CHAPTER 1
Before the White Man Came
We now know that the native tribes of Oregon had a rich and eloquent literature—poetry and songs, Greek-like harangues before a battle, beautiful geographic names, tales and legends, myths and dreams.
The Western Oregon Indians were particularly affected by dreams. The vividness and verisimilitude of these images of the night, and the way they clung to the imagination in daylight hours, justify their inclusion as an important form of literature. The case of Kubla Khan and Coleridge was an ordinary experience among the tribes.
An adolescent girl of today, arising from a sweet sleep and relating a romantic dream, would be heard at the breakfast table derisively by her brother and with tolerant boredom by her parents. An Indian maiden in the long ago in Oregon would tell it only if it were a matter-of-fact dream, and its meaning would be seriously discussed; but if, for instance, it were of such a nature that in it her guardian spirit called to her in song, it would not be, it must not be revealed. Always she would hoard it in the hidden depths of her nature that the dream might be dreamed over and over again.
Tantalizing disclosures like this, brief remnants rescued from the obscurity of the past, give us a consciousness of how great and how precious was the total that has been lost.
