Copyright ©2003 by Jack Nisbet All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by Sasquatch Books Cover design: Bob Suh Interior design and composition: Stewart A. Williams Cover map: David Thompson. “Map of North America from 84° West,” 1804. Map courtesy of The National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom. Cover illustration: John Kirk. Ornithology of the United States of North America. Plate 1. 1839, “California Vulture.” Illustration courtesy of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Ewell Sale Stewart Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. All interior illustrations by Marjorie C. Leggitt except for: this page: “Head of a Vulture” from the Journal of Meriwether Lewis, February 17, 1806, Codex J. p. 80. Production editor: Heidi A. Schuessler Copy editor: Don Graydon Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Nisbet, Jack, 1949 — Visible bones : journeys across time in the Columbia River country / Jack Nisbet. p. cm. ISBN 1-57061-376-1 (hardcover) ISBN 10: 1-57061-524-1 / ISBN 13: 978-1-57061-524-5 (paperback) eBook ISBN: 978-1-57061953-3 Columbia River Valley—Description and travel. 2. Columbia River Valley—History.. 3. Columbia River Valley—Antiquities. 4. Natural History—Columbia River Valley. 5. Fossils—Columbia River Valley. I. Title. F853.N57 2003 979.7—dc21 2003045609 Sasquatch Books 1904 Third Ave, Suite 710, Seattle, WA 98101 (206) 467-4300 www.sasquatchbooks.com [email protected] v3.1 v3.1 A ’ N G L UTHOR S OTE ON EOGRAPHY AND ANGUAGE: In this book the Columbia Plateau refers to the part of the river’s drainage that lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Cascade Range. The Columbia Basin denotes the arid central portion of the Plateau. The Snake River is part of the larger Columbia drainage. Ethnologists divide the native peoples of the Columbia drainage into three cultural groups. Plateau tribes inhabited most of the interior and spoke Kootenai, Interior Salish, or Sahaptin languages. Great Basin peoples, all Shoshoean speakers, were concentrated in the Snake River country. The Coastal cultures along the lower Columbia spoke Chinookan and Coast Salish languages. Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Introduction Map ONE Little Stone House TWO Water Dogs THREE White Shield FOUR The Beautiful Buzzard of the Columbia FIVE Behemoth SIX The Devouring Disorder SEVEN Mount Coffin EIGHT Smoke NINE The Otter Swims TEN A Good Day for Digging Roots ELEVEN Musquash TWELVE Reburying Jaco Finlay Acknowledgments Selected Bibliography About the Author THE COLUMBIA RIVER COUNTRY Introduction T through the crust, I knew I was really stuck. HE MOMENT THE REAR WHEEL BROKE Muttering curses, I switched off the engine and surveyed the situation. I had backed up too near a grove of birch trees that surrounded a seeping spring, and one wheel was buried to the hubcap. The slice of blue clay that had enveloped my tire emitted a whiff of indigo perfume, and when I bent to look I caught a glimpse of something long and smooth embedded in the mud. At first I took it for the leg bone of an animal, and struggled to pry it free—I’ve always loved to pick up bones and try to figure out what animal they belonged to—but the fragment proved to be nothing more than a plank from a farmer’s old spring box, warped to a pleasing arc by the preserving goo. Rubbing my fingers over the raised grain of the board, I figured that it must have been only a century or so since the birch spring homesteader had set the board in place. Now the rut that had dragged down my car was offering a small relic from those days for my perusal. The spring where I was mired lay on an open bench, and I walked out to its edge and looked down on the Columbia River. From the site of my misfortune, the whole country was laid out for me to see—open hillsides of ponderosa pine, new outcrops of colored dolomite, draws filled with darker Douglas firs and yellow-green tamarack. Time marched backward from the homestead spring, to the fur traders who had floated past, riding the initial wave of European contact, to the tribal memories buried beneath the waters. The round peaks to the north still capped with snow in early June hinted at the glaciers that had carved the bench where I stood. The word relic conjures up a host of connotations, from human remains to a historic souvenir. It can denote a custom from the past, the remnants of an ancient language, or a fragment of a whole. It can represent the last of a dying species, or an indefatigable survivor. During the years I have lived in the Columbia country, I have come to see its vast natural and human archives as a reliquary of its former lives, a reservoir of clues that connect this moment to the distant past, this place to territories far away. That is where this book begins, with the discovery of such relics. Some of them fit comfortably in a pocket; some are far too large for transport. Certain ones have mesmerized generations of chroniclers and invited intense scientific scrutiny, while others have barely been noticed. Many take the tangible form of rock or bone; others are as ephemeral as the faint whiff of a bloom in spring or the laugh of an auntie poking fun. Some have faded to extinction; others can be found by any kid with a penchant for muddy feet. But whatever form they take, each evokes a facet of the region’s past, reminding us that this place has not always been as we see it now. Their voices call across time, carrying snatches of the big river’s long and larger song. Upper Cambrian trilobite (Labiostria westropi) from Tanglefoot Creek Tanglefoot∼