Reading Notes: Pacific Northwest, Part A

Story: How Kemush Created the World

Story Source: Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest, especially of Washington and Oregon, by Katharine Berry Judson (1910).

Klamath Lake

I really enjoyed this story because I am really interested in creation stories. There were other creation stories in this unit but this one got my attention better. I think it was because the story of Coyote and Silver-Fox did not make much sense to me.

Plot Summary:

In the beginning, Kemush, Old Man of the Ancients, created the world.

Kemush sprung quickly from the ashes of the northern lights and made the world at the call of Morning Star.

In the beginning, the earth was flat and bare. Kemush planted the grass and roots in the valleys. He set the trees, the pine, the white pine, the juniper.

Kemush created the animals and placed them in the world. Kemush made the earth and the earth was new except Shapashkeni, the rock, where was built the lodge of Sun and Moon.

Then Kemush, with his daughter, Evening Sky, went to the Place of the Dark, to the lodges of the Munatalkni. Five nights in a great circle about a vast fire they danced with the spirits of the dark. The spirits were without number, like the leaves on the trees. But when Shel called to the world, the spirits became dry bones. Kemush put the dry bones into a sack.

He threw the bones. He threw them away two by two. To Kta-iti, place of steepness, he threw two. To Kuyani Shaiks, the crawfish trail, to Molaiksi, steepness of snow, and to Kakasam Yama, mountain of the great blue heron, to each he threw two bones. Thus people were created. The dry bones became Maidu, the Indian, Aikspala, the people of the chipmunks, and last of all, Maklaks, the Klamath Indian.

In the end, he climbed back to heaven. He still lives there with his daughter Evening Sky, and Wanaka, the Sun halo.