6
LEGENDS
How the Indians Got Their Mouths
Condensed Episode of a Klickitat Legend
By Clarence Orvel Bunnell
Clarence Orvel Bunnell, who was born and spent his childhood in Klickitat County, Washington, has been listening first-hand to Indian legends since as far back as he can remember. His father's ranch, reaching back to the Columbia, was situated east of Wishram near where the Sam Hill castle now stands, on the main Indian trail leading to the Celilo fishing grounds. There was a Klickitat camp and burying pit on the property and there were many old carvings and paintings along the cliffs.
The first complete fable he ever heard came to him when he was a small boy, in lieu of cash for his produce. A tribe of Shoshones encamped on the Bunnell place overnight, buying hay, melons and fruit. Most of them paid for what they got but one old chief was short of money. So he took three hours to tell the boy a story, giving a very reasonable outline of the history of the Klickitat and MidColumbia Indians. This story was interwoven with pure fable and told how the many channels were cut through the Celilo Falls. The chief was a good story teller. He used many signs and word pictures. The small lad listened with rapt attention and has never forgotten.
Mr. Bunnell lives in Portland and is an engineer by profession. His book, Legends of the Klickitats, from which this condensed episode is taken, is a Klickitat version of the story of the Bridge of the Gods. It is written with naturalness, freshness and charm, and with out the conventionality of style established by writers of Indian legends, myths, fables and tales.
In the beginning, when the Earth was very new and the Indians first came to live upon it, no person had a mouth. Their faces were smooth, with no sort of opening between the nose and chin. . . . Koyoda decided to make mouths for them. . . . Having gained the consent of the Indians, Koyoda lost no time in preliminaries but immediately put the men to work gathering fuel and building immense fires along the base of the black-rock cliffs at the foot of the mountain. As soon as the rocks became sufficiently heated, he had the wo-
