of Native American tradition. Please observe the signs reserving part of the berry fields for the local tribes.

Completed in 1990, the current Gifford Pinchot National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan committed the handshake agreement to print, making it an official component of the cultural resources program for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.