Our appetite for exploration takes us all over the Central Oregon landscape. It is on these adventures we encounter stories of Oregon’s past, deeply rooted in the geographical and cultural left-overs carved by the past. It is not uncommon to encounter Native American pictograms discreetly marked on a rock, or wild horses racing across the open lands reserved for tribal descendants.
This historical story of Oregon’s past is the inspiration for our Klickitat pattern: a nature-based pattern influenced by the traditional artwork of Pacific Northwest indigenous people.
We aptly named this pattern after a particular group of indigenous people–the Klickitat people–who resided in (now) Klickitat County and along the Klickitat River in Oregon and Washington. Two distinctive traits of this tribe make it the perfect inspiration for our pattern: their enterprising trade practices, and their connectivity between the Coastal and Eastern Oregonian tribes. The literal translation of the name “Klickitat” means “beyond” (as in, “beyond the mountains”), though they refer to themselves as “prairie people”–which makes a lot of sense since Klickitat county is a “prairie” “beyond the mountains”.