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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (July 1, 1887)
512 THE WEST SHORE. in tho air, across the river. There this grading crime Immediately, he was prodigious infant, on the pappoose board, filled with remorse and shame. He felt hang for ages. Speelyai was coming up that, somehow, his crime would be found the river, in tho " long time ego," and out, and set about building a great wall, finding the giant pappoose swinging over to stop the news of his sin going up the his way, was not pleased with the ar- river. In spite of him, the news, or rangemcnt He, therefore, took his knowledge of the crime, broke over the stone knife and cut the cord that held up wall and spread As fast as he repaired the titanian infant, when it came down, one breach, the rocks tumbled down in with a splash, and was drowned. The another, and kept the poor guilt-stricken feet being still held by a cord, it swung god flying from place to place to keep over to the Washington side, only the up his wall. Finding his efforts use head part falling into the water. It was less, he abandoned the project, and, 6or transformed to rock, and is called, to rowful and ashamed, he journeyed on up this day, " baby on the board." the river to the Klikitat country. Nearing What is now called " Eagle rock," was a house, the first thing he overheard was anciently a goddess, the daughter of the inmates, talking about his sin. Wea Speelyai. She was rather slim and bony, ry, and filled with remorse, he moved on and neither handsomo nor attractive, and toward Tumwater, or the home of tho in consequence, lived to be an old maid. Wisbams. Everywhere he went, he Owing to a grave lapso in morals, she overheard the story of his sin and shame, was very much humiliated, and turned This myth contains a fine picture of that into stone, as a warning to future genera- sense of guilt and consciousness of a tions. A short distance below Eagle criminal, that his sin is known by every rock, or Spcelyai's daughter, old 8peel- one. It might well have the moral ap yai anciently built a dam across the Col- pended, " Be sure your sin will find you umbia, intending to make rapids there, out" to form a fishing place for tho Indians, With tho other improvements intro- who wero soon to bo made. Changing duced by Speelyai among the people, his mind, ho went op down, and made was the use of fire and the art of cook tho rapids at the Cascades. Having ing. The legends of the Indians say made goal fishing places for the coming that their ancestors, anciently, were very race, ho threw huckleberries away off ignorant and helpless. They had nothing into the mountains, and scattered the in which to cook, and were even unac cdiblo roots, and other articles of Indian quainted with the use of fire, food, in different places, saying, " It will A few miles above the old steamboat not bo good for the people to get their landing at the upper cascades, on the food too easy; they will become lazy, or Columbia, there is a large, round-bot-get rich and independent It is better tomed hole in the rock on the shore, that they should work hard for these This hole, the Indians say, was ancient things." ly 8peelyai's pot for cooking salmon. Somewhere, not far from Mosier's The people long had been eating their landing, the steamboat traveler will ob- food raw, or drying it in the sun. In ( serve a ledge, or wall of rocks, on the this way, they baked their bread of roots shore. This the Indians call "Spool- and dried their berries and salmon, yai's walL" At this point god though Speelyai taught the people how to cook, be was, while nearly dying from hunger, at this pot hole on tho river. Having he one time committed a low and de- caught a quantity of salmon, he put