# History of Oregon Literature/Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1
Before the White Man Came
FREDERIC HOMER BALCH
We now know that the native tribes of Oregon had a rich and eloquent literature—poetry and songs, Greek-like harangues before a battle, beautiful geographic names, tales and legends, myths and dreams.
The Western Oregon Indians were particularly affected by dreams. The vividness and verisimilitude of these images of the night, and the way they clung to the imagination in daylight hours, justify their inclusion as an important form of literature. The case of Kubla Khan and Coleridge was an ordinary experience among the tribes.
An adolescent girl of today, arising from a sweet sleep and relating a romantic dream, would be heard at the breakfast table derisively by her brother and with tolerant boredom by her parents. An Indian maiden in the long ago in Oregon would tell it only if it were a matter-of-fact dream, and its meaning would be seriously discussed; but if, for instance, it were of such a nature that in it her guardian spirit called to her in song, it would not be, it must not be revealed. Always she would hoard it in the hidden depths of her nature that the dream might be dreamed over and over again.
Tantalizing disclosures like this, brief remnants rescued from the obscurity of the past, give us a consciousness of how great and how precious was the total that has been lost.
​We know that in their ages of residence in the sun shine and fog of the coast, along the swift-flowing rivers and in the verdant and blossoming valleys, the early tribes of Oregon developed an important literature, but of the literature itself we have only a very little and can never have more than a small part of what might have been ours if we had not waited too long. Most of it is gone forever with the old chiefs and squaws to eternal memaloose land.
To preserve it with any fullness, our efforts are tragically tardy, at least a hundred years overdue. If in the time of the explorers, fur traders, missionaries, or even the early pioneers, there had been a few men with the ethnological interest and technique of such scientists today, the literature of the primitive races of Oregon might well have filled volumes.
Writing in 1875 of this loss, Hubert Howe Bancroft said:
   Nor need we pause to look back through the dark vista of unwritten history, and speculate, who and what they are, nor for how many thousands of years they have been coming and going, counting the winters, the moons, and the sleeps; chasing the wild game, basking in the sunshine, pursuing and being pursued, killing and being killed. All knowledge regarding them lies buried in an eternity of the past, as all knowledge of their successors remains folded in an eternity of the future. We came upon them unawares, unbidden, and while we gazed they melted away.
S. A. Clarke, pioneer Oregon historian and writer, has explained in less figurative language how this happened and how it was allowed to happen:
   The Coming of the White Man, Portland
   wilderness. They were hardly civilized themselves, and had no object in view but to trade to advantage. The records of the fur company have furnished the most accurate details of life among the Indians; but while they were at times interested in witnessing native ways and studying character, or listening to myths, legends and superstitions that bordered on religious belief, they seem to have made no study of Indian life from an ethnological standpoint. We cannot know as much as would easily have been possible, if connected effort had been made by fairly competent men. . . .
Because we let the old Indians and their long, long recollections pass into irrevocable silence, we missed the great opportunity. All, however, is not lost, as is shown by what modern ethnologists and anthropologists are finding in their magical penetration of the past. The difficulty of civilizing an Indian has had an advantage in this respect; his unwillingness to assimilate new ways has kept his spirit from being completely deprived of retrospect; it has left a concatenation with the old times that full acceptance of the white man's culture may have destroyed. So the more aged of the present day descendants of the old Indians, in the scattered instances when they can be found, re member far more than would be expected —vastly more than a white man would remember under the same circumstances. The combination of these few lingering old people and the wizardry of the modern anthropologist in probing their astonishing memories, has resulted in much literature that was considered irretrievably lost.
Dr. Franz Boas, for instance, was able to collect his Chinook Texts from one Indian. In the summers of ​1890 and 1891, while working in Oregon and Washington, he says he "learned that the dialects of the lower Chinook were on the verge of disappearing, and that only a few individuals survived who remembered the languages of the once powerful tribes of the Clatsop and Chinook." The remnants of the tribe he found at Clatsop, near Seaside, for various reasons gave him nothing. He was finally told that a few of their relatives lived on Shoalwater Bay. He went there and found two individuals who spoke Chinook—the real Chinook, not the jargon—Charles Cultee and Catherine. He got nothing at all from Catherine but vast riches from Charles. This Indian, of course, spoke the Chinook jargon as well as his own Chinook tongue. Dr. Boas spoke the jargon. And through the medium of this trade language the anthropologist extracted from this one Indian, material for the 278 pages of his famous Chinook Texts, which includes the alpha bet, eighteen myths, thirteen beliefs, customs and tales, and two historical tales.
It is astonishing alike how an ordinary Indian should have held so much tribal literature in his remembrance and how an anthropologist could have developed a technique for getting it from him. While the old Indians have become scarcer, there has been an improvement of method among scholars for x-raying their memories. In a way similar to that of Dr. Boas, Dr. Melville Jacobs, associate professor of anthropology in the University of Washington, has found two or three old Coos Bay Indians from whom, during the past few summers, he has obtained much material, particularly material relating to dreams.
​The present account can only scratch the surface of this extensive and fascinating field. If research continues at its present intensified rate we may still be able, before all the remembering descendants of the old Indians die, to secure at least a representative amount of the literature of the native tribes of Oregon.
In recent years men have worked with compensatory zeal, in a race with silencing death—clever men who can draw a whole book from a wrinkled squaw. They travel hundreds of miles, knowing that another summer might seal that book forever. Long in the future they can still station one of themselves to watch the excavations for a great dam and can still dig into the buried sites of ancient villages, but whatever of great value they find it will not be poetry and song, for the earth will remain mute and cannot give up a literature that was never written.
The one exception is in picture writing, the Bayeux Tapestry of Oregon palisades. This, though its literary significance is clouded, has been included as one of the nine classifications of form into which our heritage of literature from the Oregon Indians may be divided, as follows: 1, songs; 2, poetry; 3, harangues and orations; 4, dreams; 5, myths; 6, legends; 7, tales; 8, geographic names; 9, petroglyphs.
1
SONGS
By J. G. Swan
The first three songs are taken from The Northwest Coast; or, Three Years' Residence in Washington Territory, by J. G. Swan, published in 1857. They are Chinook or Chehalis songs and of these ​tribes the author says: "They are all very fond of singing, and some of their tunes are plaintive and sweet. The following are some of those that I can recollect. They generally improvise as they sing; but, when they have no particular object to sing about, they use certain words which have about the same meaning as our fa, sol, la. There does not appear to be any regular form of words used like songs with us, but almost always the incidents of the moment form themes for their tunes, as with us they are subjects for conversations. While these songs are sung, time is kept by beating with sticks, or thumping the roof of the lodge with a pole."
Boat Song
Fishing Song
Gambling Song
Chant to the War Drum
Hezekiah Butterworth was born in Rhode Island in 1859. He became assistant editor of Youth's Companion, wrote several cantatas and was the author of popular children's books, including The Log School-House on the Columbia, from which this poem is taken.
In the forest lodge of the old chief of the Cascades "there was a kind of tambourine, ornamented with fan-like feathers. . . . Fair Cloud used to play upon it, or rather shake it in a rythmic way. There was also a war-drum in the lodge, and an Indian called Blackhoof used to beat it and say:
Death Wail
Frederic Homer Balch, writing in 1884 of a visit to Memaloose Island, said that "the river moving around the island prolongs the Indian death wail forever." J. G. Swan gives the words of a death song, with the following explanation regarding it: "While the corpse remained in the house, not a word was spoken except in a whisper, nor did they commence their lamentations till the whole funeral ceremonies were over; then, the signal being given, they began to sing a death song, and thump the roof with their long poles. . . . The burden of their song . . . is simply an address to the dead. . . . Every day, at sunrise and sunset, this chant is repeated by the relatives for thirty days—when the days of mourning are ended. . . .
"Oh, our mother! why did you go and leave us so sad? We can scarcely see by reason of the water that falls from our eyes.
"Many years have you lived with us, and taught us the words of wisdom.
"You were not poor, neither are we poor; neither were you weak, but your heart and limbs were strong.
"You should have lived with us many years, and told us more of the deeds of ancient times."
2
POEMS
The Heart's Friend
Shoshone Love Song
By George William Cronyn
George William Cronyn is a teacher, dramatist, artist and novelist, who at various times has made his home at Hood River, Oregon, where in 1914 he married a Hood River girl, Allura Miller. He has taught in New York City and Oakland, California. He is the ​author of several plays. His paintings were exhibited in the art museum of Portland, Oregon, in 1914, and the next year in San Francisco and Indianapolis. In 1918 he edited the Path of the Rainbow, a book of Indian poems, from which this selection is taken. Like Anthony Euwer and Billy Sunday, he gives his occupation while living at Hood River as that of rancher.
Modoc Cradle Song
By Katherine Berry Judson
Katherine Berry Judson is author of Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest from which this poem is taken. It is the most popular work dealing with the Indian legends of the Northwest. Published in 1910, it is now out of print. Miss Judson was a librarian by profession. She was graduated from Cornell University in 1904, and received her Master of Arts degree from the University of Washington in 1911. She was librarian at Kalispell, Montana, from 1905 to 1906; head of the periodical department of the Seattle Public Library from 1906 to 1911; and assistant in history in the University of Washington from 1911 to 1912. She is the author of ten books, seven of which deal with myths and legends.
Poem Referring to Frogs, Lizards, Fish, Bugs
By Albert Samuel Gatschet
Albert Samuel Gatschet, an American philologist and ethnologist, was born at Saint Beatonberg, Bern, Switzerland. In 1868 he moved to the United States, where, until 1877, he was connected with the staffs of various German newspapers, and in that year was appointed ethnologist of the Government Geological Survey. In 1879 he became linguist to the Bureau of American Ethnology. From 1874 he made extensive study of the languages of the North American Indians. He wrote The Indians of Southwestern Oregon in Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. II, parts 1 and 2, Washington, 1890. Both the animal poem and the fire dance are given in slightly different versions by Leslie Spier in his Klamath Ethnography published at Berkeley in 1930.
Fire Dance
By Albert Samuel Gatschet
3
HARANGUES AND ORATIONS
By Gabriel Franchere
Gabriel Franchere, one of the Astor clerks, in his Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America—French edition, 1819; English edition, 1854—has the following to say on the important part that words played in their battles:
   . . . those people . . . repair to the hostile village, enter into parley, and do all they can to terminate the affair amicably: sometimes a third party becomes mediator between the first two, and of course observes an exact neutrality. If those who seek justice do not obtain it to their satisfaction, they retire to some distance, and the combat begins, and is continued with fury on both sides; but as soon as one or two men are killed, the party which has lost these, owns itself beaten and the battle ceases. . . . When the conflict is postponed till the next day (for they never fight in open daylight, as if to render nature witness to their exploits), they keep up frightful cries all night long, and, when they are sufficiently near to understand each other, defy one another by menaces, railleries, and sarcasms, like the heroes of Homer and Virgil.
It is unfortunate that examples could not be found of these wrangling harangues or of the very early orations to which the explorers make reference. Texts of later orations by chiefs are available, but these are usually from red men to white, and are not the same thing as the scornful tongue of warrior to warrior, between hostile bivouacs, across a narrow no-man's-land in the darkness.
4
DREAMS
A Recent Study of the Dreams of the Coos, with Some Examples
By Melville Jacobs
Dr. Melville Jacobs is associate professor of anthropology in the ​University of Washington. He has made extensive field studies among the Oregon Indians, especially in the Coos Bay region. His study of dreams is particularly important and this essay on the subject was generously furnished by him for use in this history of Oregon literature.
My two informants for Coos ethnology differed fundamentally in their descriptions of the ancient culture that neither of them had more than heard about. And nowhere did their statements part further than on the matter of dreams and dream interpretation. Informant A had lived his life mainly among natives of the lower Umpqua and Siuslaw River cultures immediately north of the Coos. Possibly this circumstance accounts for the discrepant accounts. Informant B, an older and more alert-minded person, had had more intimate years among Coos natives, and probably reported more accurately about Coos beliefs. I will try to unite here what I think can be safely pictured, from the two informants.
Coos natives' dreams had no direct effect upon Coos beliefs or oral literature. Dreams functioned as cause in what may be called most conveniently the religious aspect of Coos life. It was in dreams particularly that they learned of guardian spirit powers that had come to them, and those guardian-powers in the dreams sang songs that became the natives' own songs, sung privately when communing with or calling upon their guardians.
The folklore was another realm entirely: it involved the winter night recounting of ancient myths and tales. In the folk literature dreaming did enter, in a sense, when animal dramatis personae themselves "dreamed." The myth characters—usually animals—were believed to have lived in the long ago like persons and to have had dreams like persons' dreams.
Coos Indians seem to have had the most acute interest in the details of their nightly dreams. If in a dream what was assumed to be a potential guardian spirit was seen and heard, and it said that it conferred some sort of power on the dreamer, or sang to that effect, that dream—it was inter​preted as a very real "encounter" rather than as a mere dream—would never be revealed to another native for fear of losing the "power" the song conferred. But if a native dreamed of relatively commonplace matters—saw dead people, walked or ran or fell or swam or hunted or what not—possibly the usual thing upon awakening was to tell the dream content to any sympathetic or merely attentive relative or listener then present. Both discussed seriously what the dream might mean. For it was never a mere dream to them; it was a real experience, not of the dreamer's physical body, but of what might be labeled inadequately his "soul." There were certainly scores of ready-to-hand, stereotyped dream (or rather, "soul" experience) explanations and interpretations. If the native had dreamt of paddling out to sea without incident or accident, that meant his life would be long. If he stumbled in the dream experience, or had fallen, or been hurt in some manner, it meant his life span would be short. If he dreamt of sexual matters, he knew when he awakened that for days after he would hunt game in vain, because the game would smell him and keep out of range.
A dream of snakes would be interpreted to mean that a hostile shaman at a great distance was undoubtedly working evil magic power on him. A dream of fire meant the coming of sickness or disease. Dream interpretations were most often predictions of death or long life or health or wealth.
A dream of a person singing beautifully might not be told, because the dreamer might choose to try to dream this dream again and again, and so encounter more intimately a potential guardian spirit power that had tried to call to him in song. To reveal the dream would prevent its return.
The natives seem to have occupied themselves with a remarkable quantity of dream content speculation. "Conditioning" to close attention to dream content from early childhood years, may have produced a regionful of natives (now unhappily almost vanished) able to observe and report minutely on their nightly dreams.
All native Coos guardian spirit power-conferring dream​experiences involved the conferring of one or more concomitant songs. These dream-origin songs, when they possess words, are of symbolic or poetic-literary flavor when contrasted with the relative matter-of-factness of myth narrative or ordinary everyday speech. They are sung often in privacy, and in public only in the winter power dances called "dream dances." These privately-owned and individually-sung songs are usually very short. Frequently they are no more than one-line poems set to a melody.
One power-dream song I noted is crudely translated thus:
They mock him, Poor, poor thing he.
I am so sorry
When they mock him.
I could not learn from my informant what the animal or other guardian-spirit power that conferred this song could be.
The following words are from a dream-power song used by a miluk-Coos female shaman when doctoring:
On the rolling surf I come.
This shaman's curing power, expressed via the song, was a type of large snipe.
Though perhaps not originally dreamed, the poetic inter est of the following song, a love plaint devised by a living woman, justifies its inclusion here:
My sweetheart,
Poor thing.
He just stays away Because my parents do not want him. But I love him.
I wish he were near here, I wish he were here,
So that he could hold me in his arms.
At this stage of my Coos research I see no warrant to assume a casual relation between dreams and subsequent folktale narrative style or content. The fok tales must be ancient things, the distribution of their component episodes and plots over large areas of America being a matter of ​lengthy history. Dreams then do not often create folk tales. A converse casual relation, that of folk-tale as cause and dream a consequence, can certainly be drawn. The evidence for it is insistent. The personality of the animal or other being dreamed, the characteristics of the animal or other curing power dreamed, are always reflections of the ancient folk tale characterizations of such beings. If a native dreams of and acquires a grizzly or fish hawk or wolf guardian "power," he dreams of a being that has just the same sort of personality as the same beings have in the ancient tales that tell about their adventures in the myth age of long, long ago. In this manner the folk literature must have exerted a constant and intimate stimulation and moulding of the dream life of each native. In short, the dreams of natives affected directly not their folk-tales but their song-poetry; and, on the other hand, their folktales determined to a considerable extent their dream life and the songs heard in the dreams.
I have no sharply drawn report of a spontaneous native Coos dream, dreamt recently. I have been able to secure only second-hand statements that so-and-so dreamt of surf and breakers, or of water-foam-bubbles, or if a violent wind storm. And I have the conventional interpretations applied to these dreams—long life, wealth, proximate death, or what not.
I secured a few semi-conventionalized dreams which all courageous natives hoped to experience in order to attain wealth. The following are such: two men are encountered, squatting, gambling, betting each other. Or a light or fire is seen near the village graveyard, it is approached in great fear, a person or body is observed there, its head is bowed; it is really a corpse; the one who approaches must take mucous from the nose of the corpse in order to become wealthy. Later the mucous will become a dentalium—the highly-prized sea shell used as tribal coin —which will multiply and give great wealth. To the native these dreams are not dreams in our sense, they are very real experiences that ​some more fortunate or brave people have, on a rare day. The native draws a line between dream experience and matter-of-fact experience that is not the line we draw. What is only a false imaginative phantom-like trick of the mind to us, is assumed by the native to be an actual occurrence, and a most desirable though terrifying one, where real "dead people" were met, met not by the physical body but by its non-physical "soul" counterpart. No native would tell about such an encounter he assumed he himself had. But he would advise his children that if they have such an experience they should recognize it for what it is worth, be brave, and profit by it.
The natives' narrative-explanations of such things rank in the oral literature on a level beneath that occupied by what we may properly label "myth" narrations and which I called "folktales" above; this lowlier level of the oral literature may be labeled conveniently "tales". It may very well be that the part of the native literature that comes under the rubric "tales" is historically brief, and originally created out of the stuff of dreams, if not from occasional other sources. If the ancient animal myths or other myths of ancient beings are not traceable to dream origins, or affected much by dream mechanisms, we must assume that dream origins and mechanisms, whatever they were—and I fear we will never do much about analysis of them in the case of the nearly extinct Coos—did exercise some sort of role in the body of the Coos literature called "tales."
5
MYTHS
Tallapus and the Cedar A Clatsop Myth
By Katherine E. Judson
Once Tallapus was travelling from the country of the Tillamooks to the country of the Clatsops. Tallapus made himself into a coyote.
​Tallapus passed the mountains and headlands of the coast. Then he followed the trail through the deep woods. As he was travelling along, Tallapus saw an immense cedar. The inside was hollow. He could see it through a big gap which opened and closed. The gap opened and closed as the tree swayed in the wind. Tallapus cried, "Open, Cedar Tree!" Then the tree opened. Tallapus jumped inside. He said, "Shut, Cedar Tree!" Then the tree closed. Tallapus was shut inside the tree. After a while Tallapus said, "Open Cedar Tree!" Then the tree opened. Tallapus stepped out of it. The tree was a very strange one. So Tallapus told the tree to open, and jumped inside. Then he told it to close. Tallapus did this many times.
At last Tallapus was inside the tree. Tallapus said, "Open, Cedar Tree!" The tree did not answer. Tallapus was angry. He called to the tree. He kicked the tree. The tree did not answer. Then Tallapus rememebred that he was Coyote, the wisest and cunningest of all animals. Then Tallapus began to think.
After he thought, Tallapus called the birds to help him. He told them to peck a hole through Cedar Tree. The first was Wren. Wren pecked and pecked at the great cedar until her bill was blunted. But Wren could not even make a dent. Therefore Tallapus called her Wren. Then Tallapus called the other birds. Sparrow came, Robin came, Finch came, but they could not even break the heavy bark. So Tallapus gave each a name and sent them away. Then Owl came, and Raven, and Hawk, and Eagle. They could not make even a little hole. So Tallapus gave each a name and sent them away. Then he called Little Woodpecker. Finally Little Woodpecker made a tiny hole. Then big Yellow Hammer came and pecked a large hole. But the hole was too small for Tallapus. So he saw there was no help from the birds.
Then Tallapus remembered again that he was Coyote, the wisest and cunningest of all the animals. Then Tallapus began to think.
After he thought, Tallapus began to take himself apart. ​He took himself apart and slipped each piece through Yellow Hammer's hole. First he slipped a leg through, then a paw, then his tail, then his ears, and his eyes, until he was through the hole, and outside the cedar tree. Then Tallapus began to put himself together. He put his legs and paws together, then his tail, his nose, his ears, then his body. At last Tallapus put himself together again except his eyes. He could not find his eyes. Raven had seen them on the ground. Raven had stolen them. So Tallapus, the Coyote, the wisest and cunningest of all animals, was blind.
But Tallapus did not want the animals to know he was blind. Tallapus smelled a wild rose. He found the bush and picked two rose leaves. He put the rose leaves in place of his eyes. Then Tallapus travelled on, feeling his way along the trail.
Soon he met a squaw. Squaw began to jeer: "Oh, ho, you seem to be very blind."
"Oh, no," said Tallapus, "I am measuring the ground. I can see better than you can. I can see tomanowas rays." Squaw was greatly astonished. Tallapus pretended to see wonderful things at a great distance. Squaw said, "I wish I could see tomanowas rays."
Tallapus said, "Change eyes with me. Then you can see tomanowas rays."
So Tallapus and Squaw traded eyes. Tallapus took Squaw's eyes, and gave her the rose leaves. Then Tallapus could see as well as ever. Squaw could see nothing.
Tallapus said, "For your folly you must always be a snail. You must creep. You must feel your way on the ground."
Ever since that time snails have been blind. They have to creep slowly over the ground.
6
LEGENDS
How the Indians Got Their Mouths
Condensed Episode of a Klickitat Legend
By Clarence Orvel Bunnell
Clarence Orvel Bunnell, who was born and spent his childhood in Klickitat County, Washington, has been listening first-hand to Indian legends since as far back as he can remember. His father's ranch, reaching back to the Columbia, was situated east of Wishram near where the Sam Hill castle now stands, on the main Indian trail leading to the Celilo fishing grounds. There was a Klickitat camp and burying pit on the property and there were many old carvings and paintings along the cliffs.
The first complete fable he ever heard came to him when he was a small boy, in lieu of cash for his produce. A tribe of Shoshones encamped on the Bunnell place overnight, buying hay, melons and fruit. Most of them paid for what they got but one old chief was short of money. So he took three hours to tell the boy a story, giving a very reasonable outline of the history of the Klickitat and MidColumbia Indians. This story was interwoven with pure fable and told how the many channels were cut through the Celilo Falls. The chief was a good story teller. He used many signs and word pictures. The small lad listened with rapt attention and has never forgotten.
Mr. Bunnell lives in Portland and is an engineer by profession. His book, Legends of the Klickitats, from which this condensed episode is taken, is a Klickitat version of the story of the Bridge of the Gods. It is written with naturalness, freshness and charm, and with out the conventionality of style established by writers of Indian legends, myths, fables and tales.
In the beginning, when the Earth was very new and the Indians first came to live upon it, no person had a mouth. Their faces were smooth, with no sort of opening between the nose and chin. . . . Koyoda decided to make mouths for them. . . . Having gained the consent of the Indians, Koyoda lost no time in preliminaries but immediately put the men to work gathering fuel and building immense fires along the base of the black-rock cliffs at the foot of the mountain. As soon as the rocks became sufficiently heated, he had the wo​men carry water and throw it upon them so that they broke into small pieces. Of these pieces he had the Indians gather those having thin, sharp edges, carry them out upon the plain and place them in small heaps at regular intervals. . . .
When he thought there were flints enough for his purpose placed about the plain, Koyoda had the Indians gather in tribes or family groups. Then causing them to fall into a deep sleep, he placed them upon their backs in great rows, each family or tribe to itself. Having the groups finally arranged to his satisfaction, he proceeded to one side of the plain at the outer edge of all the mass of people, took up a sharp flint from one of the heaps and began cutting mouths.
His first thought was to make just a straight mouth and leave the rest to nature, but, as he worked, it occurred to him that a man should have one sort of mouth and a woman another sort, that the mouth of a baby should be different from that of a grown person and the mouth of an old man should be different from that of a youth. From this time forward he studied the faces of his subjects more carefully and fashioned the mouths accordingly. Koyoda could read the hearts of men from a study of their faces. He so made the mouths that everyone might read the characters back of them.
There were many, many people. Koyoda worked for days and days. There were times when he became very tired; times when he thought of quitting, but somehow he managed to keep going and finally finished the last one.
Of course, at times when he was so terribly tired he did not do such nice work as when he was fresh. At those times, too, he often rested one hand with most of his weight upon the nose of the Indian whose mouth he was fashioning. This, of course, tended to flatten out that particular nose and sometimes left it in no very pretty shape. It is because of these things which we have just mentioned that some Indians have ugly mouths, some have pretty mouths, some have thick lips and some have flat noses, but they all, somehow, tell the story of the personality back of them.
After he had finished the last month, Koyoda awakened ​all the Indians and cautioned them not to try to talk or eat until their mouths had healed. As is usual with people, some were too curious or too greedy to wait. They are the ones, the corners of whose mouths turn down. . . .
7
TALES
The First Ship Seen by the Clatsops
Historical Tale of the Clatsops
By Dr. Franz Boas
As Translated from the Chinook of Charles Cultee
The son of an old woman had died. She wailed for him a whole year and then she stopped. Now one day she went to Seaside. There she used to stop, and she returned. She returned walking along the beach. She nearly reached Clatsop; now she saw something. She thought it was a whale. When she came near it she saw two spruce trees standing upright on it. She thought, "Behold! it is no whale. It is a monster." She reached the thing that lay there. Now she saw that its outer side was all covered with copper. Ropes were tied to these spruce trees and it was full of iron. Then a bear came out of it. He stood on the thing that lay there. He looked just like a bear, but his face was that of a human being. Then she went home. Now she thought of her son, and cried, saying, "Oh, my son is dead and the thing about which we heard in tales is on shore." When she nearly reached the town she continued to cry. The people said, "Oh, a person comes crying. Perhaps somebody struck her." The people made themselves ready. They took their arrows. An old man said, "Listen!" Then the people listened. Now she said all the time, "Oh, my son is dead, and the thing about which we heard in tales is on shore." The people said, "What may it be?" They went running to meet her. They said, "What is it?" "Ah, something lies there and it is thus. There are two bears on it, or maybe they are people." Then the people ran. They reached the thing that lay there. Now the people, ​or what else they might be, held two copper kettles in their hands. Now the first one reached there. Another one arrived. Now the persons took their hands to their mouths and gave the people their kettles. They had lids. The men pointed inland and asked for water. Then two people ran inland. They hid themselves behind a log. They returned again and ran to the beach. One man climbed up and entered the thing. He went down into the ship. He looked about in the interior of the ship; it was full of boxes. He found brass buttons in strings half a fathom long. He went out again to call his relatives, but they had already set fire to the ship. He jumped down. These two persons had also gone down. It burnt just like fat. Then the Clatsop gathered the iron, the copper, and the brass. Then all the people learned about it. The two persons were taken to the chief of the Clatsop. Then the chief of the one town said, "I want to keep one of the men with me." The people almost began to fight. Now one of them was taken to one town. Then the chief was satisfied. Now the Quenaiult, the Chehalis, the Cascades, the Cowlitz, and the Klickitat learned about it and they all went to Clatsop. The Quenaiult, the Chehalis, and the Willapa went. The people of all the towns were there. The Cascades, the Cowlitz, and the Klickitat came down the river. All those of the upper part of the river came down to Clatsop. Strips of copper two fingers wide and going around the arm were exchanged for one slave each. A piece of brass two fingers wide was exchanged for one slave. A nail was sold for a good curried deerskin. Several nails were given for long dentalia. The people bought this and the Clatsop became rich. Then iron and brass were seen for the first time. Now they kept these two persons. One was kept by each chief; one was at the Clatsop town at the Cape.
8
GEOGRAPHIC NAMES
One enduring literary heritage we have from the Indians is written on the maps and trips euphoniously off our tongues in daily speech​—Indian words, echoic and beautiful, that name the physical features of our far-reaching landscape. Lewis A. McArthur, geographer and historian of Portland, has done much to confirm and extend the partiality of the people for these Indian place names. In his widely known book, Oregon Geographic Names, he estimates that out of about 2300 headings recorded by him to cover about 4000 physical features, a little over 23 per cent are of Indian origin, "some of which were applied by the Indians themselves, and some later on by whites." What they called the places when they went that way in their moccasined feet, we call them today. This much at least of Oregon Indian literature is permanent and forever insured against loss.
Nearly every sort of physical feature of the wide Oregon country is heir to this aboriginal terminology. With no at tempt to be complete, there are Wahkeena Falls, Hoquarten Slough, Yaquina Bay, Yainax Butte, Wauna Point, Speelyeis Columns, Soosap Peak, Chucksney Mountain, Tututni Pass, Wapinitia Cut-off, Techumtas Island, Tualatin Plains, Siltcoos Lake, Chewaucan Marsh, and the Little Luckiamute — every one a phrase for poetry, a pleasant-sounding poutpourri from the Yakimas, Warm Springs, Yaquinas, Klamaths, Klickitats, Calapooias, and others.
And in spite of the tradition of flattery to popular generals and statesmen in the nomenclature of counties, there euphoniously spotting the map of Oregon are Clackamas, Clatsop, Coos, Klamath, Multnomah, Tillamook, Umatilla, Wallowa, Wasco and Yamhill.
9
PETROGLYPHS AND PICTOGRAPHS OR INDIAN PICTURE WRITING
By Earl Marshall
This statement on Indian picture writing was given in an interview by Earl Marshall, a Portland engineer, who with his brother and uncle have made one of the most extensive and representative Indian collections in Oregon. There is hardly a picture rock in the state that they have not photographed. Mr. Marshall was graduated from the University of Oregon in 1910 and has since followed the ​profession of engineering, his Indian studies and photography having been a hobby with him for many years.
Numerous picture rocks are found in Oregon, especially along the Columbia River, the Snake River, the Owyhee River, around the Oregon City region, Gaston and Cascadia. There are more picture rocks in the vicinity of The Dalles than in any other place in the world.
These picture rocks are divided into two general groups—the petroglyphs and the pictographs. Many of these carvings are both. There is a possibility they were all originally painted.
As time dimmed and erased the older pictures, new ones were placed right over the old. Thus records of centuries have been engraved on the same rock.
The methods used in making the carvings was a constant pecking with a gravel rock chiseled to a sharp point.
Some are picture writings without a doubt, while some are just plain pictures. No one knows what the greatest part of them represent, and no one will ever know. There are many clearly recognizable pictures of the sun, moon, elk, deer, fish and coyote.
The water devil is a sign found around the fishing places. These are danger signs. Fishing is dangerous there because the water devil is waiting to grab the fisherman into the rushing stream.
One sign commonly found along the coast region is the thunder bird. The Indians believed that thunder was made by this bird clapping its wings together. If a storm should arise while they were out in their canoes, and if they should meet with some fatal disaster, it was believed that the thunder bird had devoured them.
The Indians used to own their own private family fishing site. This was designated on the rocks above it. Tribal and family signs were usually marked by the cat. This site was passed down from generation to generation.
On one rock in the vicinity of The Dalles was found a picture of the sun, moon, the heart, and lungs, a cat, and ​various animals. This is supposed to mean that during the season that both the sun and moon may be seen, the fishing is very good. The heart and lungs signify that it would take a very strong, brave Indian to fish there with a net, because it was quite a dangerous place. The cat represents the family and the tribe to which they belong. The various animals have nothing to do with the fish story, so they are evidently just incidental pictures.
There is a large rock kept in the city hall of Portland which was found in the Snake River region. The signs on this rock were made by Indian braves who desired to become warriors. As one of their tests, they would have to go to some desolate, hazardous place alone, and stay for several days. To prove that they made this journey and stayed the necessary length of time, they were required to record some picture on the rock.
There are also many burial markers, which designate their tribe and family, and tell of their deeds. The family and tribal markings appeared also on their shields.
Some of these pictures are clearly elaborate sign writings. These have many figures, marks, and many dots, but there is no record of their meaning.
One very interesting picture is in the Wishram district. This is supposed to be the guardian spirit of the Wishrams. It is made on a large flat rock in such a way that the eyes seem always to be watching every one at any angle. This picture is still very distinct.