Tillamook culture could probably be pinpointed in 1792 when Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River. This discovery officially started the fur trade of the ‘Boston’ men who sailed around Cape Horn to the Oregon Country for furs, then on to China, to dispose of these pelts..." It’s as though aliens from another universe suddenly arrived. And infected us with extraterrestrial viruses which our immunological systems couldn’t fight off. We earthlings would die like flies, just as the Indians did. Besides the bones, Alpha Centaurians would go about picking up Coca Cola caps. What the hell were these used for? they'd ask. Could they drive the Toyota—their green and greasy silicon webbed fingers on the wheel? Are you capable of harpooning a whale? or of carving a seaworthy canoe out of cedar? The Tillamooks are classified as Coastal Salish. They spoke Salishan, a different language from the Columbia River Chinook with whom they used sign language. The Tillamooks were related to the magnificent totem pole and wood carvers of British Columbia—the Nootka, Tlingit, Haida and the Bella Coola. (For certain visit the Northwest Indian collection at the Portland Art Museum. Pay special attention to the spooky Edward S. Curtis photos of The Winter Festival. The wooden masks are some of the finest art work ever created on the planet.) Four main groups of the Tillamook lived beside Tillamook Bay, Nehalem Bay and River, the Nestucca River and the Siletz. They dug clams, fished, gathered roots and hunted elk and deer. They lived in wood houses on the water. There were three critical periods in an Indian’s life: birth, the acquisition of a guardian spirit and death. A boy in his teens would be sent into the forest alone, with a knife and a blanket, for 10 days. He would fast and remain there until his vision came. If the spirit he saw were a salmon, he would be a fisherman. A woodpecker or beaver, a canoe building. A serpent, a shaman or medicine man. A shaman would heal the sick by giving herbs or driving the evil spirit from the body. Sometimes an Indian’s soul would leave his body and go to the Land of the Dead. The shaman's job was to bring it back...with a soulcatcher, a wooden paddle with designs on it. Shamen would meet at sacred spots and exchange cures with others. At Cape Meare’s is one such spot: the Octopus Tree. We are fortunate indeed to possess many of their oral traditions in unbowdlerized language. The true spirit of a people lives on in their literature. Their dreams, beliefs, sense of humor, sexual fantasies, fears and hopes—all that and more are contained in the myths. The introduction to Nehalem Tillamook Tales speaks of their annual myth cycle: “Tillamooks told myths only in midwinter, approximately during the months of December and January. If stories were told at any other time, it was believed that rain or even more disagreeable consequences would follow. Myths were not dramatized at the winter dances but were told around the firesides in the homes. Only old people were privileged to recount myths. Children and younger persons reclined on mats as they listened. Children were cautioned not to sit when listening lest they grow hunchbacked." Mrs. Clara Pearson, a full-blooded Nehalem speaker, dictated the tales she had heard, mostly from her father, to Elizabeth Jacobs in September of 1934. This story is excerpted from Nehalem Tillamook Tales. “Wild Woman Kills Otter” Crane was always wanting to catch small trout. He had a basket trap. Something had been stealing from his trap. He could not discover the thief. Wild Woman said, “I can catch him.” She went to that basket trap in the night. She watched. Very soon she heard a splashing noise. There the thief came. She saw, "That is Otter! He likes fish. He is the one who has been stealing fish all the time." She killed him and packed him home. She told Crane, "Now you can go get your fish. Here is the one who has been stealing your fish.” She skinned that Otter, she stretched the hide. She said, "I will make a headdress out of that hide.” That Otter was missed at home. His people knew where he had gone, they knew who had killed him. They said, "We will be revenged on her. We will kill her.” They sent a young man to get all the dangerous ones together. They told him, "You go and tell Grizzly Bear to come, get the Panthers, get Wildcat, bring all of the tribe together. Tell them we will have a Winter Dance. Then everybody will come.” Then they invited Wild Woman. They stationed those mean ones like Grizzly Bear at the doors, they told them, "If Wild Woman leaves to go home, grab her and tear her to pieces.” Wild Woman came with her husband Crane. She was wearing that otter-skin headdress. Everyone sang. They took turns singing. After a while it was Wild Woman’s turn to sing. Now she was to sing, and her husband was going to help her. She knew what those people were planning. Now she was going to use her [spirit] power. She sang, He had just entered the trap, he was swimming in the trap, that Otter. As he was coming in, in that basket trap, Otter was swimming. I killed him with my clitoris, With my clitoris I struck him. In that manner Wild Woman claimed that she had made a club of her clitoris and that was the Instrument with which she had killed Otter. The four brothers of that Otter, they felt very badly. She had called that dead Otter by name, the one she herself had killed. Crane was somewhat ashamed. He did not want to mention his wife's clitoris, he did not want to name that with which she had killed Otter. Wild Woman stopped singing. "Oh, ” she said to him, "what is there to be ashamed of? That was what it was. That Is what I kill with.” Then she remarked, "I am perspiring." She had danced as she sang. All of the time she had thought, "I will show you that you are not going to get me.” She told them, "I am going outdoors and get cooled off. I am sweating.” She went there to that door where those Grizzly Bears were waiting. She ordered them, "Let me by, Long Finger Nails." They did not move to touch her. They believed she was merely going out to cool off and would come back in. That was how she had said it. She went outdoors. She spoke, "From now on, in future, no person will kill anybody at a Winter Dance. He must wait and be revenged in a different manner on anyone who has damaged him.” (She made this law for the Winter Dance.) She ran home. Crane, her husband, flew out of the open smoke hole, he flew home. It was no use then. They had had their chance at her. They would not bother her any more. She had gotten away. This amazing culture thrived on Oregon s shores for more than 10,000 years, living harmoniously with the environment before the arrival of rapacious outsiders. And there were many visitors earlier than Lewis and Clark. T Early Visitors HE Chinook word for white men is "tlehonnipts.” Roughly meaning "those who drift ashore.” There were many Spanish and Oriental shipwrecks. One theory about the name Neahkahnie is that it comes from the corruption of the Spanish word for meat, "carne. ” So many elk browsed on Neahkahnie Mountain that early explorers noticed them. "Ne" is an Indian prefix for "place of.” Carbon-14 dated beeswax, possibly from a Spanish 1705 wreck, has been found. There are many tales of buried treasure. Particularly regarding Neahkahnie Mountain. Did the famed world navigator, Sir Francis Drake, and his crew land on Nehalem Bay and claim it as an English colony? Portus Nove Albionis. Some scholars believe so. A hundred curiously marked “surveyor” stones have been found on Neahkahnie. One had the ‘word "Deos” inscribed on it. The same word Drake used on a map of Central America. Using the English yard as a measurement, many more stones were discovered. (Caliban, could you have been a flatheaded, fish-eating coastal aboriginee? After Sir Francis Drake returned to London town and boasted of his exploits to Shakespeare, was The Tempest born?) An extraordinary claim is made in my handy and entertaming A Hiker’s Guide To The Oregon Coast Trail; "Another interesting find near Neahkahnie Mountain was three bronze handles found in a swamp below the mountain in 800-1,OOO-year-old tree roots. The handles are of Norse origin and add strength to the theory that Norsemen landed in the Pacific Northwest in 1010A.D." One Indian legend mentions Konapee, the Ironmaker of Clatsop Plains. He taught them metal-working. Chief Kilchis, for whom the Kilchis River is named, had Negroid features and was a giant of a man. In the book Pacific Graveyard it is claimed that at least 75 Oriental junks were lost on the Pacific Coast prior to 1875. At the Chishucks site on the Wilson River, an 1820 Chinese coin was found along with a stone face and pottery fragments. There is something magnetic about these shores, that drew men here, and still draws me. L TO the Coast AST summer I promised Julian, a 1&year-old friend, we would go to the beach together. We head out Sunset Highway, west, toward the Coast Range. Julian drives. I am tutoring him. The valves are shot on my green Rambler, make a racket, and the car throws oil. But the radio is blaring. Near Elsie, we turn off the main highway onto a smaller road, partly gravel, and follow the Nehalem River. We stop for Julian to snorkel, but the summer-warmed water is growing algae. Mossy sluggish strings of green gunk trail in the water. Further down the river, we pull off to study the view. I point out to him the spar tree of an old-fashioned high-lead logging operation. Cables strung from the top of it would pull logs to a loading site. The slashed over land is ugly, even though it will heal itself. My eyes search for the skull-like broken top of Saddle Mountain, the highest point on the coast, but can’t find it. This entire area is the setting for Don Berry’s excellent historical novels, Trask and Moontrap. We continue to Nehalem. The day is sunny, the sky blue. Black and white 10 Clinton St. Quarterly
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