To the Nimiipu, water was the strongest spiritual substance. Note that the snake that leaves the Snake River here at Buffalo Eddy, never arrives at the (older) shamanic figure. That’s because it’s […]
Snake Leaves the Snake
Coyote’s Still Talking
Some cultures are so ancient that they watched the glaciers come and go 10,000 years ago. So it is with the Syilx culture of today’s Colville Confederated Tribes. Once the ice melted […]
The Lost Mission of the Manastash
Ah, to be a young Oblate missionary in Washington Territory before the Indian Wars, when you were the only educated man for a thousand miles, and all you wanted was to stop […]
Be Like the Mouse Beneath the Hawk
This is Pahto, mistakenly called Mount Adams. She is one of the wives of the sun. Look at her rising like the sun over the White Swan plain. We’re a long way […]
Eel and Turtle
This morning, I showed an image of the mouth of Asotin Creek, where the Moray Eels used to spawn in the Snake River grasslands, in the far west of Washington, before the […]
The Snake and the Eel
What is a river, then? It is a stream, a flow, a run, which gives a Rhine, a Rhone, a river and a row. But what is it, when those words aren’t […]
Heart of the Monster
This is the heart of the monster. This is ?Ilcwé.wcixnim timíne. This is where the nimi.pu began. This is where the people got started. The real people, as they call themselves. This […]
Spirits in the Mountain
So, imagine, if your people lived in the same place for ten thousand years. That means that something like 500 generations of children and parents would wake to the same mountain, overlooking the […]
Reports of Father Pandosy Starving in 1846 Are Greatly Exaggerated
He’s the Boy from Marseilles, the French Oblate Priest who came on the Oregon Trail and started two of the first missions in Washington Territory, singing the whole time. His first was […]
Coyote Lets the Kids Out
The quarry’s a good place to get a drink on a hot day. I’m probably the first human they’ve seen. Worth a second look, I guess. For me, too.A welcome […]
Okanagan Okanogan 