Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/197

Rh By this, of course, the village was almost depopulated, and when, after a time, Tallapus returned, he was very angry to see that the benefits of his fishery had gone, not to the people, but to the wicked skookum. He therefore went forth to the monster and cried out to it, "O, wicked skookum; long enough have you been eating these people." And with one blow of his tomahawk cut off the offending tongue, and buried it under the rocks upon the west side of the falls; after which the people flourished. But so persistent is Indian superstition that even yet some of the old Indians say that when the canal was cut around the falls, that this was nothing more than laying bare the channel made for the tongue of the skookum.

On the east side of the falls at about the site of Oregon City the Indians also made a large village, being nourished by the fishery, and had among them a great chief. But from the mountains on the east there came a frightful skookum, who destroyed the entire village and even the old chieftain and all the people, except the chief's wife and her unborn son.

The woman desiring that her son should be great and strong, took him after his birth to the various streams or lakes that were haunted by Tomaniwus spirits, and bathed him in the waters. From these he absorbed the strength of the water and of the spirits, and in consequence, grew prodigiously. In the course of time, he returned to the old village where he found his mother, and looking about the lodge, he began to ask her what were the various articles that he saw. She replied: "This is the spear with which your father used to catch the salmon; and this is the tomahawk with which he