Coyote Breaks the Fish Dam
Just how did Coyote free the salmon from behind the dam on the big river which five sisters had built to keep the fish all to themselves?
This favorite story of the Nez Perce, or Nimi’ipuu people, is about both Coyote’s trickster as well as his transformer powers. And according to tribal member and oral literature scholar, Jeanette Weaskus, this story is about caring for your neighbors.
“It takes place at Celilo Falls (on the great Columbia River) where Coyote finds that five sisters have lived there since ancient times and dammed the falls to trap all the fish. Not only are the fish unable to go upriver to spawn, but all the people and animals who live along the rivers cannot have any fish to eat. The sisters killed anyone who came near the dam and had never let a single fish out,” explains Jeanette.
She says that Coyote watches the sisters for a few days before making a plan to trick them into taking him into their lodge.
“He turned himself into a baby that was so cute they could not resist it, except for the youngest sister who clearly saw it was Coyote. She warned the older sisters but they dismissed her, saying she was wrong about the baby. When Coyote got close enough to the dam, he broke it down and set the salmon free,” says Jeanette.
This ancient legend is retold by the late Mari Watters, an elder that I worked with on Mythweaver projects back in the early 1990s. Jeanette chose to feature Mari in her Mythweaver podcast as she was an extraordinary storyteller and knowledgeable teacher of Nez Perce culture. Keep in mind that she is telling the story, not reading it. Her telling is truly captivating. Mari was my mentor for years in working with the storytelling tradition, so listening to her archival recording is so very heartwarming and wonderful. To this day, I always laugh when she imitates Coyote’s cry as a baby in disguise!
The late Allen Slickpoo, Sr. explains in Jeanette’s podcast that Coyote also teaches the listener to take action. Coyote took steps to free the salmon from captivity and in doing so, helped the salmon so they could go upriver to spawn. Coyote let everyone have salmon instead of just the sisters.
“The moral of the story is that the salmon was intended to be shared by all people, and not just any one tribe or one group.” Al explains, another amazing elder I learned from, back in the 1990s. “It should be shared by everyone and this was the reason why the Coyote had broken the dam,” Al says.
In her podcast, Jeanette shows us how this story also speaks to today’s challenges for salmon swimming upriver. She recounts how the Dalles Hydroelectric Project, built by the U.S. Government in 1957, inundated Celilo Falls, the most important fishing site in the entire Northwest. Listen to the emotional gravity in the late Rick Ellenwood’s words, a good friend and former Board President of the Idaho Mythweaver, as he speaks about what it meant to lose this treasured cultural site, a place he knew so very well. We can’t help but wonder, what would Coyote do today?
Celilo Falls may likely not reappear, but we can all take action by commenting on the proposed plan to breach the four Lower Snake River dams that are keeping the salmon from successfully spawning upstream in Idaho, northwest Washington and northeast Oregon. We can all be Coyote’s helpers this time by writing or calling your state’s Governor and members of Congress. Remember that Coyote is all about taking action to help the people live the best life, Jeanette says.
This is Jeanette’s first podcast, so listen in again for her next story about how Nimi’ipuu legends teach and guide the listeners through and about the landscapes of their homeland, especially in Idaho.
Funding for the Voices of the Earth Podcast Series comes from the Idaho Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
6/15/2022