Volume 1 Number 3 - APRIL 2007

Indian Geography: From a'cac to mansa'la

Again we turn to our treasured member, Rick McClure, Forest Archeologist, for a feature article. This article appeared in an issue of the Morton Journal in 1984. With his permission and a few changes (for one, Randle Ranger District had a name change), we present it to members who may have missed or forgotten it.

If you had been a traveler passing through the Cowlitz Valley 200 years ago and asked for directions to Kelso, chances are you would have been met with a shrug. If you had asked how far it was to mansa'la, you would probably have gotten an answer. That answer would more than likely have been in Sahaptin tongue, the number one language in East Lewis County for hundreds of years before the coming of white settlers. Very few of the landmarks in the upper Cowlitz country are still known by their old names – the ones familiar to the Indian people who once roamed these forests and mountains.

Some of the Upper Cowlitz (or Taidnapam) Indian names that are still with us include Cispus, reportedly the name of a mythological warrior; Salkum, the Indian name for Mill Creek; Naches, and Tieton, the original names for those rivers; and Takh Takh Meadow, on the Cowlitz Valley Ranger District, Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The literal translation of the word “takh takh” is “small prairie”. A few words still on the maps are slightly modified from their original Sahaptin language forms: Skyo Mountain , near Packwood, was, to the Indians, “tiska'ya”, meaning “skunk”. The Nisqually River was “cqwali”, pronounced squally”. Then again, craggy Tongue Mountain in the Cispus River Valley seems to have gotten its present name from the translation of the Indian's place name: melE'ci'nc” means “tongue place”. This was a popular area with Indian goat hunters.

Some of the words no longer with us describe plants or animals which attracted native people to the spot. One example was “wa'q'amuyac”, the name for Huffaker Mountain near Randle. The literal translation for this is “camas place”, referring to the plant often dug by the Indians for its starchy bulb. Camas probably grew in open meadow areas at the base of the mountain sometime in the past. Landers Creek, now running into Riffe Lake , was called “cu'caincac”, meaning “steelhead place”.

This suggests the Indians may have used their wooden fish traps in the creek in a bygone era. The former community of Nesika, now under the waters of Riffe Lake , was called “swi'kswikt” when only the taidnapam people lived there. This place name is derived from the word for the common horsetail or scouring rush, a plant frequently found in damp areas along pond margins.

Anatomical place names include: “neq'u't'” meaning “breast”, the name for Butter Peak , northeast of Packwood; “k'a'cinu” meaning elbow, the name for Davis Mountain, east of Randle; and “nu'cnu” meaning nose, the former name for the place at the head of Dunn Canyon (near Mossyrock) on the Cowlitz River.

Just as people living today in Mineral are called “Mineralites” or people in Randle “Randleites”, the taidanapam Indians put similar endings on their place names to indicate where they lived. The people who lived at the mouth of the Tilton River called themselves “lalalxta'ma” after “lala'lx”, the ancient name for the Tilton. The residents of Mossyrock Prairie or “qw'E'it” in the native tongue, were “qw E'lt t'ma”, the “ta'ma” ending meaning “people” or “people of” in the English language.

Within a few decades following white settlement most of the old names disappeared from use, lingering for a brief time only in the memories of a few Cowlitz elders, from whom most of the names above were collected. The man responsible for preserving the ancient geographic listings was Melville M. Jacobs, a professor of anthropology at the University of Washington . Jacobs had worked among many Indian tribes in Washington and Oregon studying their language and folk tales. It is said that in his later years Jacobs was the last person conversant in two extinct Northwest Indian languages which he had learned years before from native speakers.

In the summer of 1927 Jacobs gathered up his notebooks and an Edison wax cylinder recorder and drove from Seattle to Morton where he interviewed Sam Eyle Jr., a fluent speaker of the local Taidnapam dialect. In 1928 additional interviews were made, beginning with Lewy Costima, an older Cowlitz man living at Bremer, west of Morton. However, the bulk of the geographic place names came from a lengthy narrative by “Indian Jim” Yoke of Packwood. Jacobs has described the interview as follows:

“Yoke had been encouraged by interpreter Eyle Jr. to dictate anything he knew about his Cowlitz River world, in addition to myths; he plunged spontaneously into this peculiar text, the motivation apparently being to parade knowledge derived from a lifetime of travel in the local region in hope that both the visiting ethnologist (Jacobs) and the younger natives squatting about the tipi might be properly educated and impressed.”

Of the many, many place names listed in that recorded text, only 39 can be matched with modern names. The rest include no landmarks or translations and only vague notions as to their present positions. Yoke also related many fascinating and ribald Indian tales to Dr. Jacobs which were published by Columbia University as a two volume set, “Northwest Sahaptin Texts”, in 1934.

Jim Yoke died in 1943 at about 100 years of age. Jacobs passed away in 1971. A few years ago Elizabeth Jacobs, the widow of the anthropologist, donated her husband's collection of field notebooks and recordings to the University of Washington . In order to make this material available to the public for research, the University Manuscripts Division (just over a year ago) published a catalog of the materials. Included in the collection are Jacobs' original field notes from the 1927 and 1928 field trips to interview the Cowlitz elders. The Edison cylinder recordings have been preserved, and, for convenience, copied onto magnetic tapes. Today the voice of Jim Yoke can be heard again, rhythmically and poetically chanting a story about the exploits of Old Man Coyote, or about Skunk, for whom Skyo Mountain was named. Some songs have also been preserved. The tapes are available for listening at the Music Library Listening Center on the University of Washington campus in Seattle .

n an attempt to return at least one of the old Indian terms to use, the Forest Service will have the word “panakpi” on their new recreation map, due to be released later this year. This place name, collected from Jim Yoke by Dr. Jacobs, was formerly used by the Indians to designate Walupt Lake . The name will now appear on the mountain rising to the south of the lake, previously unnamed on the Forest Service map. Unfortunately, this word's meaning has been lost. If you had ever had the opportunity to ask old Jim Yoke where panakpi is, he might have told you it was just a few ridges over from a'cac, the highest peak ( Gilbert Peak ) in the Goat Rocks. (Unfortunately, the Forest Service ran into red tape; they were not permitted to place an unofficial name on an official map.)

In Passing

Sadly we've lost a few more long-time residents of our area. If you've not seen the obituaries, they were:

Elsie Virginia Morris, Fishville, born July 19, 1912 to James and Laura Forinash, passed away January 19, 2007 at the age of 94. She married her second husband, Earl Morris, September 13, 1942.

Ed D. Music , 69, formerly of Glenoma, joined a small combo in heaven January 20, 2007. He was born April 27, 1937 to Jenks and Eleanor Music.

A truck driver by trade, he was a picker for the Tune Teasers, one of Packwood's premier country bands. Give him an instrument, he could play it; two of his specialties were the piano and the guitar. For a while he toured with Packwood's own Nashville star Johnny Mullins.

Other information is sketchy at this time. He is survived by his wife Dusty, mother Eleanor, four children and a bunch of grandkids.

Frank Pratt , 97 year-old Randle resident, died February 2, 2007. He was born January 18, 1910 in Twin Falls , Idaho . Mr. Pratt came to Randle with his adoptive mother, Emma, in 1927. He started to work for the U.S. Forest Service in 1928. He joined the Civilian Conservation Corp in 1933, then returned to the Forest Service for many years. He manned Burley Mountain lookout from 1936-1941 according to one source, and for four years in the late 1930's, according to another. He next went to work logging and worked for various gyppo outfits until he retired in 1972.

Frank married Myrtle Maxine McNee in 1934.

Wallace Mead , Randle, born March 15, 1922 to Glenoma area homesteaders Benjamin F. and Almeda (Pollard) Mead, died February 3, 2007 at the age of 84. He married Geneva on August 11, 1942.

Our sympathies go out to the families of these folks. We trust they had good lives, and left many fond memories for those who continue their legacies.

Charlie's Barn

LaVonne Sparkman, longtime Morton resident and author of local history books, including “From Homestead to Lakebed,” contributed this article which was printed some years ago in the Morton Journal. We sincerely appreciate her letting us use it.

The early morning blast echoed between the hills of Glenoma. All over the valley, house lights flicked on as neighbors awoke to hearing their dishes and windows rattle. Alarmed, neighbors ran to their doors to see if they could find out the cause of the thunderous noise.

Questions flew around, “Was that an earthquake? I heard the windows rattle!”

“Did Mt. Rainier erupt? Was it a thunderstorm?”

But no one could figure out what caused the extremely loud noise that disturbed their rest and brought them out of bed at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Some of the neighbors never did find out that Bob Weber was behind the alarming, rolling explosion. The story behind it began when Weber bought a barn from Tacoma City Light. The utility was clearing ground for the reservoir behind the Mossyrock Dam that would drown the little community of Kosmos. The time was 1967 when all the property owners in both Kosmos and Riffe had no choice about being bought out by Tacoma and causing them to leave their homes, farms and businesses. The city utility sold the buildings to be dismantled.

Weber knew Charlie Little's barn was built of the finest lumber and he knew when Charlie built something it was meant to last. All those 2-by-6's and 2-by-10's were worth a lot of money and he paid only $75 for the barn.

A friend told him, “Board it up tight and then set off a stick or two of dynamite inside it and that will do the job; that'll loosen all the nails then the rest of it will be easy.”

Weber followed the advice – after all as a logger, he knew how to handle dynamite. Using sheets of plywood, he worked his way around the barn, covering each opening. After pounding nails in the boards every six inches, he proudly surveyed his work. To himself, he said, “That'll do ‘er. That barn is boarded up tight as bark on a tree.”

When the barn was sealed up tight, he brought in nine sticks of dynamite. It was all he had on hand: 90 proof. Setting it down in the middle of the barn, he stuck the cap in a stick and wired a long fuse.

Then he thought, “I'll set it off very early in the morning, ‘cause it might disturb the neighbors still living around here.”

He lit a long fuse on that powder and dashed out to the old pickup, reached into his pocket for his keys and they weren't there. He dug into all the pockets in his jeans – no keys. Breaking out in a sweat despite the cold morning, he suddenly remembered he had put them in his jacket pocket. Jumping into his pickup, pouring on the gas and throwing gravel, he got out of there.

Starting up the hill, hunching forward, he willed his pickup to gain speed up the hill from Kosmos. With his eyes swiveling between the road and the rear view mirror, he was watching the barn when the pickup rocked as the blast went off. Immediately, he saw lights flash on in all the houses.

He smiled, “I didn't go back to that damn barn for quite a while. Some of my friends never did know who was responsible for the blast.”

When he did go back to see if the job was done, the only nails that were loosened were the ones that were drove into the plywood. But it had sounded like a good idea.