Tsunamis and Floods in Coos Bay Mythology

Abstract

Tsunamis and Floods in Coos Bay Mythology byPatricia Whereat Phillips The principal evidence for major prehistoricearthquakes associatedwith subduction comes from investigations of estuarine marsh sediments buried by sand layers. These deposits suggest that portions ofthe coast subsided abruptly and were then overwashed by extreme tsunamis, or "tidal waves," that swept over the area and deposited the sand_ The number of these layers ... indicate that catastrophic earthquakes have occurred along the Northwest coast at least six times in the past 7,000 years, at intervals ranging from 300 to 600 years, with the last having occurred about 300 years ago. ? Paul Komar1 TSUNAMIS ARE TERRIFYING anddestructive events but relatively infre quent from the standpoint of a human lifetime. It isno wonder, then, that tsunamis appear in themythology of coastal peoples. To my knowledge, no one has looked in depth at a particular Oregon coastal people's language and theirmythology to assess the scope and effectof these events from the point of view ofNative people. Iwill focus on themythology of the Coos Bay Indians and on theHanis language (along with Milluk, itwas one of the two languages thatwas spoken on Coos Bay), as it is the one I am the most familiar with. Great Cascadia Earthquakes and Tsunamis 181 The linguistic data on this subject are unfortunately quite limited. The sole phrase recorded in theHanis language for earthquake is tVta lishtats. It translates literally as 'earth shaking', from tl'ta (or ti'da) for 'earth, land, ground' and the verb root lish- 'to shake, tomove'.2 Although there are a handful ofCoos texts thatmention tsunamis, there are none explicitly about earthquakes. In various interviews with ethnologists and linguists, however, some mention of earthquakes has been recorded. In a 1942 interview with linguist John P.Harrington, Hanis Coos informant John Waters said, "My [grandmother] toldwhen years ago therewas a big earthquake that caused cracks in the ground."3 In 1881, when George Bissell was working on a vocabu lary listwith an unidentified Lower Umpqua woman, he listed s? hwass as aword for earthquake and noted next to iton his schedule that "y?ohy for a caving in."4The woman volunteering 'caving in' along with 'earthquake' hints that she had heard accounts of earthquakes. Several words and phrases describe high and low tides, which is to be expected in the vocabulary of a coastal people. Iwas able to find only one word inHanis Coos that can be translated as 'flood', maatl, but therewas no further definition of the semantic domain for theword. The word was recorded only once, as the title of a tsunami story told by James Buchanan, from theHanis village Wu'allach (near Empire). Maatl probably refers to flooding in general and not specifically tsunamis. More often in theHanis language, phrases are used todescribe tsunamis, as 'when theflood time came therewas no ebb tide', 'now thewater rushed in',and 'thewater ran ashore far across the land'. Iwill consider these descriptions within the context of the narratives inwhich they appear. Althoughdozens ofCoos myths (bothin Hanis andMilluk) and other narratives have been recorded, they represent only a small portion of the narratives that have existed. Most of the narratives that have come down to us are primarily from twoHanis-speaking informants ? JimBuchanan, who worked principally with Henry Hull St. Clair and Leo Frachtenberg in the first decade of the twentieth century, and Annie Minor Peterson, who worked with Melville Jacobs in 1933and 1934.Annie Peterson, who was born on Coos Bay nearWu'laench (Cooston) but raised at theYachats reservation, also spoke Milluk, the language spoken at Cape Arago and South Slough on Coos Bay. The traditional narratives can be divided loosely between myths and historical narratives. Throughout the Northwest, Indians recognized this division of their stories. As Melville Jacobs noted, Long ago, [Franz] Boas and others pointed to the larger Pacific Northwest's natives own contrast of myths versus tales. Boas wrote correctly that this larger region s myths 182 OHQ vol. 108, no. 2 Courtesy ofCoos Historical andMaritimeMuseum, 995-D185 Coos elderAnnieMiner Peterson displays her traditional regalia and baskets in Empire,Oregon, in 1914. comprised recitalsofhappenings dated inan earlyerawhen things were ratherdiffer ent from what they were in the more recent era that...