cover image The Forgotten Tribes: Oral Tales of the Teninos and Adjacent Mid-Columbia River Indian Nations

The Forgotten Tribes: Oral Tales of the Teninos and Adjacent Mid-Columbia River Indian Nations

Donald M. Hines. Great Eagle Publishing, $12.95 (143pp) ISBN 978-0-9629539-0-3

The forgotten tribes of folklorist Hines ( Tales of the Nez Perce ) are from the Columbia River Valley in the Pacific Northwest: the Teninos, the Umatillas and the Cascades. The handful of traditional stories that remain from those cultures are published for the first time in this important volume, presented by Hines as originally told by Native informants to an amateur ethnologist in the early part of the century. Many of the tales are etiological in nature, explaining the origin of river rapids, of a rock formation, of the horse. The longest and best piece, concerning a war between the wolves and the salmon, explains not only the origin of the seasons but also of the victory cry given by winners of the Cascades tribe at the end of the contests. Each of the 14 stories testifies to the belief that the tribal home was a numinous landscape populated by dwarfs, spirits and demons, where every lake and rock had meaning. Hines provides the reader with what little social and historical data is known about the tribes and supplies references to similar myths in other traditions. Illustrated. (Jan.)