Yoncalla (Southernmost Kalapuya Indian group) Creation Myth Mask- adaptation by Maria Serrot

William Hartless, our Corvallis native Indian, left us a considerable amount of information about his people.  William, or Shawala talked in general about the spiritual life of the Chepenafa or Cha Pinafu.  Our native local Indians' religion was nature oriented, their guardian spirits taking the forms and characteristics or animals or natural elements.  Their priests or shamans had extraordinary powers, they acted as ceremonial leaders and healers.

 "Always a boy who wanted to become a shaman, he was always swimming in the early morning, and when it became dark, the moon was full, then he would go to the mountain, he would go five nights.  Always in the early morning he would go swimming.  And then he would find his dream power, his spirit power."  (Jacobs, Kalapuya Texts).

The young people cleaned up their vision-quest sites, they gathered wood and cleaned up the trenches where they would sleep: "…they go in order to make their hearts good at the dirt wall (trench), all night long when the day rises, then they call to the dream-power…"(Jacobs, et al).

Some spirits were  acquired through an ordinary dream, while others could be inherited from other people.  A song was created by the spirit-seeker, usually connected to the acquired spirit helper.  Winter dances were held to strengthen the people and shamans often presided over them.  Spirit powers came in many forms: eagle, deer, grizzly, coyote (very popular in stories), black bear, mink, whale, blizzard, grouse, etc.,  The Mary's River shaman would ordinarily dress for ceremonies in buckskin suit, with fringed sleeves.   On his neck he could wear beads, grizzly teeth, shells or feather.  On his head he would wear a band of cedar bark, braided, about two inches wide, intermingled with feathers; it was long in the back as worn by the Sioux.  At times he would wear an otter skin over his shoulders.  Feathers were symbolic of the spirit world, and dance wands were made of them.  Rattles were also used in dancing.  The local Indians believed that the spirit-powers left with the coming of the European-Americans.

A Mary's River myth tells of an old woman that threw one of her grandsons out of her house for being disobedient; he cried all  night and then disappeared, becoming a spirit.  This myth may have helped some misbehaving children from becoming bad.
 
 

	A creation myth told by the Yoncalla, who like the Cha Pinafu belonged to the larger Kalapuya tribe, was recorded by Jesse A. Applegate, who learned of their creation story from a chemomochot, a shaman.  The three characters in this story were known to the Yoncalla as Snowats, Iswukaw, and Quartux (woman, boy and wolf)  (Applegate 1914:94):
View of Creation Myth Mask adaptation by Maria Serrot

 

" In the beginning was a mountain, and on the mountain top was a stone.  On this table was a deposit of some kind of matter jelly-like in consistency - we would call it protoplasm..and out of this protoplasm mass grew a living being in the form of, and was, a woman.  She held in her arms a male child, and when she was fully grown she descended, carrying the child on her bosom, to the base of  the mountain, where the two were joined by a wolf.  The woman placed the boy astride on the wolf's back and passed a strap around the child and over the wolf's head above his eyes."

View of Creation Myth mask - adapation by Maria Serrot

On October 9th, 1986, Alex Atkins, an archeology student at Oregon State University showed me a perfect obsidian arrow-head as well as a scraping tool called a "spoke-shave" that he had found that very day near the bike path close to the confluence area between the Mary's and the Willamette rivers, evidence indeed that the Cha Pinafu were very much a part of the vicinity in the not so distant past.  Our European-American history in these parts is only about 140 years old, and yet there are many "historic landmarks" designated by past and present historical societies and city planners of Corvallis.  The Cha Pinafu however, who go back with this land probably to ancient times, have no historic site to honor them in Corvallis.  I like to think that the confluence area where our two rivers meet is an area that honors them well, and hope that present and future city planners endeavor to keep it as clean and magnificent as the Cha Pinafu left it.
 

 
 
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