An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties; with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 82

Author: Interstate publishing co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate publishing company
Number of Pages: 1146

USA > Washington > Kittitas County > An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties; with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 82
USA > Washington > Yakima County > An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties; with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 82
USA > Washington > Klickitat County > An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties; with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 82

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The commonly accepted estimate of the In- dian is a symposium of impressions formed of him while at war with the whites. At such times all that is basest, most savage, cruel and deceitful in his nature is uppermost; the side of his char- acter brought into bold relief is the worst side, and an impression decidedly unfavorable to him is the natural consequence. So it happened that . the Pacific coast pioneers came to believe the only good Indian was a dead Indian. But now that the conquest of the red man is complete, that there is no longer a chance of his waging success- ful warfare against the white men, a reaction has set in and many are coming to look more kindly upon the vanquished race, and to contemplate with feelings of sympathy the Indian's impend- ing doom. Men are beginning to realize the pathetic aspect of the Indian's situation ; how that his race has wrestled without guiding star for ages with the problem of destiny; yielding at last its native land to strangers and going out of existence as a race, leaving not even so much as a history behind. "Almost all that is known," says Kuykendall, "of the past hopes, fears, loves, battles, intellectual, physical and moral life of un-

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counted millions of human beings could be writ- ten on a single page. All the rest is silent and forever lost in oblivion. That the Indian race was capable of a great degree of civilization is evident from the ruins of magnificent cities found in the southern part of the continent. That this country is very ancient and has known a high degree of civilization is certain. Whether the North American Indians worked out their own destiny without any extraneous influence will probably never be known. Our Northwest Pacific country has a wonderful past as well as a grand future. As having some bearing on the past his- tory of our tribes, it may be mentioned that while boring an artesian well in Nampa, Idaho, Mr. M. A. Kurtz found, July 24, 1889, a pottery image of a human form, almost perfect in every detail, at a depth of nearly three hundred feet. The well went first through the natural soil, gravel, etc., about sixty-five feet ; then through a lava flow of about fifteen feet ; and the rest of the distance was through layers of sand, quicksand, clay and peb- bles. The image was found in sand underneath all these. It was of burnt clay and about one inch long. Who made it, where it came from, how it came where it was found and how long it had lain there are mysteries that will never be un- veiled. This curious find would go to indicate that, at some remote age back of all written his- tory, there were in this country, somewhere, peo- ple who were well advanced in civilization and art."

The origin of the Indian is another unsolved problem. Possibly the most feasible explanation of his presence is that his race is identical with the Mongolian and that his ancestors drifted across the Pacific ocean, probably where the two continents, Asia and America, approach each other most nearly. There are, perhaps, no physi- cal differences between the Chinese and the In- dians that cannot be accounted for by the effect of climate and environment. The war spirit is much more dominant in the American than in the Asiatic race, but this may have resulted from the physical conditions of the country in which the ancestral Indian found himself, being devel- oped first by his warfare with the animal crea- tion for subsistence and later by intertribal bellig- erence incident to chieftainship and a tribal form of government. Indeed, the recent Japanese- Chinese war furnished abundant proof that at least one branch of the original Mongolian stock was not deficient in martial spirit. Whether differences of environment and conditions are sufficient to cause the Asiatic Mongolians to be noted for their patient industry, while the Amer- ican Indian is noted for his utter shiftlessness and contempt for anything like drudgery, is a matter of opinion.

The account of their origin given by the Pa- cific coast Indians themselves is of interest pri-

marily as a part of their religion and mythology and incidentally from the fact that it presup- poses a condition of physical features such as geological science teaches to have existed in past ages. The observations of the Indian led him to think that much that is now dry land was for- merly covered with water, and the geologist's 'research has led him to the same conclusion. The legends of the different tribes regarding their creation, though not in perfect accord, are simi- lar in all their essential features. The version of the eastern Washington Indians is thus given by Dr. Kuykendall :

A great while ago, in the wonderful age of the an- cients, when all kinds of animals spoke and reasoned, and before the present race of Indians existed, there was a mighty beaver, Wishpoosh, that lived in Lake Cle-Elum. This beaver was god of the lake, owning it, and claim- ing property in all the fish, wood, and everything in and about its waters. He lived in the bottom of the lake; his eyes were like living fire; his eyebrows bright red; and his immense nails or claws shone and glistened like burnished silver. Like so many others of the Indians' animal gods, he was a bad character, and was very de- structive to life. He had made the lake and its sur- roundings a place of terror; for he destroyed and de- voured every living thing that came in his way. To those he could not kill, he denied the privilege of taking fish, of which there were plenty in the water. All about in the country the (animal) people were hungry for fish; and, with plenty near by, it seemed hard that they must starve. Coyote, in his journeyings, found the (animal) people in this sad plight, and their condition moved him to do something for their relief. As many unsuccessful attempts had been made to destroy the monster, Coyote knew he had a big job on hand, and so made elaborate preparations for the encounter. He armed himself with a powerful spear with a long and strong handle. This spear he bound to his wrist with strong cords of twisted ta-hoosh (Indian flax). Thus equipped, he went up to the lake, and finding old Wishpoosh, drove his spear into

him. The wounded and enraged water god plunged into the lake and down to the bottom. The cord of the spear handle being fast to Coyote's wrist, he was dragged along by the infuriated beast; so that now the two went plung- ing and tearing along through the lake. A fearful strug- gle ensued, in which they tore a gap through the moun- tain, and came wallowing and swimming into the lake that then covered Kittitas valley. On across that they came, and thrashed through the ridge forming the Naches gap, and entered the lake that then stood over the Yakima valley. Still the mighty beaver god struggled; Coyote hung on, and they struck the ridge below the Ahtanum, and tore through, forming Union gap; and then they went floundering on down, tearing the channel of the Yakima river. Poor Coyote was getting badly worsted, and was almost strangled, and was clutching at trees along the bank, trying to stop his wild career down the stream. He caught hold of the large cottonwoods, but they broke off or pulled up; he tried the firs, but they tore out by the roots; he clawed at the rocks, but they crumbled off. Nothing could stand before the irresist- ible power of the mighty Wishpoosh. Exhausted and al- most drowned, he found himself wallowing in the mouth of the Columbia among the breakers. The muskrat was standing on the shore laughing at him.

By this time the beaver god was dead; and the now half drowned Coyote came out, dragging his game with him. When he came out, he wiped the water from his face and eyes, and proceeded to cut up the beaver's car- cass. As he cut the different parts, he made of them the

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Indian tribes. Of the belly he made the lower Columbia and Coast Indians saying, "You shall always be short and fat, and have great bellies." Of the legs he made the Cayuses, saying, "You shall be fleet of foot and strong of limb." Of the head he made the northern tribes, saying, "You will be men of brains, and strong in war." Of the ribs he made the Yakimas or Peshwan-wa-pams. The various tribes had characteristics derived from the parts from which they were taken. Last of all there was a lot of blood, pieces of entrails and filth, which Coyote gathered up and flung off towards the country of the Sioux and the Snakes, saying, "You shall always be people of blood and violence." Having peopled the country with tribes of Indians, he started up the Colum- bia, and, reaching the point where the Columbia and Snake unite their waters, the mighty maker of the red men paused. Standing there, at the meeting place of the waters, with hands outstretched like the arms of a bal- ance, first towards the east and west, then toward the north and south, he said: "Earth is full of inhabitants; there is no longer place here for me." Then he ascended to the sky.'

The god "Coyote," who figures so prominently in the foregoing legend, was, in the Indian mythol- ogy, the chiefest of a large number of animal deities. It seems to be generally believed by In- dians that the animals as they now exist are degen- erate sons and daughters of an ancestry endowed with the power of speech and a large degree of in- telligence. Indeed it is stated that even inanimate objects were thought to have possessed, in that wonderful ancient time, the ability to speak and to perform marvels. The Indians believe that a spirit essence still exists in material blankets, beads and other articles of comfort and adornment, attesting their faith in the doctrine by burying such articles with their dead. They think that the soul of the blanket, pipe or other object attaches itself to the spirit of the departed and in some mysterious way ministers to his comfort in the undiscovered coun- try. They believe, a fortiore, in the existence of animal souls, and some of them are in the habit of slaying a horse over the grave of his master, that the spirit of the animal may bear the spirit of the man in its journey to that good land to which the grave is the only portal.

The Indian's animal gods are a strange crea- tion of his imagination. They are grotesque creatures possessed of magical powers to defy the laws of nature; cunning, deceitful, treacherous, re- flecting with fidelity the moral character of the race that fabricated them. In their magical powers they were akin to the divine; in physique they were gigantic animals: in ethical standards they were ordinary Indians.

To Coyote, their great deity, are attributed won- derful powers. He could change the aspect of nature, convert beings to stone, transform himself into any form he wished. While he was not alto- gether good, and seems to have been a believer in the doctrine that a benevolent end might justify almost any means necessary to its accomplishment, yet he was for the most part the friend of the In-

dian and the enemy of the tyrant gods who would do him harm. With all his powers, he sometimes suffered from hunger and thirst, often found him- self in ludicrous and absurd positions, was frequent- ly guilty of folly and frivolity, and wise though he sometimes was, was forced more than once to take counsel of his three little sisters who lived in his stomach and were, in bodily form, like a species of berry. It is said that whenever these knowing females had given him advice, he would say "Yes, that is just what I thought," taking all the credit to himself. In order to rid the world of a troublesome one-horned dog, he created a two-horned canine out of clay which vanquished the hated animal in various feats. He thereupon traded for the hated dog and took him out of the country. Then, the two-horned creature, having accomplished the pur- pose of his creation, turned back to the vile clay whence he sprung.

But this was by no means the most wonderful of the deeds of the famed Coyote. He destroyed malevolent water gods; slew Amash, the owl; fought with Eenumtla, the thunder, beat him un- mercifully and so broke his power that he is now seldom able to kill anyone, though he often frights; outwitted certain beaver women, who were in the habit of preventing salmon from ascending the rivers, and brought it about that the salmon might swim to the waters of the interior without hin- drance; transformed the female aspirants for the favor of his son into rocks; cursed the monstrous tick god, who thereafter became small, feeble, in- significant and vile; slew by treachery the giant mosquito god, forming from his head the race of diminutive insects which now annoy mankind; at- tempted with Eagle to bring the dead back from spirit land and did many other wonderful things.

But the mighty Coyote at length overleaped himself. In a climax of audacity he ascended to heaven. This boldness proved his utter undoing, for on account of his presumption, or the sinfulness and deceit of his past life, he was fated to experi- ence a tremendous fall, not only from his elevated position in space but from all the exaltation of at- tribute and magical power which were formerly his. There are several different versions among the Indian tribes of this fall of Coyote. One of them is as follows :

Coyote, in the course of his checkered career, had at one time occasion to mourn the death of his five daughters, or, according to some, sisters. While wandering about disconsolate, he was di- rected to a rope reaching up to heaven, having found which he began the ascent. Encouraged by a voice from above, he climbed higher and higher, until at last the strains of music reached his ear and looking up he saw grass and trees, and streams of water. He had paused to listen and when he again attempted to move upward, he discovered, to his consternation, that his paws had become

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fastened to the rope, so that he could neither as- cend nor descend. While in this ridiculous posi- tion between earth and heaven, he heard a voice saying, "You cannot come up; your heart has been very bad; you have been fork-tongued and deceitful, and have practiced evil. You are unfit for the heavenly country. You never can come up until you have confessed your wrongs and put away your evil spirit."

A long time Coyote hung there before he could bring himself to make this humiliating confession, for he was a great god and not a little proud of his achievements. At length, however, he made a clean breast of all his iniquities, and was drawn up through a trap door into the sky country. Four of his daughters received him joyfully, but the fifth upbraided him for his sinfulness and presumption in coming to the heavenly land. She ended up by giving him a shove through the trap door. Coyote sought the rope but it had been drawn up into heaven, so there was nothing to hold onto and he fell precipitate. For more than "nine days,"-a whole year-he fell and fell. When at last he struck the earth he was mashed as flat as a tule mat; nor was there consolation in the voice which spoke to him from heaven, for it pronounced a curse upon him, saying : "You shall be a vagabond and wanderer, and shall be a common contemptible coyote, and shall forever cry and howl for your sins." Thus it came to pass that the coyote is a most ignoble animal, whining and crying of nights; wandering about continually in its destitution and friendlessness.

Referring to the strange admixture of conflict- ing characteristics attributed to this fantastic ani- mal deity, Dr. Kuykendall says: "In the incon- gruities of the Indian god we see the incongruities of the Indian mind; for his god was the product of his own imagination and he clothed him with such attributes as were in harmony with his own intelli- gence, feelings and moral nature. Since these myths and traditions have been handed down for centuries, they convey to us a picture of the Indian character for ages back, more correct, perhaps, than any written history could give us. The myth- makers had no desire to flatter or traduce; but un- consciously, while telling of the doings of the gods, they told their own natures, feelings and impulses, and without knowing it gave us their own standard of morality."

A noticeable feature of the Indian mythology is that the death of a gigantic animal deity almost invariably resulted in the formation of a race simi- lar in some respects to the slain god, but smaller in size, vastly inferior in power and dignity and degenerate in every way. Thus the death of Amash, the owl god, gave to the world the hooting bird of the night; the death of the mosquito god resulted in the blood-sucking pest of modern times, and even the fall of Coyote himself was fruitful in the creation of a race of animals. It was natural that

the mythology of the Indian should take its form and substance from the animal creation. The ear- liest and the latest associations of the primitive red man were with the wild beasts of nature, and by the simplest psychological law he was constrained to weave them into his day-dreaming. The myth- ology of the Indian is the result of his efforts to solve the problem of origin, to explain nature as he saw it, a problem with which the mind of man has wrestled in all ages, and many times with as little success as has attended the philosophizing of the ancestral red man.

The Indian myth-maker did not pause when he had constructed a cosmogony of animal life. He sought also to explain by imaginative accounts many other phenomena of nature. The result is numerous myths concerning the origin of fire, the warm and cold winds, the existence of rocks in dif- ferent places, etc., etc. Lakes and streams and springs were peopled with mythological inhabitants of various shapes and characters, and even the re- mains of extinct mammalia yielded suggestions to the story teller. A sunken place on the north side of the Naches river near a small lake is supposed to be the place where the famed Coyote used to have a sweathouse; and a depression in a south hillside near the mouth of the Satus is pointed out as the spot where the warm wind rested over night when on his way to avenge the killing by the cold wind brothers of his father and uncles.

From the character of myths heretofore referred to, it may be seen that the Indians, in common with practically all other races of men, believe in a future existence. In reference to the peculiar features of the Indian's belief in the doctrine of the soul and immortality, we find this language in Dr. Kuykendall's excellent article:

As has been mentioned, the Indians believe that all objects are of a dual nature, having a soul or spirit-like existence independent of the material form. It is said that some of the Oregon tribes formerly held that the various organs of the body were each endowed with sep- arate souls. Among all the tribes the idea seemed to be that there were really two persons, the spirit or soul and the body with its animal life, and that the body could exist for some time while the soul was absent. This ghost-like self had the same form and visage as the body. While they believed in a spirit or soul, they do not ap- pear to have thought it was as much a reality as the body. There was a vague, misty unsubstantiality about it that must have been very unsatisfying to their minds. The soul could leave the body and go away in dreams and trances, and could appear as an apparition in places far from the body, with form and features recognizable. In their languages, life and breath or spirit and breath meant the same thing.

A good many if not all of the Indians believed that there were certain shamans or conjurers that could rob them of their souls, and that the body would continue to live on for a longer or shorter time, but that it must soon die. In their so-called doctoring pow-wows, the doctors professed to restore the absent soul to its owner, and thus make his recovery to health possible. Another idea quite prevalent among the tribes of northern Oregon and Washington was that the soul could come back and in-

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habit some other body. The most northerly tribes bor- dering upon and reaching into British Columbia thought the soul came back and entered certain birds, fish, or deer or elk. Others held that the soul came back in the body of infants born to near relatives. It entered the body of a female and appeared in her child. If the child strongly resembled the deceased, then there was no doubt but that he had appeared again; and his name was sooner or later conferred upon it. Some of the tribes in the Northwest held that the deceased could choose into what family he would be born again; and, among the poor and sick and suffering, life was laid down with little regret, believing they might after a while be born into wealthy or honorable families. It was generally believed that the spirits of the dead are out around the world very active and busy during the night, but that in the daytime they stay about graveyards and lonely, dark places. Some held that the dead go into a state of insensibility as soon as the light of day comes on; and that, when darkness broods over the world, their spirits come forth rehabilimented and happy, dancing, feasting and engaging in all kinds of pleasures during the hours of darkness.

Whatever happiness or bliss was attributed to those in the spirit land, there seems to have been a sort of vague dread and much misgiving in regard to it; and their legends show clearly enough that it was the general belief that it would be desirable to have the souls of the deceased return to earth; and that the existence here is really more substantial and desirable than that in the spirit land. Everything goes to show that for some cause there had been a great deal of change going on in the belief of the tribes for some time before the advent of the whites. Their traditions indicate that the Indians had been travelling and visiting more together than formerly. There is every indication that, at some period back only a few hundred years, the tribes had no horses, and their excursions were limited, and there were greater provin- cialisms in customs and beliefs than in later times. For- merly each little tribe had its own grounds, lived and died near their birthplaces, and seldom traveled to any extent. Under these circumstances, each had its own legends and myths, and its own particular belief as to the future. Now and for some years back there are found traces of several beliefs mixed in with all the tribes. There was much more independence in thought and dif- ference in religious belief than we have been prone to imagine. There was much more scepticism and tendency to unbelief than we have been taught to look for. Many individuals, when asked about the future state, will say, "I don't know." Some express a doubt as to the immor- tality of the soul; and some utterly deny it.

Among most of the tribes, there seems to have been a pretty distinct idea of rewards and punishments based on the Indian's idea of right and wrong. In nearly all cases, there was hope held out for relief and final entrance into the happy land. Generally, after an uncertain length of time spent in banishment, the sins of the offender were expiated, and he was permitted to pass in among the good, or was even assisted in. Among no tribes do we find anything like the orthodox fire and brimstone hell; but there are very close representations to the condition of the ancient Tantalus, forever tortured with images of everything pleasing to the senses, but which he was utterly unable to grasp. The Chinooks and Klickitats believed in a bright, happy land not very definitely located, where the good were permitted to enjoy themselves in hunting, fishing and every pleasure conceivable to the Indian mind; while the wicked were condemned to wander away in a land of cold and darkness to starve and freeze un- ceasingly. Some of the northern tribes say that in the other world there is a dark, mysterious lake or ocean; and that out of this lake there flow two rivers. Up one on the shores there is a beautiful country filled with all manner of berries and game, while the stream abounds in fish. Here the good Indian lives in happiness and com-

fort forever. Up the other river there is a land of frost and darkness, a stony, barren waste, a land of briars and brambles, where the sunlight never comes and where the wicked wander forever in cold, hunger and despair.

The Okanogans have an Indian heaven and a pecul- iar kind of hell. Instead of the orthodox cloven-footed, barbed-tailed devil, there is a being in human form with ears and tail of a horse. This fantastic being lives in the pine trees, and jumps about from tree to tree, and with a stick beats and prods the poor souls consigned to his dominions. If among the tribes of the Northwest there is any idea of a heaven in the sky or in some elevated spot in space, it probably was derived from priests or missionaries. In the extreme southern part of Oregon, the Indians represent the happy hunting grounds as be- yond a deep, dark gulf or chasm across which all must pass-some say on a slippery pole. The good manage to get over, but the evil fall in and reappear upon earth in the form of beasts, insects or birds. One of the most common ideas among the interior tribes was that the spirit land is situated far away towards the south or west. In its journey the soul meets far out on the way a spirit being who understands his life, and weighs all his con- duct and actions. If he has been bad, he is sent on to a crooked, wandering road that leads to a land of misty darkness, where the soul, forlorn, cold and hungry, for- ever wanders in despair; while the good are directed along a straight road leading to a country that is very beautiful, and abounding in everything the Indian can desire.

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An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties; with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 82

Author: Interstate publishing co., Chicago, pub Publication date: 1904 Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate publishing company Number of Pages: 1146

Author: Interstate publishing co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate publishing company
Number of Pages: 1146