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About Smoke signals. (Grand Ronde, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 15, 2004)
SEPTEMBER 13, 2004 Smoke Signals 0 Touring The Forests Of Our Ancestors FOREST TOUR continued from front page "You find it all over, some dating back 2,000 years and more." Information like this helps him determine the "broad band of settle ments" Natives established in the area. Each story filled in a little more of the lost or forgotten history of Willamette Valley Indians, layering what was once an oral Native his tory with the white bureaucracy's reclamation of that same history, this time for print. Talk went to future collaborations between the Tribe and the feds for building in terpretive sites here and there along the old ways, amicably and one might say, finally, merging white and Tribal histories. "It's always interesting to see these sites," said Tribal Vice Chair man Reyn Leno. "I never get tired of hearing about them." But all the sites and all the sto ries were not to be this trip. A visit to the obsidian cliffs was knocked off the schedule because rain made it too uncomfortable and possibly too dangerous to visit. "I had specifically wanted to go to see the obsidian cliffs," said Tribal Council Secretary June Sell Sherer. She also expressed inter est in a recent cultural dig site, the so-called Yellowjacket cultural site that also was knocked off the And so it was that late in August, a few miles down the road from the McKenzie River Ranger Station, Ranger Mary Allison said that the Willamette National Forest staffers were dedicated to bringing the forest's Native history to life for Tribal Council members. This was not the first time that the Forest Service has led a delega tion of Tribal leaders into the for est, however, and will not likely be the last. . "We're hoping to set up another tour to see some of the old camp sites and the obsidian rocks," said Leno. "We want to focus on the actual sites." Archeologist Bergland identified sites in the forest as trails and camp grounds used for centuries by In dians crossing back and forth over the Cascades. "Virtually every place there is wa ter, we've found tools, chips," he said. During a recent fire near the Santiam Pass, Bergland watched an obsidian artifact fall as the fire burned. The artifact was buried as the fire continued burning and de bris covered it over. For an anthro pologist, this was "a real eye opener," he said, because it was a demonstration of how artifacts move in the face of cataclysmic events. Along with a broad band of settle ments across the area, said Bergland, forest investigators have 41 J' "t ft The Sights And Sounds Of The McKenzie River Here's a look at the 1 20-foot Sahalie Falls, the highest of the falls in this section of the McKenzie River. the 120-foot Sahalie Falls and the 90-foot Kooshah Falls. The two-day tour of historic sites brought together a series of history detectives, like Bergland and Jim Denny, an artist in real life who as an employee of the Forest Service takes detailed and dedicated care of rehabilitating and maintaining the forest buildings that have sur vived. Denny took the group intc; a r 1 1 1 We Listened, And Learned Forest Service Archeologist Eric Bergland describes some of the features of Fish Lake in the forest. Ironically, Fish Lake dries up each year, starting around the Fourth of July, when the fish head upstream to Hackleman Creek. schedule because of weather. "We need to know about these places as Tribal Council members. Just to know and to see the sites where they lived." "I definitely want to go back and see the (obsidian cliffs)," said Tribal Council member Jack Giffen, Jr. As part of a Tribal deal to man age federal forest land in the Willamette National Forest, the Tribe and Forest Service agreed, among many things, to "build on our relationship." found trees from the old days "up wards of 800 years old." He led a tour of the Fish Lake area and the Clear Lake picnic grounds for lunch; in the afternoon, the tour went Owl Creek Meadow, a newly discovered camas meadow, as well as last summer's Clark Fire. "It makes you wonder, Was ca mas more widely distributed here?'" he said. The group also took a short hike along the McKenzie River where it goes over a series of falls including building that had been a dispatch ing center for forest fires. He spoke about the effort to straighten up the building they used big old farm machines to hold steady the bulk of the structure while the inside walls were squared and pointed to a 1932 forest map that had been found under the building and cleaned before being mounted on a wall where it might well have found itself when still a tool of the trade. He also showed the refurbished Forest Supervisor's house, now oc cupied in summer by the Stock Packer for the area. He discussed his effort to use western red cedar for the roof in an attempt to match the original construction. Old growth originally used for the shingles, he said, had to be replaced with shingles cut from young trees available today. When the Tribal delegation in cluding the three Tribal Council members along with Natural Re sources Manager and Tribal member Pete Wakeland ar rived at Fish Lake, the water was gone. It starts drying up around July 4, said Allison, and the fish head upstream to Hackleman Creek. "An interpretive spot on the by-way," is how Bergland de scribed it. Also on hand for the tour was Mei Lin Lantz, Assistant Fire Management Officer in Fuels, a hot shot firefighter who now finds herself in the opposite roll of fire starter for the McKenzie River Station. "We want to reintroduce fire into the eco-system," she said. Leno's family has been camping at Clear Lake for years, and a few years ago, he had taken a similar tour, so some of the sites were not new to him, though stories of the old buildings were new, and the camas meadow was new to everyone, since it had just been rediscovered. v, The two-day tour started with a quirky kind of observa- tion: the cabins at the historic Log Cabin Inn at McKenzie Bridge, where Tribal Council members stayed the first night, were with out radio or television. Among a group looking to the forests for its history and culture, the talk the next morning was about how much we missed the culture that has re placed it. Before mass media, everybody went to bed early. In McKenzie Bridge late in August, history not only came alive but also for many of us, unexpectedly repeated itself.
