Toivo Land, WA 98648

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.” – Emily Dickinson

~
There are numbers zipped up in code that distinguish a place. A place where the mailman sometimes drives a mile or more to the next box; markers upon a black sea of asphalt, gravel and rain. Toivo lived here, amongst the mapleway and dirt trails- snags of trees swaying in the wind. A psithurism cathedral, with halls that echoed Finnish Polkas in a land of make believe. My Grandfather came from an old world, yet made a new one in the mossy twigs of 98648.

I am the oldest of 10 grandchildren, and arrived into a world filled with imagination and music. My grandfather played the accordion, spoke Finnish when drinking with his brothers and sisters, and loved to tell good stories. My oldest memories are set to the soundtrack of joy, laughter, and the Chicken Dance. Gramps had instruments in every corner and nook- amongst the dusty wisps of paper scrolled upon with poems, music, and blueprints for building. His hands were always inventing something new. When I was 9, he invented Toivo Land.

Toivo was an imaginary friend he made out of sawdust flesh, dressed in cover-alls, and who wore a face of permanent marker drawn upon a milk jug. Toivo always sat on an old Ford tractor that was rusty and splintered (unless he was out and about with the Toivo Land Band.) Toivo was a Magician, and like the Wizard of Oz, Toivo plowed a yellow brick road dotted with hand painted signs, and paved with the falling leaves of Maples, Oak, and Fir. A network of discovery that spanned 3 acres, and a lifetime. Toivo was always busy- this was Toivo’s land.

Toivo: 1) Finnish toivo = ‘hope’, ‘wish’, ‘desire’ 1 a) … with an older meaning ‘faith’, ‘trust’, ‘promise’

 (Photo of Toivo Land Band @ Skamania County Fair Parade, Stevenson, WA. 98648 , cir. 1984)

(Photo of Toivo Land Band @ Skamania County Fair Parade, Stevenson, WA. 98648 , cir. 1984)

~~

The faint sound of Polka seeping from old cassettes keeps time with the machines monitoring his breathing. His heart beats sporadic metronomes to his Covid-19 fever dreams. His fingers fold in on themselves- clutched and cold. It has been awhile since he has held the weight of billows and keys strapped upon his stern shoulders. He is quiet and ready- ready to make music again.

“Thank you,” I sob a hard sentence, stuck in my throat made of his flesh, “thank you Grandpa for always being there, and making our lives magic, and filled with love.”

“Thank you Grandpa for Toivo!”- I strain the words between tears that fall upon my pandemic shield made of plastic.

We lock a gaze of Finnish silence, the kind of silence filled with the solidarity of *Sisu. A stoic tear moves its way down his ageless face of wisdom, and with a side quiet smile, he says:

“It is all I could have hoped for!”

“It is all I could have hoped for.”
———————————————————————————————————————

* Sisu is a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness and is held by Finns themselves to express their national character. It is generally considered not to have a literal equivalent in English.

Siah | The Long Ago

The Cascade Range, where it crosses the Columbia River, exhibits enormous cross sections of lava, and at its base are petrified trunks of trees, which have been covered and hidden from view except where the wash of the mighty stream has exposed them. Indians have told me, of their knowledge, that, buried deep under the outpours of basalt, or volcanic tufa, are bones of animals of siah , or the long ago.

Where Gods live.

Where Gods live.

Traditions of the great landslide at the Cascades are many, but vary little in form. According to one account, the mountain tops fell together and formed a kind of arch, under which flowed, until the overhanging rocks finally fell into the stream and made a dam, or gorge. As the rock is columnar Basalt, very friable and easily disintegrated, that was not impossible, and the landscape suggests some such giant avalanche. The submerged trees are plainly visible near this locality. Animal remains I have not seen, but these Salmon-eating Indians have lived on the river’s borders through countless ages, and know every feature in their surroundings by constant association for generations, and naturally ally these facts with their religious theories. (MacMurray MS.)

An excerpt from ‘The Ghost Dance Religion and Wounded Knee’, by James Mooney, Chapter VII, Smohalla and his Doctrine

Matriarch of the Cascades

“Mary was born at the Cascades in 1854, in the “Moon of the Falling Leaves”, October. Many Indians did not know what year they were born, much less the month and day.

Grandmother.

Matriarch.

Mary’s mother was Susan, a member of the Wishram tribe. Her father was Tomalth. * (Amanda pronounced it “Tum’uth”.) He was the 6’4″, red-haired chief of the Cascade tribe of Chinook Indians.He was the son of Chief Stilgat of one of the tribes at the mouth of the Columbia River.

Mary was only eighteen months old at the time of the Battle of the Cascades, in March 1856. After her father was hanged by order of the U. S. Army, Mary went with her mother and other family members back to the Wishram village.

In the 1870′s, as the young widow of Henry Will-wy-ity, a Wishram Indian, she traded a team of horses to Kenzy Marr for 160 acres of his donation land claim at Marr’s Landing. Here, at the end of the present lndian Mary Road, her brother built for her a nice wooden cabin.”

Read more about our Grandmother, Kaliah Will-wy-ity, here at my Cousins webiste: https://chieftumulthtreatysigner.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/skamania-historical-society-pamphlet-on-indian-mary-written-by-ida-williams-altringer.pdf

Also, check out this site for more info pertaining to our heritage as Watɬlala Band of Chinuk (Cascade Indians): https://chieftumulthtreatysigner.wordpress.com/

Old photo shows "Indian Mary" Stooquin, right, with daughters and a friend. From left is Nellie Arquette Miller, 18, a friend; Amanda Williams, 14; Abbie Reynolds Estrabrook, 7; and Mary Will-wyity, 40. Photo taken at Moffett's Hot Spring about 1894.

Old photo shows “Indian Mary” Stooquin, right, with daughters and a friend. From left is Nellie Arquette Miller, 18, a friend; Amanda Williams, 14; Abbie Reynolds Estrabrook, 7; and Mary Will-wyity, 40. Photo taken at Moffett’s Hot Spring about 1894.

Landscape of Visions

This is a photo of my hometown of Carson, Washington taken in the year 1925. The domed mountain in the right hand side is Wind Mountain. 10473063_1117725894905723_815477723240662057_oGrowing up, I could see Wind Mountain directly from my bedroom window. I would get lost in daydream, which is a pretty common occurrence for me, and wonder how my ancestors revered and interacted with this landscape. What was it about this mountain that made it holy or sacred? Was it because of it’s stand alone features in the middle of the Cascade Mountain range? Was is it because of the sacred mineral waters that bubbled and boiled in her shadows? Or, was it because it could have been where the actual land bridge, known as the Bridge of the Gods, could have crossed the mighty river? – And Who had the first Vision on her lofty peak? Was it Coyote?

Submerged Forest

Up until the completion of Bonneville Dam in 1938, a ghostly white forest of drowned tree stumps could be observed along both sides of the Columbia River between Cascade Locks and The Dalles. The submerged forest was first mentioned in a geologic textbook in 1853, in “Principles of Geology” by Sir Charles Lyell

“Thus Captains Clark and Lewis found, about the year 1807 (sic), a forest of pines standing erect under water in the body of the Columbia RIver, which they supposed, from the appearance of the trees, to have been submerged only about twenty years.”

Both Lewis and Clark in 1805 and Captain Fremont in 1845 recognized that the trees were drowned by the formation of a lake behind a 200-foot landslide dam.

Penny Postcard, ca.1920s, "Wind Mountain and Submerged Forest, Columbia River".

Penny Postcard, ca.1920s, “Wind Mountain and Submerged Forest, Columbia River”.

Possibly triggered by an earthquake, the dam material slid down from the cliffs of Table Mountain and Greenleaf Peak at a time later determined to be between 1260 and 1290 A.D. The stumps were described in detail by Minnesota biologists Donald B. and Elizabeth G. Lawrence in a series of definitive papers in 1935, 1937, 1937, and 1958. The Lawrences were the first to date the time of the landslide, by caron 14 analyses, as having occurred 700 years before. As of 1936, the Lawrence’s counted 3,068 stumps on the south side of the river, and 938 on the north side of the river. The maximum concentration of stumps on the south side occurs just above the mouth of Viento Creek, where more than 800 stumps were counted within a small area.

Source: John Allen, Professor of Geology at Portland State University, 1985, “Time Travel in Oregon”.

In These Shadows, We Call Home

these veins of fire do smolder
beneath ash and flesh-
our eyes glow red-
and lips spit rocks-
we morph and quake
and shimmer and shake
and burn it all again.
in the dust the sun does bake
the ash to caked earth-
and a seed finds
its way to grow.
now our arms do shake as we begin to awake
and reach for the sky we fly….
and as storms do come,
and as mountains do cry-
-silent-
in their shadow-
we call home.

LAWETLAT’LA

LAWETLAT’LA

A Dragon Named Energy

The curve around a domed landscape harkens an era of black smoke and tar. Roads and the gorge became intwined in a historical knot of progress and expansion. Along with the trailblazing of the railroad, the fuel dependent pathways would change the course of what it meant to transport goods and culture. As the pace quickened along its shores, the river seemed to halt and stall behind pale dams hungry for a dragon named energy.

The very base of this mountain holds vigil, and reminds the River how it use to sing, and the mingle of wind holds time with the sun.
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Real Indian

Real Indian
By my Auntie Teri Deras

Little boy
questions
‘Are you
a real
Indian?’
‘Yes!’ I
Patiently
say.

‘But you
don’t have
braids!”

I smile and
walk away
in my
Reebok moccasins.

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Resilience | Confluence Project

Reposted from Confluence Project Please check out and support the work that they do!


Stories from the River is a series of documentary shorts produced in collaboration with Confluence, Tule Films and NW Documentary. These videos are here to support teachers as they work to bring Indigenous prospects into schools. They are also educational and inspirational to anyone curious to gain a more inclusive understanding of the Columbia River system. Filmmaker Woodrow Hunt (Klamath/Cherokee) of Tule Films produced this series with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts.

The theme of this video is resilience and survival. Four Native individuals talk about resilience, survival, river rights, and the fight for recognition.

In order of appearance:

Bobbie Conner, Cayuse/Nez Perce/Umatilla

Tanna Engdahl, Cowlitz

Greg Archuleta, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde

Mildred Quaempts, Umatilla

A Timeless Vortex

The constant sounds of falling water and rustling winds make up much of the landscape of the Gorge.

Dog Creek Fall, Washington

Dog Creek Falls, Washington

The warm Pacific ‘Chinook Winds’ dropping their rains against the cold easterly draft of the Plains. I love being in that cold nip of winter, everything is bright and chill. I get lost in the language of falling water, often watching the afternoons fade into the waining of dusk. There is a vortex here, that makes time stand still.