ST. QUARTERLY Well, it wasn’t Tiny’s. Quite sedate. All whites. On the mirror was drawn a naked girl floating in a beer mug. “ House Rules SKUNK Buys Beer.” Stuff like that. Outside, though, was Ruth’s House of Treasures, a second-hand junk store. Some Li’l Abner guys were selling, fetish-like, rattlesnake belts, skins and pen holders with a rattler buried in clear platic! Very lifelike. ( I said, “ He looks like he wants out of there.” The guy coolly replied, “ He don’t have no wants no more.” I found the Indian bar. In Skid Road Pendleton. Olympia Cigar Store bar in a brick building. SW Emigrant Avenue. They were there, all right — on the sidewalk, sleeping in cars. Whole families. Staggering around dead drunk. Cars full of kids wearing red bandanas like Mexicans do. “ You fuckin’ Nez Perce, man!” lady says in the bar. Another says to the bartender, “ Hey, brother, give me a Black Velvet with a water back.” “Whattya drinkin’? Do you know how to make a stinger?” Leaning on elbows. An Indian in brown felt hat with braids says, almost to himself, “ Nobody didn’t tell me nothin’.” When an Indian drinks, there’s nothing sicker. The complexion changes from brown to gray-brown, sickening. It’s as if cement or Crisco were injected into the veins. I decide to leave town and drive back to The Dalles. Celilo Falls Celilo Falls was the great Indian fishing grounds on the Columbia. For centuries, they caught the spring and fall salmon runs. Lots of fish. With nets on poles, hanging out over the roaring waters, they dipped for fish. Each family had a traditional platform. Chief Tommy Thompson of the Wy’ams presided over the village. Wy’am means “ echo of the water against the rocks.” He was over 100 when he died. In the early fifties, The Dalles Dam swallowed Celilo and a way of life. “ Which milepost is it? 97? Where Celilo was originally?” I ask myself. Looking at the flat, choppy, lake-like water, I can’t tell. At the falls site, there is only a rest area with grass and concrete-block restrooms. Across the freeway, dilapidated houses string along a chuckhole-filled road. Ralph Friedman chronicles the social despair of the situation in A Touch o f Oregon. The Dalles At the old Fort Dalles surgeons’ quarters, still intact, I bought a copy of Come to Our Salmon Feast by Martha McKeown. This children’s book pictures the 1951 spring salmon feast at Celilo Falls. How evocative! Large photos of Chief Thompson and his grandsons, women, the inside of the long house, dances, and reverential ceremony. The Warm Springs, Wishram, Wasco, Klickitat, and Yakimas were invited to the celebration. The Dalles is a very historic town. Lewis and Clark, French voyagers, early missionaries, pioneers, gold seekers, steamboaters. At Pulpit Rock, Jason Lee converted the first Indian in 1838. The rock is embedded in asphalt, and located behind the high school. Visit the city museum. It overflows with memorabilia, maps, photos, odd stuff: pistols, clothing, Victorian hair wreaths, knickknacks. With its soaring spire, red-brick St. Peter’s church is a beautiful piece of architecture! Downtown The Dalles is charming, reminiscent of the fifties. The Hand- Out drive-in. The kids have all the energy, dragging the gut. On Saturday night. I notice a headline in the paper: “ Indian Take 30,000 Salmon From Columbia.” It’s still not the 60 percent of the Chinook run allotted by the court, to Columbia River Indians. Downriver, non-native gill- netters caught 52,800 in their one-day season. I slept on the road to Dufur, in the back seat of my car. The rain drummed on the roof. In the morning, stiff as hell, I awoke pleasantly to the cooing of mourning doves. I was parked near the Celilo Converter Station, largest AC-DC transformer in the world. (Upriver, the John Day Dam is reputed to be “ the largest producer of electrical power in the free | world.” Equivalent to four nuclear power plants!) Searching for the Past All day Sunday I will spend my time looking for petroglyphs. Suns and water devils and fish. The dams took their toll of most of them, N.G. Seaman, in his definitive book, Indian Relics o f the Pacific Northwest, tells us. (That large boulder in the courtyard at Portland’s City Hall is called the “Wallula Monolith.” It is covered with petroglyphs.) I hesitate to reveal the exact location of the few artifacts. Near burial grounds, these artifacts need to be protected, and they are by the parks system. Despite that, there are overlays of other graffiti. By freaks on acid? And high school kids. Even a “ WSC” obscenity. The largest, “ She Who Watches,” is three feet or so in diameter. The others are smaller. As you search the stone facets of the shattered rocks, lichen stained, spotted white and fluorescent green — searching for prehistoric symbols — it’s like an acid trip. Are you hallucinating something there? Or is there really something there? Has the weather cracked lines in the rock, or were they scratched by an ancient hand? The grass is yellow and dry. I see a bleached cow skull and rib bones. The locusts sound like rattlers, when they chirr their wings. I’m spooked. Do the snakes protect the bones of the Indian dead? I saw a small striped one, about eight inches, no rattles. Something else moves suddenly in the grass. Your vote CAN count your Elect Reagan and he might. . . • blunder into war. • continue to ruin the economy. • as a bumbler make the White House an international joke. Elect Carter and he might. . . • blunder into war. • continue to ruin the economy. • as a bumbler make the White House an international joke. Vote for Anderson? • Like Jimmy Carter in 1976, Anderson is running a campaign based on his "personality." His independent candidacy leaves us nothing after Nov. 4. Your vote can count. The only solution to our current political mess is the building of a new party. A party whose power rests solely in the hands of workers, consumers, small business, family farmers and community residents. The Citizen's Party is such a party. Can Vote The Citizen's Party calls for a rebuilding of basic industries under local community and worker control. Phasing out nuclear power with a real commitment to renewable energy. Vigorous support for women, minorTsagaglalal, or “She Who Watches” “ I ask forgiveness for violating your space,” I whisper to Her. A Picasso-like artist, 1,000 or several hundred years ago? painted in reddish ochre a guardian face, as a shield, in front of the river. The drawing is in stone’s lines and paint. Some of the lines have been chalked in white. Is Tsagaglalal an owl woman? Is the petroglyph a woman at all? It could be a bear — the drawing has ears. No owl beak, but nostrils. The mouth is vague; only the enlarged eyes grip your own. It’s a picture drawing, simplified, yes, but its commanding power lies in its not being easily identifiable. A spirit creature: not bird, not bear, not moon, not woman, but calling up almost preternaturally these associations. Yet more. The Indians said of this aweinspiring petroglyph, “ She watches continued next page we do it? In just six months we have gained ballot access in over 30 states, a record smashing success fora party in its first year. Furthermore just 5% of the vote will get us millions in federal funding to organize in the future. ities, veterans and the right of workers to unionize. Join the fight against des truc tive co rpo ra te policy and build real Economic Democracy. Invest in the future, vote Barry Commoner and LaDonna Harris. Paid for by Oregon Citizens' Party, David Shaich, Treasurer, 1300 SW Washington. 37
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