Dearest Friends, Another week has flown by. I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to get to the weekend. Have a wonderful week also. I wish you unconditional Love, abundance in all, Joy and much laughter for a divine weekend, Loads of Blessings. Melodie
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Creation of the Yakima World - A Yakima Legend
In the beginning of the world, all was water. Whee-me-me-ow-ah, the Great Chief Above, lived up in the sky all alone. When he decided to make the world, he went down to the shallow places in the water and began to throw up great handfuls of mud that became land.
He piled some of the mud so high that it froze hard and made the mountains. When the rain came, it turned into ice and snow on top of the high mountains. Some of the mud was hardened into rocks. Since that time the rocks have not changed - they have only become harder.
The Great Chief Above made trees grow on the earth, and also roots and berries. He made a man out of a ball of mud and told him to take fish from the waters, and deer and other game from the forests.
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When the man became lonely, the Great Chief Above made a woman to be his companion and taught her how to dress skins, how to find bark and roots, and how to make baskets out of them. He taught her which berries to gather for food and how to pick them and dry them. He showed her how to cook the salmon and the game that the man brought.
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Once when the woman was asleep, she had a dream, and in it she wondered what more she could do to please the man. She prayed to the Great Chief Above for help. He answered her prayer by blowing his breath on her and giving her something which she could not see or hear, smell or touch.
This invisible something was preserved in a basket. Through it, the first woman taught her daughters and granddaughters the designs and skills which had been taught her.
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But in spite of all the things the Great Chief Above did for them, the new people quarreled. They bickered so much that Mother Earth was angry, and in her anger she shook the mountains so hard that those hanging over the narrow part of Big River fell down.
The rocks, falling into the water, dammed the stream and also made rapids and waterfalls. Many people and animals were killed and buried under the rocks and mountains.
Someday the Great Chief Above will overturn those mountains and rocks. Then the spirits that once lived in the bones buried there will go back into them.
At present those spirits live in the tops of the mountains, watching their children on the earth and waiting for the great change which is to come. The voices of these spirits can be heard in the mountains at all times. Mourners who wail for their dead hear spirit voices reply, and thus they know that their lost ones are always near.
We did not know all this by ourselves; we were told it by our fathers and grandfathers, who learned it from their fathers and grandfathers. No one knows when the Great Chief Above will overturn the mountains.
But we do know this: the spirits will return only to the remains of people who in life kept the beliefs of their grandfathers. Only their bones will be preserved under the mountains.
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Tsi - Laan (Deep Water) - A Yakima Legend
Once there was more than enough game, plants, and fish of every kind for the people. to eat. But they took their wealth for granted and were rude to Spilyay (coyote) when he offered them more food. Consequently, they lost almost everything they had. This is the story I will tell you...
There was a time that coyote was going around telling the animal world that there was going to be a change. He told them, "We are going to be reduced in power. There are others coming who are going to be rulers over all of us, and over all this country." Coyote was talking about the new people, the people with two legs - people we now call native Americans.
So he began to prepare. One day, coyote came up the Columbia River to the Chelan River. He looked it over and felt there was something he should do here. He asked his "power" what he should do (the power or counselors were his five sisters which he carried around inside of him). The sisters told him that there were no fish in the Chelan River that he should fix it so the fish could swim up the river. At that time the Chelan River was too swift and the salmon could not go up the river.
Coyote decided to build steps with rocks for the salmon to swim up the river. He widened a narrow gorge for them to swim through. He made a deep pool under the falls so the salmon could rest up before they swam up river.
And that is not all the coyote did! When he came up to Mud Flats, he found that the river was too shallow, so he built a high rocky cliff and a rapids and made another little pool for the fish to rest. Coyote was very busy. He traveled to many places, fixing streams and rivers so that the salmon could come and spawn. He did this for the new people.
But one day while coyote was working on a place called Dry Lake, he left his canoe on the shore. He had seen a pretty girl living with the new people. He told the people, "I want the most beautiful princess you have in your village and I'll fix up a lot of places where you can catch many fish. I'll even make places where you can dry your own fish." But the people told him, "We don't need your fish. We will not give you our prettiest girl.
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We have enough game here to live on. We have mountain goats, mountain lion, game birds, quail, grouse and turtle doves and we have bear and deer. We don't need your fish."
Coyote (who was known for a having a very bad temper, as well as being a trickster), grew angry. He had worked very hard to make places for the salmon to live so that the new people would have fresh fish to eat. So he started back and began destroying everything that he had created. He destroyed all of the fishing sites, drove out all the fish from the spawning grounds, and he made the water holes dry up. He left his canoe in the Chelan River, but so that no one would get any use out of it, he turned it into stone (there is a cliff there now). He took back everything that was worthwhile.
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Chelan River Cliffs Chelan Rock Canoe
Now most of the lakes have only small fish. Coyote said, "they can have a few minnows, but there will never be any more big fish". This is why many places in North Central Washington are without Salmon. The only way to get fish in many lakes is by planting them there.
