The Historical Legend of Spokane

Why Coyote Changed the Course of The Colombia River

Coyote had a tepee near the Sanpoil River. Kingfisher had a tepee there too. Four brothers, the Wolves, had a tepee there. So there were three tepees. Kingfisher was having a hard time getting his fish. He could get little fishes, but not enough. They didn't suit Coyote, who expected Kingfisher to do his fishing for him. The four brothers could get all the meat they wanted because they could kill a deer any time they wanted to. They had plenty of meat, and they gave Coyote plenty of meat. The four brothers, the Wolves, were Coyote's nephews. But Kingfisher ate no meat. He was having a hard time getting his fish.

Down at Celilo on the Columbia, four sisters had a fish trap. They wouldn't let any big fish come up the river. Finally Coyote said, "That won't do. I've got to get busy and see into that, so that everybody can have fish. Not just the sisters. I'll have to take a trip down there and see what I can do." It took him a long time to walk down to Celilo. Before he came to the house where the fish trap was, he tried to think how he would break the dam and bring the fish up without hurting the girls any and without fighting with them. How he was going to fool them! Then he made [called upon] his powers. He asked his powers, "What can I do to get the fish up the river?" His powers said to him, "Well, that's too much work. You can't do it." "I can work all right," said Coyote, "if you will tell me what to do." One of his powers said to him, "Go down a ways and get in the water and float down. You'll be a little wooden bowl. Go down on the trap. Then the sisters will see you and pick you up and take you back to the house."

So he went down to the water and turned into a little wooden bowl. When he got to the trap, he couldn't float any longer. So he stopped right there. When the sisters came down from the hills where they had been picking berries, they went to look at the trap and to get some water. They got down there and saw the little wooden bowl on the trap. One of them said, "O sisters, see this little wooden bowl! Now we can have a nice little dish to put our salmon in." Two of her sisters ran up and said, "Isn't it pretty! Isn't it lovely!" But the youngest sister stood off at one side and said, "I don't think that wooden bowl is good for us. Better leave it alone. It might be something that will harm us." "Oh, you)re always suspicious," said one of her sisters. "What is the little bowl going to do! Someone must have tipped over in a canoe up above, and this is part of their stuff. It can't harm anyone. Let's take the wooden bowl to the house." That's what they did. So they cooked their salmon, ate all they wanted, and after supper put what was left into the little wooden bowl for breakfast. Then they put it behind their little pantry and went to bed. The next morning when they got up, the wooden bowl was empty. There wasn't a thing in it. "I wonder what's happened to our salmon!" asked one of the sisters. "There isn't a thing in here." The youngest sister said, "I told you that wooden bowl isn't good for us. You wouldn't listen. We'd better throw it away." But the others said, "There must have been a rat or something that came and ate all the salmon. I don't think the dish had anything to do with it." The youngest couldn't do anything with her sisters. There were three against one. So they cooked some more salmon, ate their fill, put what was left into the wooden bowl, and put it behind the pantry. Then they went up into the hills after more berries. When they came back about one o'clock, they went to their house and looked at the little wooden bowl. But there wasn't anything in it. The youngest said, "I told you that bowl is no good for us." The others began to believe her and walked out of the house. The youngest had the bowl in her hand. She threw it against a big rock. Celilo was pretty rocky. The girl found a big rock and threw the bowl against it, to break it. When the bowl hit the rock, it dropped down on the ground and sat up as a little baby. One of the sisters ran over and picked it up. A little baby was staring at her. "Oh, it's a little boy baby. Sisters, we'll have a brother now. We'll take care of him, and he'll grow up, and then he can get all the salmon for us. We won't have to get the salmon. All we'll have to do is to dry it and take care of it." But the youngest sister said, "You'd better leave him alone. We don't want him in the house at all." But they were three against one. They took the baby up to the house. It was a cute little baby, full of smiles. It was always smiling. "Isn't he a cute little baby!" said the sisters. "Now we have a little brother." So they fed it, put it in the bed in the tepee, and went back into the hills to pick berries.

As soon as they were out of sight, Coyote changed himself from the baby into a man. The man went down and began digging and digging, to break the dam that they had worked so hard to make. When it was about time for the sisters to come back, he would go into the tepee, get into bed, and change himself into a baby. Well, that went on for quite a few days. Every day he went on digging and digging. One day he said to himself, "Today I think I'll be able to break through this dam." He was working as hard as he could. "It's about time for them to come home, but I'll stay here and finish breaking the dam. They can't harm me." He had a wooden bowl which he put on top of his head. He kept on digging away and digging away. The sisters got back and went down after water. They saw him there, digging. "Oh, he's a great big man, and he's breaking our trap!" cried one of the sisters. The youngest sister said, "You think you know it all. I told you that baby was no good for us." They picked up a stick and ran over to him. They tried to hit him over the head. But he had on that wooden bowl, so they couldn't hurt him. He gave the dam a few more licks and it was broken through. Then he started running away from the girls. He laughed at them. "You women never will put it over on us men. Men always will put it over on you." When he walked away from them, the salmon followed him. When the dam was broken, the salmon went through the hole he had made. Coyote walked along the shore. Whenever he got hungry or tired, he would stop and call to some of the salmon in the river. A big salmon would jump out. He would catch it, roast it, eat it, and rest awhile. Whenever he stopped, the salmon stopped. So he kept coming up the river that way.

On the way down, he had stopped at the place where Dry Falls are now. At the time, the Columbia River flowed there. He had seen a family camping there and catching little fish to eat. They had two nice-looking girls. They looked good to him. He made up his mind that he would camp there and see what he could do. He came there that evening and went to their tepee. The girls were out picking berries, so he talked to the old folks awhile. He said to the old man, "You'd better come down to the river with me. I saw a couple of salmon down there that you can have. So they went down there and caught one and brought it back and cooked it. The girls came home. They all had a big feed on the salmon. He talked with them and then stayed over night. Next morning he went down and caught two more and brought them up to the old man. After breakfast Coyote asked the old folks if he could have the girls, to marry them. "Well, I'll have to ask the girls," the old man said. So he asked them. "No," the girls said, "we don't want to be married yet. We want to be free for a while." That made Coyote so angry that he broke up the river. "All right. If you girls won't have me, you can go hungry the rest of your days. I'll just take the river away from you." So he changed the channel and made the river run down this other way, where it's running now. He said to the old man, "Some day there'll be some smart man who will run the river through here again. Years from now there will be one man who will make the water run this way again."

Then he came on up the river. He kept coming up, coming up, coming up the river till he reached the mouth of the Sanpoil River. A girl there looked good to him. He put in Hell Gate dam to hold the salmon back for her people. The salmon couldn't get over Hell Gate dam. It was too high; they couldn't get over it, the way he had it fixed. But that girl wouldn't have him. So Coyote said, "Four or five kinds of salmon will come up the big river. King salmon will go up the big river, but no big ones will come up the Sanpoil River. Steelheads first, chinooks, then silver salmon, those little salmon smaller than the silver and red on the outside - those four kinds will go up the Sanpoil. But no king salmon - no big ones." Then he broke up the dam he had made at Hell Gate. Ever since then, there have been rocks and rapids at Hell Gate.

He went on up the river and took his salmon with him. He went and went and went and went. He got as far as Kettle Falls. Of course there were no falls there, but people were living on both sides of the river. And he saw a nice-looking girl there. She was one of the Beaver family, and she looked good to him in spite of her big teeth. "I'm going to see what I can do here," Coyote said to himself.

He caught salmon for the old folks and was good to them. Next morning he asked the old man for his daughter. The old man said, "Yes, you can have her. Then I can have all the salmon I want to eat as long as I'm alive." So that's where Coyote got his woman - at Kettle Falls. He made the falls there. That's as far as the salmon could go. He would not break those falls. He left them there. So all these years that is as far as the salmon would go up the river. Coyote was very good to Beaver's daughter. He gave her a beautiful fur coat, the softest and most priceless of furs. He gave her the right to live under the falls. "Whenever you see people or hear them coming," he told her, "you can hide under the falls. There you will be safe." Coyote piled rocks across the river and cut them, so that there would always be a waterfall. He made three levels of rocks, so that there would be a waterfall whether the river was high or low. When the salmon tried to jump the falls, they could be easily caught by people fishing from the rocks. Coyote broke down all the dams from the mouth of the river all the way to Kettle Falls. Soon the salmon were so thick that Beaver could not throw a stick into the water without hitting the back of a fish. Then Coyote made Beaver the salmon chief. "The people of many tribes will come here to fish," Coyote said to Beaver. "You will be chief over all of them. You must share the salmon with everyone who comes. There will always be enough for everyone. You must never be greedy with it, and you must see to it that no one else is greedy."