Etched in stone | Scene Two: The Columbia-Sinkiuse People
Here is the second of a four-part series by Brad Trumbo that encapsulates the ethos of Raconteur Magazine –storytelling rooted in landscape and experience.
A willow cluster blushing with early autumn senescence appeared a couple hundred yards down the coulee – the source of the valley quail’s three-note “chi-ca-go” gathering call. Having located the covey, I released Finn to pursue the quail and shook off the confusion caused by the ghostly rumble. But the quail had their eyes on us and flushed ahead into the sagebrush.
“Just as well,” I thought. “They’ll hold better now that they’re sprinkled among the shrubs.”
Peeling left on a southeast trajectory, Finn and I again meandered through the dark sagebrush. Without the call of the quail, all was silent, save for the clattering of yellowing cattails and the zipping of woody limbs against Cordura pantlegs. An occasional white streak flashed through the brush as Finn quartered. Moments later, a “BEEP” from the GPS system alerted me to Finn standing on point. She was 200 feet away and over a slight rise.
Recalling similar past flushes, I moved with haste, anticipating that the covey would bust the moment my head crested the rise. With luck, the flush played out as expected.
The gun mount was flawless, and the swing was natural. Right-handed shooters often find the swing on a left-to-right trajectory to be their bread and butter, but I often land a quartering right-to-left shot. As a single disappeared behind the barrels on a left swing, the intimidating sound of pounding hoofbeats shook my being. Simultaneously lifting my head and tugging the trigger resulted in a clean whiff. Still, I mustered enough composure to draw the bead on a single that got up late. A tug at the right barrel sent a wad down the modified bore, connecting perfectly with the straggler.
The hoofbeats subsided as Finn and I rushed to collect our bird. I marveled at the little quail’s gray-blue shine against the seafoam green of the soft sage tips. The memory was made profound by the intoxicating herbal aroma of sagebrush leaves that had been obliterated by the number-six lead shot. Lavish praise for Finn and the gentle placement of the quail into my vest brought a moment of reality and a sense of time. Finn needed a water break.
While turning to my right to grab a bottle from the holster, I squinted through the sharp sun rays at the rim. I saw no movement, only the allusion of dust particles rising in the warm air. The hoofbeats… it was horses. I was sure of it. But where in the hell were they?
A palpable feeling of being watched had followed me down the coulee, but raptors were the only visible life. Given I was deep into the land of the Columbia-Sinkiuse People, their horsemanship came to mind, and the realization that the hoofbeats may have been meant to grab my attention.
The Columbia-Sinkiuse People were semi-nomadic and traveled central Washington and the Columbia River corridor on horseback as they followed the seasons and fish and game that sustained them. Horses were essential to many Tribes, but the Columbia-Sinkiuse People were unique. Each family lodge had more than 100 horses, and Moses Coulee served as a massive corral to contain them all. The horses provided transportation and trading benefits, and the Tribe’s impressive wealth of horses made the young Columbia-Sinkiuse women sought-after for marriage.
The scablands sustained the Columbia-Sinkiuse People with game animals like mule deer and Columbian sharp-tailed grouse and offered foods like biscuit root, which develops a bulb that can be dried and pounded into a paste. Biscuitroot is abundant in central Washington and served as a diet staple for the Tribe.
Sagebrush was used primarily for medicinal purposes to treat digestive and rheumatic disorders, sore throat, and respiratory distress. A dressing of steeped leaves was used to soothe irritated eyes, and crushed leaves were used as a disinfectant to treat wounds. Sagebrush is also vital to wildlife like the greater sage grouse, which once inhabited central Washington in great numbers with the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse.
Chief Moses led the Columbia-Sinkiuse People in the mid-to late-1800s. He was educated and multi-lingual, an expert negotiator, and one of the most influential Tribal leaders in the Pacific Northwest. Twice, Chief Moses went to Washington, DC to shake hands with a US President and sign treaties. In 1879, Chief Moses persuaded the US Government to set aside the Columbia Reservation, west of the Colville Reservation and Columbia River, around present-day Wenatchee and Chelan. However, white settlers ignored the Tribe’s treaty rights and reservation lands. Because of this, Chief Moses had difficulty encouraging fellow Tribes to take up residence in the Columbia Reservation.
In 1883, Chief Moses returned to DC where he accepted a bargain. If the United States made improvements to the Colville Reservation including “…a sawmill, a grist mill, cows, wagons, and plows,” he would move his people onto the Colville Reservation and cede the Columbia Reservation. Therefore, the Columbia Reservation dissolved in 1884. Today, Moses Coulee and Moses Lake bear Chief Moses’ name.
Tribal lore offers that the Columbia-Sinkiuse People, among the 11 other Tribes of the Coville Reservation, originally lived higher in the Columbia River watershed in anticipation of a great flood. They knew the flood would destroy everything downstream on the Columbia River. And, while the connection is not made in writing, Bretz’s Flood and the resulting landscape appear to have satisfied this prophecy.
Finn lapped water from a pink collapsible bowl while I kept an eye on the coulee rim. A coyote emerged like a spirit aglow with the sun shining through a sparkling dust-particle halo.
The coyote is a central being of the Colville Tribes. It possesses great powers, cunning, and an insatiable appetite for food and mischief. If the coyote is as crafty as the Tribe portrays, it could have easily conjured the hoofbeats to play me for a fool.
Colville legends suggest that Coyote is easily angered and has a knack for swiping weapons from his adversaries. I wondered if Coyote was jealous of my side-by-side and how easy it must seem to bring down the bird with such a tool. Were the well-timed hoofbeats Coyote’s attempt to cause a miss? Perhaps. And, if so, touché, Coyote. It worked.
Coyote watched as I gained my feet, reloaded the gun, and sent Finn into the wind toward a butte that was about a half-mile away.
“Slick little bugger. It’s a wonder it didn’t run down here and bust up all the birds,” I thought with a chuckle.
My thoughts on the cultural and natural history of the landscape circled back to the game that Finn and I were playing with non-native upland bird species on a landscape that once saw an abundance of sage and sharp-tailed grouse. The Columbian sharp-tailed grouse was once so abundant that folks never considered that the wholesale conversion of shrub-steppe habitat to agriculture and other land uses could cause the demise of a species that once sustained the Tribes of eastern Washington.
