‘It’s True--My Grandfather Told Me’ : Legends From the Pacific Northwest

A long time ago, the Destruction and Tatoosh islands, which lie off the northwest Washington coast, were a man and a woman, said Chief Don Lelooska, an Indian carver and storyteller from Ariel, Wash.

The two were married but often quarreled over Destruction’s gambling and inability to provide for his wife and many children. Tatoosh’s lack of basket-making and robe-making talent also fueled their arguments.

One day they had a real battle. “They threw rocks and wood (at each other), and some children were trampled--oh yes, they became some of the little flat creatures we find along the beach,” Lelooska said.

After the fight, Tatoosh left in a canoe, taking the children and some provisions. While paddling, she looked at her offspring, “who varied in size and quality,” Lelooska said, and she began to rage about the ways they resembled their father. “All the way up the coast, one after another, she found some fault with each child and cast them into the sea, where they magically turned into rocks.”

When all the children had been cast out, a great storm arose. Tatoosh brought her canoe in close to land. While waiting for the weather to improve, she had time to think, “and the old woman began to mourn her children,” the storyteller said. She stayed near the coast keening until her canoe rotted away, and “she became a great lonely rock washed by the sea and visited by sea birds.” Meanwhile, Destruction came to regret having alienated Tatoosh, and he, too, “sank into the sea and became a great craggy rock.

“It’s true,” Lelooska added. “My grandfather told me so.”

Storytelling Sessions

So went one of the legends of the Kwakiutl (a group of 16 to 20 autonomous tribes based in southwest British Columbia, Canada) narrated by Lelooska last Sunday afternoon at Galeria Capistrano in San Juan Capistrano. The two storytelling sessions he presented Sunday for about 400 people climaxed the art gallery’s fifth annual three-day exhibit of the carvings of Lelooska, his brother, “Smitty” Tsungani, and their mother, Shona-hah.

Lelooska, 52, an immense man with a booming voice and a deep belly laugh, wore red robes decorated with black lines and rows of white buttons, a carved kolus (a mythological thunderbird) headpiece and a large brass nose ring. He sat on a fur-covered dais to give what he termed “an oral Christmas card” from Clan Lelooska to members of the overflow crowd, some of whom had come from San Diego and Los Angeles.

Among the ancient Kwakiutl, a carver of sacred masks and crests was “the illustrator of the (Indian) mythology,” Lelooska told his audience. “He had to possess a unique vision of the dark world of the supernatural” and know the stories of its spirits, some of them good, some bad, and “some indifferent to puny mortals.”

Tale of Raven

He also needed to know legendary tales of “the adventures of (mythological) animals who dwelled in the world before the coming of human beings,” Lelooska said. One of those was Raven, who “brought light to the world . . . stole the sun, the moon, the stars . . . and made man from a leaf of the cottonwood tree. Raven was a clown, a liar, a lecher and a thief,” Lelooska added, and he was also “a poor fisherman.”

On one of Raven’s worst fishing days, a supernatural being named “Fogwoman” materialized in his canoe as a beautiful woman. “Raven, as he was wont to do, fell in love” and married her, Lelooska said. The marriage was happy, he added, because Fogwoman was silent until one day she spoke to reveal her ability to summon salmon, her magical “children.”

Fogwoman’s fish-calling powers made Raven rich, but they didn’t make him better-tempered. One day he struck his wife, and she left him. Then all his dried salmon rustled down to “the rich shining water, where they were reborn and swam away,” Lelooska said. “Poor Raven--his bad temper had caused him to lose his fortune.” The moral, he added, was “never take your blessings for granted, and never mistreat your wife.”

(During the laughter and applause that followed, one audience member bumped her husband’s back and said, “Hear that?”)

Turncoat Named Bat

Another story concerned Bat, who according to legend would only join whichever side was obviously winning in mythical battles between the birds and other animals. Because he was such a “turncoat,” when peace was finally declared, the other creatures turned Bat into something half-bird and half-animal, “something of night and twilight and early dawn” sentenced to hang upside down all his life. “It’s true,” Lelooska said, “our grandfathers have told us.”

There was also a folk tale about a great contest of wits between Raven and a giant halibut who created the first tides. Raven won the contest by taunting the halibut into demonstrating its powers. The fish thrashed and “boiled” the waters so mightily that it “cooked itself,” thereby creating “the largest quantity of halibut soup” in the world’s history.

Lelooska told the stories surrounded by Kwakiutl and Bellacoola (another Northwest tribe) style art made by him and Tsungani. Those pieces included such Lelooska carvings as an “owl feast dish” with a hollowed-out center and a powerfully beaked head, its wings folded, painted in red, blue and black, and an eagle sculpture that showed the bird of prey with its wings spread for flight and a fish under one claw. Among Lelooska’s masks was a big “halo” mask of a human face with a hook-like nose and open mouth, surrounded by a symbol-covered halo, painted in blue, red, black and white.

‘Transformation Masks’

Both Lelooska and Tsungani also exhibited some “transformation masks” of animal faces that opened to show human heads made of wood inside. Transformation masks represent Kwakiutl ideas about the world’s beginnings and the changing of animal spirits into Kwakiutl ancestors, Lelooska said.

Shona-hah’s pieces were miniatures of Indians. Her carvings included a “Hopi Man and Donkey,” a “Woman Carrying Wood” and a “Shaman and Patient.” The figures wore woven clothes, and sometimes had small detachable ceremonial masks.

Lelooska is both president of the Lelooska Foundation and the most willing spokesperson for his clan. Tsungani, 36, said he is more comfortable “hiding” behind a ceremonial mask when he performs dances, and quiet-spoken Shona-hah, 70, also prefers demonstrating Indian dances to lecturing or telling stories.

Lelooska did not grow up knowing the Kwakiutl myths and legends. He is three-quarters Cherokee and one-quarter French-Irish. Born on a cattle ranch in Sonora, Calif., he moved with his family to Washington state as a boy. There he came to know the art of the Kwakiutl, whom he calls “the dramatists of the Northwest coast.”

Taught to Whittle

His mother’s Cherokee father named him “Yana” (Bear) at birth and taught him to whittle when he was still a small boy. Later, members of the Nez Perce tribe gave him the name “Lelooska,” which means “to cut against wood with a knife.” (Lelooska’s Anglo name is Don Smith.)

But it was the totem poles of the Kwakiutl and the Haida (another Pacific Northwest tribe) that fascinated Lelooska when he encountered them as an adolescent. “On the Northwest coast, people carved whole trees, and that (carving style) grabbed me and never let me go,” he said in an interview before his performance. Today, he carves some totem poles, as well as masks, bowls and rattles.

Nearly 12 years ago Lelooska was interviewed for a book published by the Pasadena Art Museum. In that interview, conducted by Doris Gruber, Lelooska compared his studies of the Pacific Northwest tribes’ art to a non-Indian artist’s study of European art. “To me,” Lelooska said, “the Northwest Coast is the Rome, the Florence, of North America. These people, I think, created the greatest art objects to be found in North America. . . . I haven’t gone to Florence, I haven’t gone to Paris, I’ve come to the Northwest Coast . . . and that’s where I’ll probably be involved for the rest of my life.”

Can Perform Rituals

He has studied Northwest art and conducted an educational program about the Kwakiutl while living at Ariel almost 24 years, Lelooska said. Twelve years ago he was ritualistically “adopted” by a Kwakiutl chief (Chief James Sewid) and was given the right to use Kwakiutl dances and masks and songs, he said. He was honored by this gift, he said, as well as shocked: “This (right to perform rituals) is the most important wealth of the Kwakiutl people.” Because of this “adoption,” about six years ago Lelooska created the nonprofit Lelooska Foundation at his rural southwest Washington home.

Through the foundation, Lelooska said, he and his family seek to perpetuate Kwakiutl traditions by offering college-credit classes in conjunction with Portland’s Lewis and Clark College and Central Washington State University. They also offer “living history” sessions for visiting groups of schoolchildren, and they conduct historical research.

He and his family make their income from selling their artwork, Lelooska said, but the fees asked for their educational activities are often small. Admission to some programs ranges from $1.50 to $4 per person. The university classes, which usually include three all-day workshops on topics like “Peaceful Conquest: Lewis and Clark’s Adventures Among the Indians,” cost $146 per class, of which the foundation takes $36, Lelooska said. But despite low prices, Lelooska said the foundation supports itself without grant funds.

In Touch With Past

Conducting the classes and performing the “living-history” sessions “makes us (family members) better as artists” because it keeps them in touch with their Indian past, Lelooska said. His mother, brother, sister-in-law, niece and a nephew perform in tribal dances; his father helps maintain the physical property, and Lelooska does most of the talking.

Today, Lelooska said, he thinks of himself as a Kwakiutl. Living near Mt. St. Helens, in an area populated by eagles, bear, elk, coyote and deer, he and his parents share a building that is their “home, library and workshop,” he said. “We live what we do, we all work in the house; there’s the smell of cedar chips” everywhere. “It’s a lot like living in one of the old-time houses.”

Although they have such modern conveniences as a television set and automobiles, it’s “also possible to shut out the 20th Century completely,” Lelooska said, to “become emotionally and by taste one of the old people,” an Indian of bygone times. He uses traditional hand-made tools to make his carvings, he added, but “not just to be traditional-- they just happen to be the most efficient means to do the job.” He has tried electrical tools, but they won’t work as well, he said.

The foundation grounds also include a replica of an old Kwakiutl house, with tall carved house posts, a gabled roof and a big fire pit in its center. This house is used for the “living history” of dance, song and story, Lelooska said.

Trading Post Built

One other building on the property, an exhibit hall, houses a collection of various Indian tribes’ art, tools, weapons and costumes. The hall also holds a reconstructed trading post “filled with things that were traded to the Indians for furs,” Lelooska said.

Between 1885, when the Canadian government passed the Indian Act, and the 1950s, much Kwakiutl culture was suppressed, Lelooska said. For example, under the Indian Act, it was illegal for the Kwakiutl to hold their “potlatches” (big feasts, usually held in winter or between salmon runs and harvests, in which Pacific Northwest Indians validated their rank and social positions). The songs and dances that traditionally accompanied these feasts were also forbidden. As a result, Lelooska said, “a generation grew up without knowing” many sacred rituals.

Today, only older members of the tribe are familiar with the Kwakiutl traditions. Lelooska said he has been trying to collect some of the elders’ memories before all the old ones die. “The time is so limited; we are losing our old people,” he added.

Occasionally Lelooska travels to British Columbia for oral-history research, he said, and sometimes the elders come to Ariel. The old Kwakiutl also examine non-Indian anthropology books in Lelooska’s library, “and tell me whether they agree” with what the books say, Lelooska said.

Visits Once a Year

He doesn’t like to leave Ariel often, he added. Once a year he comes to San Juan Capistrano (his next visit to the Galeria will be in early December, 1986), and he makes annual visits to a gallery in Milburn, N.Y., and another in Chicago. He has also exhibited and/or given performances at the Chicago Art Institute, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, the Museum of Science in Minneapolis, the Native American Art Center in Washington state, the Museum of Man in San Diego and at Cal State Long Beach, he said.

Yet despite his long-term study of Kwakiutl culture, “I don’t consider myself an authority; I’m a learner,” Lelooska said. “The more I learn, the more ignorant I feel. Northwest culture is so vast and complex, if I had two centuries ahead of me, I couldn’t explore all the things I would like to.”