Salish creation stories

“Everything you need to know about life is in the Coyote stories- if you just listen carefully.” Flathead elder, Joe Cullooyah

The Salish-speaking Spokane Indians occupied a wide territory, much of it along the drainages of the Spokane and Little Spokane Rivers. Like other Interior Salish peoples, they have their origin stories to explain how the world came to be--many of them focusing on the figure of Coyote.

In Beaver Steals Fire, people learn how difficult it was to bring fire from the sky world and how important it is to animals and humans. Traditional stories are told in winter months, for if someone tells a story in the summer, Coyote could cause cold weather to occur by shooting a mist out of his penis. Coyote is the principal creator in many stories, a trickster but also a well-meaning creature.

Here is just one of the many Coyote stories: Beaver Steals Fire, as told by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes:

“A long time ago, the only animals who had fire lived in the sky. The earth animals wanted fire to keep warm, and decided that whoever sang the best song would be the leader into the sky to steal fire. Beaver and the animals tried to sing, but they were not satisfied. Then they heard Coyote sing and all the animals began to dance and named Coyote the leader.

"Wren, coyote’s friend, shot arrows into the sky world, creating a ladder. Wren climbed up the ladder and dropped a rope for the animals to climb up. Curlew, the guardian of fire, was at the river watching his fish traps and the animals followed him back to his camp, where the fire was kept.

"Beaver pretended he was dead, floating in the river, and Curlew grabbed him and wanted to skin him and dry his hide. Suddenly, Eagle landed on Curlew’s house and he ran outside to catch him. That is when Beaver stole the fire. Beaver took the fire and swam down the river, climbed back down the rope. That is how the animals brought fire to us.”

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In the early 1900s, tuberculosis was known as the “great white plague,” and at the turn of the century it killed around 450 Americans every day. An infectious disease of the lungs, tuberculosis spreads through the air, usually via coughing fits. Until the discovery of antibiotics in the mid-20th century, the principal treatment was to isolate the patient in a special hospital or sanatorium for tuberculosis patients.

After the Indian boarding school at Fort Spokane was replaced by day schools on the reservations, the fort entered its third phase in 1916, as a tuberculosis sanatorium for members of the Spokane, Colville, and other local tribes. The goals of the hospital were twofold: to slow the spread of TB by isolating the contagious victims, and to try to cure them of the disease with the crude methods of the time. The disease was unfortunately prevalent among Native Americans. A survey of Indian boarding schools in Washington state showed that 85 of the 589 total students showed symptoms. Overall, the disease struck thirteen percent of all Indians in Washington. Sanatoriums for the Indians’ ‘trachoma problem’ (another phrase for TB) began operating around 1910 on or near reservations at Fort Lapwai in north central Idaho, as well as in Phoenix, Arizona and Laguna, New Mexico. By 1912, there were 53 hospitals and sanatoriums in the Indian service.

A common treatment for TB was to place patients outdoors in fresh, cool mountain air, and many former Indian schools were remodeled to allow for outdoor sleeping quarters. Other treatments were not so delicate. One method was to punch a hole in the chest and collapse a patient’s lung in order to let it rest and facilitate healing. Another treatment was to surgically remove the affected portion of the lung. Neither was particularly effective.

While few records remain about cases of TB at Fort Spokane, similar hospitals throughout the country provide a snapshot at daily life for patients with the disease. In 1920, patients of Catawba Sanatorium followed this daily schedule:
7:15 - Rising Bell
8:00 to 8:30 - Breakfast
8:30 to 11:00 - Rest or Exercise as Ordered
11:00 to 12:45 - Rest on Bed
1:00 to 1:30 - Dinner
1:45 to 4:00 - Rest on Bed, Reading but no talking allowed. Quiet hour.
4:00 to 5:45 - Rest or Exercise as Ordered
6:00 - Supper
8:00 - Nourishment if ordered
9:00 - All patients in pavilions
9:30 - All lights out

The hospital at Fort Spokane treated 64 patients in its first year. But the fort’s isolated location made it difficult to get supplies, and the sanatorium was abandoned in 1929. Tuberculosis remained a problem among all races in the United States until after the Second World War, when the development of modern antibiotics provided the first effective cure for the disease. However, the story of TB in the United States may not be over, as new, drug-resistant strains of the disease continue to challenge medical authorities.

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The career of Helen Clark typifies the efforts of the "Friends of the Indians" during this time period. She worked hard to educate and defend the Spokanes, but also to get them to abandon their traditional culture.

Helen Clark, one of the first white school teachers on the Spokane Reservation, was a Scottish Presbyterian who worked with the Women’s National Indian Association. Clark arrived on the Spokane Reservation in 1894, one of the only non-Native American women living on the Reservation. At Wellpinit she became friends with Chief Lot, who she described as having "a keen sense of humor and a smile often lights up his face.” Clark taught children as well as married couples, who camped in tents near the schoolhouse, even in harsh winter conditions with temperatures below zero.

In 1894, the Secretary of the Interior set aside five acres of land for a school. Miss Clark taught the students, as well as worked in the garden and fruit tract. She was isolated while living on the Wellpinit Reservation, twenty-five miles from any store or post office, but, armed with her bible, she was determined to teach. The school opened in 1895, with 35 pupils in attendance. By the end of the month, 50 students were enrolled. "They seem to have a great craving for knowledge," Clark wrote of her pupils in 1897.

Clark was quite typical of her fellow white “friends of the Indian” in thinking that her own culture was superior to that of her pupils, and that her job was to get Indians to abandon their own ways and adopt hers. During the winter months, she watched the students practice their Chinook dancing, which she called a “darling sin … the greatest barrier there is to a civilization.”

Clark also helped to influence road building, as good roads made it easier for her students to get to school. At the same time, Clark used her own money for school supplies and tried to protect the Indians from other whites. Clark wrote, “Every white man seems to think that it is his legitimate privilege to beat and trick an Indian in any kind of trade or business transaction, and as a rule they have very little confidence in the white man’s honesty. I tell them I am ashamed of my people.”

The army at Fort Spokane was disbanded in 1899 and the barracks became a boarding school. This meant that her services were no longer needed and Clark was transferred to a mission in Neah Bay, Washington, where she taught for over twenty years.

Attempts for her return to the Spokane Reservation were made and she would say that, “If I followed my heart instead of my head I would pack up and be off next week.” She eventually moved back to her hometown of Huntingdon, Quebec where she passed away in 1937.

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The famous Indian Chief and prophet was once jailed here at Fort Spokane for years without trial.

This jail cell has harbored many a man; frontiersmen, troublesome soldiers, and defiant Indians. One of the most infamous prisoners was the shama q,olá’ skin, known in English as Skolaskin, who founded a new religion among his native followers.

Skolaskin was born in the Sanpoil settlement snuke’ilt, meaning brush spring, on the Columbia River in 1839. When Skolaskin was twenty he won a blanket while gambling with an elderly, crippled man and soon after, he became bedridden, covered in sores and unable to move his legs. Respected shamans were unable to cure him.

After two years of paralysis, one day Skolaskin lost consciousness. While his family prepared for his burial, Skolaskin woke up singing and explained that he had a message from the powerful one, called qwilan tsu’ten. The Indians must no longer drink, steal, or commit adultery, and they must pray to a new god. Astonished villagers saw Skolaskin as a prophet, who, although not completely recovered, was brought “back to life.” For the rest of his life he could only walk in a stooped position with both hands resting on his knees. Skolaskin became chief of Whitestone, an village near the Nespelem Valley.

Skeptical but curious crowds gathered around Skolaskin. His fame grew as a prophet and his revelations included a great flood that would destroy the world unless his people built a sawmill near the church and used the lumber to build a boat. He believed a male and female of every animal and bird would be put in the boat, then the rain would come and flood the earth.

In 1873, Skolaskin journeyed to Kataro, in Southern Okanogan territory, where he once again predicted disaster. An earthquake, a level 8 on the Rossi-Forel scale, occurred that night, on November 22, 1873.

After the earthquake, Chief Skolaskin exerted even more power over his people. He punished natives for adultery, stealing, and intoxication. His followers were forced to work at the lumber mill, and the disobedient were sent to a hole in the ground covered with planks.

Officials at Fort Spokane were unsure how to handle Skolaskin’s rise to power and his refusal to obey American authority. In 1889 one of Skolaskin’s policemen, Kannumsahwickssa killed a Sinkiuse Indian, Ginnamonteesah.

The American district attorney said he wanted nothing to do with this “inconsequential” affair, since it was a case of one Indian killing another, but officials from Fort Spokane arrested Skolaskin and carried him to the fort by mule. He was released a few days later on the condition that he deliver up the murderer, but after failing to do so, Skolaskin was again taken into custody and sent to McNeil Island federal penitentiary. Though never given a trial, Skolaskin spent three years at McNeil and we then sent to Alcatraz, where he languished as a political prisoner for another nineteen months.

Once Skolaskin returned from prison, he remained a Chief and advised his people to never trust the white men or the government. Toward the end of his life, Skolaskin converted to Roman Catholicism, and by the late 20th century, very few traditionalists still clung to Skolaskin’s religion.

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Before the invention of the refrigerator, Americans relied on the iceman. His frequent deliveries were similar to the milkman. He started his route at a local ice-warehouse where he loaded ice blocks onto a horse-drawn wagon. Ice was crucial for preserving food and keeping ice cream cold. Many people owned ice houses, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In 1880 ice consumption in the United States was nearly 5,250,000 tons. So useful was frozen water that an international trade in ice developed, a trade that included early Spokane.

New England’s Frederic Tudor, aka “Ice King of the World,” made a fortune selling ice in the nineteenth century. His workers cut ice slabs from Massachusetts ponds, packed them in sawdust for transport, and shipped the blocks to cities near and far, from New York to Cuba. Tudor’s ice trade transformed daily life and allowed people to enjoy cold food in the summer and dine on perishable meat and vegetables from faraway locales.

Spokane too was part of the ice trade. In the early nineteenth century, agricultural produce was an integral part to the development of Spokane. Produce warehouses, creameries and restaurants relied on ice to preserve food. Huge ice blocks were collected from local lakes and sent by rail to the city.

J.H. Pifer owned the contract that supplied the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads in 1916. His 10,000-ton ice-storage house was located on Sprague Lake. He also used ice harvested from the Great Lakes where 100 railroad cars per day were shipped out to nineteen different storage houses, carrying as much as 50,000 tons of ice per year.

One of the Pacific Northwest’s largest ice houses was the Hazelwood Ice Company, who employed about 130 men to cut ice from Blanchard Lake, Idaho. The company also supplied the Northern Pacific, the Milwaukee, and the Spokane International railroads for their refrigeration cars. The company packed two railcars daily in the summer, mainly for ice-cream, heading to Cle Elum, Othello, Malden, and Avery, Idaho.

In 1921 there were 5000 mechanical refrigerators manufactured in the United States. Ten years later, over one million were produced. By the end of the 1930s the mechanical refrigerator was a common appliance in middle-class America, ending the need for the iceman.

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A suffragist marches coast to coast to save the family farm.

In 1887, Norwegian-born Helga and Ole Estby purchased 160 acres of land in “Little Norway,” an enclave in the town of Mica Creek, 25 miles southeast of Spokane. Shortly after the Panic of 1893, Ole injured his back and was unable to work the family farm.

In a desperate attempt to keep their land and support their eight children, Helga and her daughter Clara took up a $10,000 offer to walk from Spokane to New York. Under the conditions of the contest, the ladies had seven months to finish their journey, could only begin their trip with five dollars, had to wear bicycle skirts, were not allowed to beg, must visit political leaders in every state capital, and were forbidden to use the railroad.

The two set out on May 6, 1896, leaving the remaining seven children at home. Mother and daughter walked 25 to 35 miles a day on a seven-month trip.

The Etsby's began their walk in Spokane and headed south to Walla Walla. Their light pouches contained only the necessities--including a Smith-and-Wesson revolver and a curling iron for Clara’s hair. Washington’s residents refused to sell food to the ladies because they were considered vagrants; it was popular opinion that a woman’s place was in the home with her family. As a suffragist, Helga hoped to prove otherwise.

After ten rainy days they arrived in Boise, where residents were much more hospitable and offered cooking and cleaning opportunities. The Estby women followed railway routes to avoid getting lost. In La Grande, Oregon, the ladies were threatened by a tramp so Helga shot him in the leg.

The kindness of strangers outweighed their fears and the women continued their journey through rain, wind, and heat. They crossed the desert, slept in railroad depots, hiked through the Laramie Mountains in Wyoming, and hoofed through Colorado, where Clara sprained her ankle. In Ohio, the ladies met with President-elect William McKinley before finally reaching their goal at the World newspaper office on Manhattan Island on December 23.

Tragically, not only did the sponsor refuse to honor the $10,000 wager, but two of Helga’s children died from diphtheria days apart from each other while she was stuck in Brooklyn, earning money to get home. Finally, a New York railroad titan, Chauncy Depew, gave the women railroad passes and the Estbys made it back to Spokane. The Estby farm went into foreclosure in 1901 and they moved to 1528 E. Mallon Avenue.

After trekking nearly 3,500 miles, Helga and Clara proved that women were resilient and strong, not the typical opinion of Victorian women. In Spokane, Helga became actively involved in the suffragist movement.

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Before the advent of the electric trolley in 1889 or Ford’s Model T in 1908, Spokanites got around by foot or by horse and buggy. The height of the carriage era lasted from 1850-1910, a time when horse-drawn carriages were as common as automobiles are today.

Carriage steps are a reminder of that era. In front of what used to be Spokane socialite Dr. William Sellers’ early twentieth century Victorian home, rests a nearly sunken treasure, a carriage stone, or block. Stepping out of carriages could be tricky. A lady in a long dress had to be careful not to stumble as she made her way to the pavement. The historic streetscapes of Spokane were once littered with carriage stones to assist people on and off their buggies or horses. The wealthiest citizens, like Dr. Sellers flaunted their class with expensive carriages and horses.

In an article published in the Spokesman Review on January 1, 1903, a who’s who of Spokane society were recalled by their fashionable carriages and impressive horses. Mr. O. G. Laboreo owned luxurious carriages such as a Victoria, a Spider, and a gentleman’s road wagon. Mr. and Mrs. Laboreo were often seen on horseback in Spokane, and Mr. A. B. Campbell owned the most complete stable. Mr. Campbell’s horses included Shetland ponies, while Patrick Clark’s team of coach horses drove his modern Landau carriage. His wife owned a pair of bay pacers driven by a cabriolet. John A. Finch owned both a cabriolet, Victoria, and covert wagon. Not to be outdone, Austin Corbin owned a pair of black hackneys, a brougham, an English dog cart, a cabriolet, and multiple other carriages. Louis M. Davenport was often seen riding Rosebud, his pacer horse.

In the late nineteenth century mail-order catalogs offered cheaper carriages for as little as twenty dollars and carriages became mass produced. The age of the horse and carriage came to a quick end with the development of the automobile. Easier to turn and closer to the ground, automobiles required no carriage stones to help ladies dismount. Carriage stones have mostly sunken into the grass or have been pulled out in favor of new sidewalks or expanding streets. Horse troughs, hitching posts, and carriage blocks are now remnants of the past.

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For the first decades of Spokane’s history, its citizens got around on foot or on horse. In a very few places downtown, horse rings can still be found in the granite curbs. Here, on the corner of Main and Stevens in downtown Spokane, lie two remnants from the late 1800s or early 1900s.

Horse drawn carriages were typically owned by the affluent. Many of the wealthy lived in Browne’s Addition mansions that date back to Spokane’s ‘Age of Elegance’ in the 1890s. Many of these mansions have held on to their carriage houses and stables. The Patrick Clark house, or “Patsy” Clark house, built by Kirtland Cutter, has both a carriage house and stable that housed their two Shetland ponies, a driving horse for their two-wheel cart, two lighter horses for their Spider, two heavy horses for their Landau. But when people came into town, they needed a place to tie their horses. At one time, horse rings like these would have dotted nearly every Spokane curb.

In the early days of Spokane, the economic and population boom increased the demand on streetcars and a much needed transportation system. The Spokane Transit Service began in 1883, as a series of independent horse-drawn vehicles. In 1886, real estate investors John J. Browne, Henry C. Marshall, and Andrew Ross created the Spokane Street Railway Company to make their properties more accessible to the people. In April 1888, Spokane’s first streetcar, pulled by horses, traveled from Riverside Avenue to Browne’s Addition. Only two months later Spokane’s first cable car line and steam-powered lines began operating on the South Hill. In 1889 the first electric trolley arrived in Spokane.

Horse drawn carriages soon became remnants of the past. By 1910, at least 150 trolley cars carried 24 million riders to work, errands, or entertainment. The electric trolley and streetcar system was maintained through the 1930s but once Henry Ford introduced his Model T. in 1908, automobiles and city buses replaced the trolleys.

Today, horse drawn carriage rides are a romantic activity set aside for weddings and special events. In the colder months, one can experience the wonder of an old fashioned holiday season in downtown Spokane with free carriage rides starting at Wall Street and going through Main Avenue, just passing the old horse rings on the corner sidewalk from over a hundred years ago.

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