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| "Songs tell our history..." |
| Marjorie Waheneke |
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| Do you know how oral history
is really done?
Cecelia Bearchum |
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| Cecelia Bearchum explains a
time ball. |
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Map locating
Marmes cave on the Snake River.
Helen Sherman map (Fish: 1972). |
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Armand Minthorn
"Ancient oral histories..." |
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Umatilla River > Culture > Since Time Immemorial
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| Oral History |
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"From generation to
generation..."
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"Rattlesnake Mountains
and the flood"
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Armand Minthorn
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A Story of Wet-koo-wies
Is this the woman who saved Lewis and Clark? |
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"One day a small group of us
cornered Gilbert Minthorn, demanding Indian stories.
He was our host for the day, and could not well refuse.
Moreover, he is president of the Umatilla Ind. Res.
council, so who would be in a better position to spin
a yarn or two? Ordinarily, Gilbert's English is adequate
but we soon found him to be at his best in his native
tongue.
"Still another factor added to the thrills of
the hour. The interpreter was Gilbert Conner, whose
mastery of the English language usually excels that
of his white friends; Mr. Conner could give the exact
shading of English words needed to make the original
meaning clearest. It was a delectable set-up, indeed.
"Gracefully and swiftly, Minthorn's hands, arms,
fingers, head and eyes talked in unison with his lips…
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"On an early summer evening, many, many
years ago, a small band of Nez Perces were
gathered about a camp fire on Hurricane creek,
that precipitous gash through which a silvery
ribbon tumbles from Matterhorn's lofty
peaks to the Wallowa river close by Joseph.
Delicious trout, seasoned with herbs, sizzled
over a bed of coals. Laughing children; men
at rest; squaws ready to serve the evening
meal. Round about were peace and contentment.
"Suddenly a shower of Bannock arrows; then
death, blood, confusion. In less time than required
to recite the facts, the happy NPs were dead—save
only one comely maiden. Her screams for help reverberated
weirdly through the dark canyon as her captors dragged
her off to mountain fastnesses. From there she was carried
south, day after day, week after week, until the Bannock
marauders reached their home land in Southern Idaho.
Eventually came an opportunity to escape. But what to
do with her freedom, now that she had it? Hundreds of
miles form home, the most rugged mountains of the Nw
before her; wild beasts and raging torrents in her path?
Yet, in a manner you shall presently learn, there came
a day when she stood by the gray ashes of what a year
before had been a happy campfire on Hurricane creek.
From there to Asotin Valley where friends and relatives
sojourned was a minor detail. Seeing her while yet afar
off, and recognizing the living body of one long thought
dead, her friends spoke in reverent awe, as one person,
the words "Wet-koo-wisha! Wet-koo-wisha!"
which translated means-"returning home from a perilous
journey." And for the rest of her life Wet-koo-wies
was her name.
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Gilbert
Minthorn in traditional regalia.
Photo courtesy Tamástslikt Cultural Institut
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"But, you ask, how could a bewildered maiden
find her way over strange deserts and mountain crags from
S Idaho to NE Oregon? Well, it was just like this: from the
night of her escape until she reached Hurricane creek, a massive
she-wolf strode before her, choosing always the right trail,
fighting off predatory beasts and generally looking to her
comfort and security. Familiar fields at hand and her task
performed, the she-wolf slunk into the brush and was seen
no more" (Minthorn; Nelson: 1934).
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| Reckoning Time |
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Geneology, a Way of Reckoning Time
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| Our oral history doesn't usually, because
we're not linear, come with dates. But we can tell
you when a person lived and some of the significant
events of their life. So my mother and her cousin
here, are the children of a brother and sister,
Gilbert and Blanch Conner, are the children of Sarah
Pilatson Monni Conner and her father was Ollicut,
and Ollicut's father was Old Joseph or Twiitacuss,
and Old Joseph's father was a man who was know by
a number of terms. |
Bobbie
Conner |
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Old Ollicut was one name they called him, Wullamut Keen was
another name he's known by, and as it turns out when the journals
were created by the explorers coming through, they called
him Yellept or Yellepit, and that's a Nez Perce term meaning
trading partner or brother or trader, and it's kind of like
calling someone mayor or congressman or senator. It's an honorific,
it's a reference to his role and relationship to those two
Nez Perce men who brought the Lewis and Clark Expedition here,
through this country in October of 1805.
So when they meet him the best reference they have to who
he is, is what these men try to explain. And these Nez Perce
men, there's no surprise that they might call this man brother
or trading partner, close trading partner, because he had
a Nez Perce wife with whom he had these children, that are
now Joseph band is one of the terms they're called. In addition,
he had other wives, he had a Cayuse wife and he had a Walla
Walla wife. So the descendents to this man they refer to as
Yellept, are numerous, on more than one reservation.
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| Archaeology |
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In 1968, not far from where the Palouse
meets the Snake River, geologists from Washington
State University found some of the oldest human
remains ever found in the western hemisphere. The
cave which served as shelter for this man and his
extended family, is now partially submerged by the
backwater from Monumental Dam. Referred to as "Marmes
Man," the skeletal remains were carbon-dated
to be approximately 10,000 years old.
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Since 1968, the number of human skeletons
of this antiquity has grown, but still remains relatively
limited. The most controversial finding was discovered
downriver from the Marmes Site, outside of the town
of Kennewick, Washington, and is known as "Kennewick
Man." |
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A series of radiocarbon dates now available from the Kennewick
skeletal remains indicate a date of between 9500 and 8500
years ago during which the Kennewick Man lived… The DOI
has made the background information available on the Worldwide
Web at http://www.cr.nps.gov/aad/kennewick/c14memo.htm.
Is Kennewick Man linked to the present-day American Indian
tribes in this area? In 1805, Lewis and Clark first documented
the presence of the various Plateau bands now living on the
Umatilla, Yakima and Nez Perce reservations. Archaeologists
investigate many lines of physical evidence in an attempt
to ascertain when people of this particular way of life moved
into the area.
Archaeologists especially rely on styles of projectile points,
dated in stratigraphic context, to determine chronological
sequences in a particular area. In the Plateau, Cascade and
Windust points (ca. 8,000 - 10,000 years ago) are the earliest
recognized types. Most of the Windust and Cascade points
are regarded as having served as tips for darts that were
probably propelled by atlatls (Ames et al.1998:104).
Languages also hold keys to the length of time a culture has
lived in a particular environment. Anthropologist, Eugene
Hunn (2000:10) contends that "the prominence and apparent
antiquity of terms for rattlesnake (waxpush), burrowing owl
(papu), yellow-bellied marmot (chikchiknu), western gray squirrel
(qanqan), and tick (ach'pl) all point to a long-term association
of Sahaptin with the semi-arid Plateau environment."
Hunn also notes that "… every salmon species of
the Columbia River basin is named" in Sahaptin" (Hunn
2000:9).
There is no written documentation prior to the Lewis and Clark
journey, but the various tribes have oral history which documents
an age-old connection to this particular landscape. Many stories
recorded from oral traditions describe events which may correlate
with the close of the last ice age, dating back some 10,000
to 15,000 years ago, such as "Blood Red Lake", "How
Coyote made the Columbia River", "Legends of Steamboat
Rock", and "Origin of the Palouse Falls", reported
by Ella Clark, describe the immense glacial lakes, floods,
and river channels that glacial geologists and geomorphologists
have shown through independent evidence to date to this Late
Glacial period (Ault 2000).
The Origin of Palouse Falls
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| The Origin of Palouse Falls is about "…four
giant brothers and their giant sister…"
who were proud of the appearance of their hair and
kept it shining with beaver oil (the story itself
can be found in Clark 1953:117-118). One day they
ran out of oil and went hunting for a giant beaver
that lived in the Palouse River. They intend to
kill the beaver and use his oil for their hair.
The brothers find and attack the beaver, tossing
their spears at him. The beaver runs down the river,
as he eludes the giant brothers he tears up the
river bed creating a series of five small falls,
a deep canyon, a series of rapids and another canyon.
In the last encounter with the brothers, there is
"…the biggest fight of all." In this
fight, beaver tears out a big canyon and creates
the Palouse Falls as it now exists. In one version
of the story, the beaver escapes the brothers, in
another, he is killed. |
Palouse
Falls
Ben Daniels photo |
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| This story, according to native peoples of the area, explains how
the dramatic features of the lower Palouse River were created.
It is widely acknowledged that the flood of glacial meltwater from
Glacial Lake Missoula cut through mountain ranges and scoured the
Columbia Plateau, creating what are presently known as the "channeled
scablands". Forty or more floods are estimated to have moved
through the region and along the Columbia River between 15,000
and 12,800 years ago. |
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"The tribes of the Mid-Columbia
area do not have stories about migrations;
according to their traditions, they have always
lived in the places where Lewis and Clark first
documented their presence" (Armand Minthorn
interview).
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"We... have always been
here."
Armand Minthorn
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| Background:
Joseph River, just downstream from where
Cold Springs Creek flows into it. K. Lugthart photo |
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