Chinook origin legend

The Chinook origin legend is carved into the basalt fish-cleaning table.

Ages ago, an old man named Toölux (or the South Wind), while traveling to the north, met an old woman, named Quoots-hooi, who was an ogress and a giantess. He asked her for food, when she gave him a net, telling him that she had nothing to eat, and he must go and try to catch some fish.

He accordingly dragged the net, and succeeded in catching a grampus, or, as the Indians called it, "a little whale." This he was about to cut with his knife, when the old woman cried out to him to take a sharp shell, and not to cut the fish crossways, but split it down the back.

He, without giving heed to what she said, cut the fish across the side, and was about to take off a piece of blubber, but the fish immediately changed into an immense bird, that when flying completely obscured the sun, and the noise made by its wings shook the earth. This bird, which they called Hahness, then flew away to the north, and lit on the top of the Saddleback Mountain, near the Columbia River.

Toölux and the old woman then journeyed north in search of Hahness, and one day, while Quoots-hooi was engaged in picking berries on the side of the mountain, she found the nest of the thunder-bird, full of eggs, which she commenced breaking and eating, and from these mankind were produced.

The thunder-bird came back, and, finding its nest destroyed, returned to Toölux for redress; but neither of them ever after could find the ogress, although they regularly returned to the north every year.

By tradition, the first salmon caught must not be cut across, but must be split down the back, and then split in thin flakes. If it should be cut contrary to their practice, then all the salmon will leave, and no more be taken that season.

The Chinook, who live near the mouth of the Columbia River, and the Chehalis, who live a little farther north, tell this story about their origin, as recorded by James Swan in 1857.

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