The Bridge of the Gods

Crow Indian historian and storyteller Jeanne Eder opened the Fifth Women's West Conference with her interpretation of Sacagawea, the Lemhi woman who was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. In her persona as Sacagawea, Eder drew a convincing portrait of a self-contained and competent Indian woman unaccustomed to taking orders from men and remarkably tolerant of the white men who refused to admit how much they could learn from Native people. Then she took off her wig, changed her posture and her accent, and as Jeanne Eder, Ph.D., explained to a fascinated audience how she researched her character, drawing particularly on sources for Hidatsa women (Sacagawea was captured by the Hidatsa when she was a child) and on the oral tradition claiming that she led a long life that included a happy marriage with an attractive Comanche husband.

Later in the conference, leading off the panel on Pacific Northwest women, Eder told a version of the "Bridge of the Gods" story reprinted below.¹ In Eder's version, however, Loo-wit generously shared her fire with the people and later was rewarded with youth and beauty, rather than (as in this version) bargaining for them beforehand. This small change in emphasis reminds us of the flexibility of perspective that is an inherent part of living oral traditions, and it points to exciting and different ways to understand how the Native peoples viewed the land we now call the Pacific Northwest, no longer fixed and unchanging but alive with personal meanings.

Tribes from central Oregon to northeastern Washington related traditions about a legendary rock "bridge" that spanned the Columbia River "one sleep" below the site of The Dalles. When it fell, old Indians said to early travelers, its rocks formed the Cascades in the river; its fall, two Indians explained to travelers in 1854, was accompanied by quarrels between between Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens, who threw fire at one another.

The most familiar version of the myth about the stone arch has been altered so freely that no one now can determine the original tradition, even in the variant written by a Puyallup-Nisqually Indian. The source of the story given here, Lulu Crandall, seems to have been the one closest to the Klickitats, who had this tradition. Mrs. Crandall, who had known those Indians from her pioneer childhood, was a historian of The Dalles area.

Long ago, when the world was young, all people were happy. The Great Spirit, whose home is in the sun, gave them all they needed. No one was hungry, no one was cold.

But after a while, two brothers quarreled over the land. The older one wanted most of it, and the younger one wanted most of it. The Great Sprit decided to stop the quarrel. One night while the brothers were asleep he took them to a new land, to a country with high mountains. Between the mountains flowed a big river.

The Great Spirit took the two brothers to the top of the high mountains and wakened them. They saw that the new country was rich and beautiful.

"Each of you will shoot an arrow in opposite directions," he said to them. "Then you will follow your arrow. Where your arrow falls, that will be your country. There you will become a great chief. The river will separate your lands."

One brother shot his arrow south into the valley of the Willamette River. He became the father and the high chief of the Multnomah people. The other brother shot his arrow north into the Klickitat country. He became the father and high chief of the Klickitat people.

Then the Great Spirit built a bridge over the big river. To each brother he said, "I have built a bridge over the river, so that you and your people may visit those on the other side. It will be a sign of peace between you. As long as you and your people are good and are friendly with each other, this bridge of the Tahmahnawis will remain."

It was a broad bridge, wide enough for many people...