The headlines for Totsgi’s piece referred to the “apes” as “Big Hairy Indians,” “Mountain Devils,” “Giants,” and “Shaggy Creatures.” He quoted several other Indians to corroborate his facts: Henry Napolean, a Clallam; I. J. James, a Lummi; and George Hyasman, of the Quinault tribe. Totsgi wrote, “Every Indian, especially of the Puget Sound tribes, is familiar with the history of these strange giant Indians.” He went on to relate experiences and traditions passed on by Shaker Indians at a gathering on the Skokomish reservation, by Henry Napolean, by his own relatives, and by others in Oregon whom he visited during his research on the Seeahtlks. He reported a consensus among his informants on the Seeahtlks’ huge, hairy bodies, their ability to kill game by hypnotism, and their gift of excellent ventriloquism. They spoke, he reported, the bear language of the Clallam, as well as the bird language. They could imitate any bird, especially jays, and had a keen sense of smell and night vision. Some Northwest Indians, according to Totsgi, believed that in changing from animal to man, the Seeahtlk “did not absorb the . . . soul power, and thus became an anomaly in the Indians’ process of evolution.”
Totsgi’s informants agreed that the big hairy Indians were harmless unless antagonized but vengeful if abused, killing twelve Indians for every Seeahtlk who was killed. He related Henry Napolean’s story of making a peaceful journey through underground trails to Bigfoot caves in company with a Seeahtlk he had come across. And in a tale told by Totsgi’s grandfather, Kwaichtun, a group of Clallams took a young male Seeahtlk across Hood Canal in their boat after capturing him near Seabeck. The creature escaped, but that night “the Seeahtlk tribe came down and killed every Clallam there but Kwaichtun, who had moved his family across the canal.”
Totsgi also reported that “Indians at times have been greatly humiliated by the Seeahtlks’ vulgar sense of humor. The Seeahtlks play practical jokes upon them and steal their Indian women. Sometimes an Indian woman comes back. More often she does not, and it is even said by some northwestern Indians that they have a strain of the Seeahtlk blood in them.”
This story was followed in that issue of the Oregonian by a brief account of the posse that investigated the miners’ report, headlined “Apeman Hunt Broadening; Kelso Police Chief and Others Go to Spirit Lake.” Chief George Miller had set out with Charles Palmer “for an outing,” and they were followed by Bert Wall, James Foley, James Murphy, and Bud Edgar, to be joined by County Game Warden Leichhartd. The party firmly expressed its disbelief that “any such animals exist in that territory,” but they went to investigate the story of “ape-men” anyway. Just as true believers sometimes “find” things that aren’t there, rock-solid skeptics often miss what is. In any case, the posse came back apeless.
The apes of St. Helens, hoax or no, are still remembered, though George Miller and Bud Edgar have long since entered the permanent purgatory of anonymity. Jorg Totsgi’s reply to the incident demonstrated exactly what Bill Holm had told us: that a literal belief in Bigfoot is widespread among the native tribes.
The earliest known written account of Indians and apes is found in the Diary of Elkanah Walker. In 1840 Walker, a would-be missionary among the Spokane Indians, described “a race of giants” inhabiting a snowclad mountain to the west—St. Helens? They came by night, the natives told him, stealing people and salmon, leaving tracks some eighteen inches long. “If the people are awake,” Walker wrote, “they always know when they are coming very near, by the smell which is most intolerable.” Bigfoot-like accounts from Indian territory have proliferated ever since.
The names and details change, but the idea remains the same. Seeahtlk equates with Seeahtik, Seeahtkch, Sehlatiks, Salatiks, Seatco, and Saskehavas of other bands and tribes and with the more modern version, Sasquatch. The Coast Salish people of the Skagit Valley speak of See’atco or Kauget—One Who Runs and Hides. According to their legend, Sasquatch evolved from survivors of a raid on a Salish village conducted by a northern slaving tribe. Exiled to Whidbey Island, the villagers acquired night vision and the use of invisibility, as well as body hair, size, and strength. According to a caption under a print of the retreating See’atco by artist Frank Anton Woll, “with each decade the Sasquatch became larger, stronger, and spiritually more powerful, thus increasingly elusive.”
Some of the many other names of beings that might be something like Bigfoot include Wampus, a legendary monster of the forests in the Oregon Cascades; Xi’lgo and Yi’dyi’tay, the Tillamook Wild Woman and Wild Man; At’at’ahila among the Chinookans; Qah-lin-me, devourer of Yakamas; and Omah, of the Yurok to the south. Most of these names and others have been compiled by Henry Franzoni of Portland, who has studied monster names with respect to Northwest geography.
A vast body of lore pertains to Ste-ye-hah’mah, also called Stick-shower Man or Stick Man. The Yakama word means a spirit hiding under the cover of the woods. Some say the “stick” refers to this habit, others that these creatures poke sticks into lodges to extract or harass victims, or rain sticks down upon them. In a recent Quinault story, women put out shallow baskets of salmon and other food, and See’atco takes the provender in exchange for firewood, which he places in the basket—another “stick” connection. Some Indians consider Stick Men to be spirits whose name should not even be mentioned; Don Smith—Lelooska—thinks the Stick Men have merely been conflated with Bigfoot.
The impressive fact, especially in light of the many versions with their seeming contradictions, is that all of the original Northwest people have a strong Bigfoot tradition. And this continues into modern times, if somewhat diluted by the cultural amnesia brought on by massive forced change. Eva Jerry of the Muckleshoots, near Seattle, told a wealth of Sasquatch stories until her recent death. And Fostine Lone Tree, a Puyallup/Quillayute from Port Hudson, Washington, told me that her mother, as a young girl at Muckleshoot, would hear Bigfeet whistling at dusk. She would whistle with them, and her mother would say, “You come in right now and quit whistling with Seeat-kos!” Fostine remembers that when her brother told of an encounter near Quilcene, she said, “I want a Bigfoot too!”
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Miles and miles of desolate, road-gouged clear-cuts and stumphills lined the highway side of Swift “Lake,” the third obstruction to the flow of the river named for Meriwether Lewis. The forests and canyons on the south side of the reservoir stared back, awaiting their fate. An embayment of logging slash, washed down from clear-cuts above, contained by log booms and policed by gulls, stretched for hundreds of yards: a delta of cellulose-bound nitrogen clotting the swollen limb of the phlebitic river. The boat launch at Swift Forest Camp (part of Puget Power & Light’s mitigation for the reservoir) was no longer usable on account of slash flotsam. Some logs were being salvaged near the campground. I decided not to camp by that racket, even though the day was running down.
Across the reservoir gaped a big glacial hanging valley named Paradise, and the map showed logging roads into even that far redoubt. Paradise must have well described the Lewis River valley before the dams, before the roads. I can’t help but wonder what a native from the paradise days would think of it now. If a Hamatsa dancer were to be swept from the longhouse into the present reality, could he even comprehend what he saw? Perhaps he’d think that Raven, creator of the universe, had lost his mind and was taking things apart again. Or that Trickster Coyote had made a great puzzle of the landscape just to confuse the People. Or maybe that Seeahtlk had run amok. Someone has run amok. All of us have.
I headed up Old Man Pass into a painting made of the vague colors of dusk, fog, vine maples, and lichen. The mist closing in made me wonder whether as many people think they are seeing bear when they see Bigfoot as the reverse. How good to be back in the fragrant, unpeopled silence! As the dark climbed the hill behind me, I made a dinner of pepperoni stick, Rainier Ale, cherry tomatoes from home, and a brownie and coffee from the Cougar Café. A varied hare tried to dart beneath the car, but missed by a whisker. Bach harps
ichord inventions on the tape deck choreographed her footwork as she shot into the black wood.
Since the eruption, interpretive signs have sprouted like puffballs across the Gifford Pinchot. Outlaw Ridge Volcanic Viewpoint, with no other visitors, offered a fogscape. It seemed strange to see signs up here—Carson to the right, Trout Lake and the Sawtooth Berry Fields to the left. I went left and up out of the fog. Sunset glow lightened the sky, and a slender crescent moon rose on this first night of autumn, with a real twinkler of a star, rubies and blue, just off its horn in a halo. Pink stains and cotton rags filled the valleys below in a vague afterglow.
Mount Adams lay dead ahead, Rainier off to the left. As I drove a little farther on, Mount St. Helens, now blunted, stood out in clear silhouette against the light western sky. Lone Butte still had its old sharp shape. The buttes and ridges rode above the valleys on a woolly rug.
In the deep dark I came to the Sawtooth Berry Fields. A
sign read huckleberries on this (east) side of the road reserved for indians. Another sign warned of “congestion,” but at 8:21 p.m. there was no one about but us Bigfeet. The road crossed the Pacific Crest Trail, where I stopped to stretch, listen, and pee. I felt as if Seeahtlks were close at hand, but I saw none. The stars, however, were fabulous over the church-spire firs. I realized now that the moon and its twinkler were actually setting; they had just seemed to be rising near Lone Butte because of the fog. Realities run muddy in the mountain mists, as I’d found many times before, but it was a lesson never
quite learned.
I tried to pick a commemorative berry from the Sawtooth Fields (Anglo side), but the bushes were picked bare. How different this was from Juniper Ridge, where the bushes drooped under the weight of their fruits. The nightly low fighter flew over, a little higher here than over Yellowjacket, but still no great favor to the seekers after silence along the Pacific Crest Trail. I remembered the signs outside Oak Harbor, Washington, posted by the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station: excuse our noise—it’s the sound of freedom! and was reassured.
Near the Cold Springs Indian Forest Camp, I saw the green eyeshine of an animal by the road, slowed to spot it, and was surprised to find a pussycat, gray and white, longhaired. I thought it must be abandoned, but then I came upon a homemade double-decker bus with a collie outside. Wanting to see this better, I spent the night nearby. By daylight I could see clearly that this incredible bus consisted of two Volkswagen microbuses merged end to end on top of an erstwhile school bus, the three vehicles sharing a green hide. Tarps spread out from the main structure shaded dogs, cats, kittens, three bikes, even a small flock of chickens. There was no sign of folks about the place. It was the ultimate nomadic hippie home.
I wondered whether this out-of-the-loop family was mimicking the autumn lifeway of the Indians who moved to the berry fields for weeks in the fall to gather olallie. Or—I was vaguely disturbed by the thought—maybe this was what was left of the Indian encampments. But it was parked on the whites’ side of the road.
Soon enough I came upon the real thing. The Cold Springs Indian Camp had the ghost of a traditional longhouse, an uncovered pole structure with no pretensions of prettiness. A sign read kah-pus-paw / cold springs longhouse / p-ow-wa-swa-koth / sawtooth mountain. Bedsprings, perhaps for drying berries, lay over pits full of trash. The methods have changed, but the point is the same. As Keith McCoy wrote in The Mount Adams Country:
Most of the berries were dried on grass or willow mats spread in sunny spots. Others, by the age-old method, were dried on mats tilted toward a burning log so the heat of the sun could be bolstered by the heat and smoke of the elongated fire. The Indians had a code of honor which, it is hoped, persists these 50 years later. A berry field campsite, its drying log, and even its tepee poles leaned in a tree for the next year’s use were never violated by another tribesman.
McCoy wrote that at the berry fields, baskets and bags, beadwork and buckskin, wapato and camas roots might all change hands in the brisk intertribal trade. If not such a traditional scene, I had hoped at least to find someone in residence at Sawtooth. But the camp was deserted. The berry season had peaked, and the gatherers had gone on.
Nearby, at the Surprise Lakes Camp, some sites were still occupied. I saw some ponies but no people, except some white bow-hunters in camo and greasepaint walking on the dusty road. The Surprise Lakes were just that: little blue lakes tucked into the red folds of the huckleberry flats, mountain ash gold and orange all around, with Pahto peeking over the eastern horizon like an eagle’s head looking away. Three female goldeneyes floated and dove on one of the ponds. The huckleberries might be gone, but wild strawberries were fully in bloom. Inspired by the strawberries and the psychedelic green bus, I wondered: Are these berry fields forever?
I looked for an answer in the Forest Plan for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The pole-frame longhouse at Cold Springs is used by the Kah-milt-pah band of the Yakama Indian Nation for yearly gatherings and ceremonies in honor of the huckleberry harvest. This is only one of many ways that the native inhabitants use the area. The plan reveals that members of the Yakama Nation (including the Klickitats), the federally unrecognized Cowlitz tribes, and the Warm Springs and Umatilla Indians have all used the Gifford Pinchot for a very long time. Today the sites they have frequented lie in several wilderness areas and more or less actively managed parts of the forest.
On June 9, 1855, Kamaiakun, on behalf of the Yakamas and many related bands, signed a treaty with Governor Isaac Stevens. The treaty guaranteed the tribes continuing rights to fish, hunt, gather roots and berries, and graze animals “at all usual and accustomed places.” In recent years this and related treaties have been upheld in legal disputes about contemporary fishing practices, profoundly affecting relations between Indians and whites. Only now is the situation beginning to sort itself out as the salmon fisheries collapse for all, thanks to the dams. The berry wars have been subtler, with no large economic implications. But the gathering and drying of Vaccinium/huckleberries/olallie is no small matter to the traditional occupants of the uplands, for whom berries have always been important for winter subsistence. Even “modern” Indians, such as the women I’d prevailed upon to give me a lift from Juniper Ridge, consider berry gathering an important spiritual closure to the summer, whether or not they need the berries for nutrition. And it’s not just huckleberries: according to the Forest Plan, traditionally used plants included nuts, bitterroot, camas tubers, other berries, and many other edibles; bark, roots, beargrass, and other fibers for weaving and basketry; and a wide array of medicinal and ceremonial herbs.
Before the dams were built on the Columbia and Lewis rivers, the berry gatherers made expeditions back and forth between Indian Heaven (as the entire huckleberry uplands were then called) and the main salmon-fishing spots such as Celilo Falls on the Columbia and Chickoon Creek on the Lewis. Dried berries and salmon pounded into pemmican went together the same way that whipped soapberry, eulachon (candlefish) oil, and smoked salmon did for the Kwakiutl.
Vast shifting gatherings took place as the people followed the ways of the seasons—berries to salmon, stories to games, campfire to longhouse. As recently as 1911, more than a thousand Indians convened at Indian Race Track in the southern part of Indian Heaven, where the women gathered and dried berries and the men raced horses and gambled prior to the late autumn hunts.
It is easy to see why Washington’s southern Cascades came to be called Indian Heaven. For the relatively few Indians who had survived the early onslaught of diseases and other risks, everything remaining of the good life they’d known could be found there. But the last horse race in Indian Heaven took place in 1928, and in the next decades the dams were built. The treaties’ many loopholes allowed whites to acquire much of the best land within the boundaries of the reservations, and conditions changed in nearly all of the “usual and accustomed places” of traditional usufruct. As the Forest Plan modestly concedes, “Timb
er management activities generally result in some level of ground disturbance to a site.” After logging, skidding, burning, spraying, and planting, nary a berry, beargrass clump, or sacred site is likely to be left.
To give them their due, the Gifford Pinchot planners attempt to take Indian needs into consideration these days. As they rightly conclude, “Native American values and value systems are inextricably linked with the use of Forest resources for both economic subsistence and sacred/religious purposes. For many, ‘Indianness’ is centered on the ability to carry out these activities and to obtain the resources necessary to do so.” They seem sincere, if turgid, when they write of ways in which native religious systems can “potentially interface with National Forest management.”
For example, in the 1980s the managers decided not to sell any more beargrass permits to whites in areas regularly used by Yakama basketmakers. And in 1932 the so-called Handshake Agreement set aside the eastern part of the Sawtooth Berry Fields for the exclusive use of Indians, thus diminishing the tensions arising even then between native pickers and recreating whites. But that area might not be enough now. Forest succession is rendering the old berry fields unproductive, and the number of nonnative berry pickers—whether arriving in homemade buses, motor homes, or mountain bikes—is growing all the time.
Where Bigfoot Walks Page 16
