The Oregonian, Portland, OR., May 31, 1931, magazine section, page 3
Includes a photograph

ISLE OF DEAD LIES IN COLUMBIA
By Lida Wheeler MacGowan

     Standing in the mid-channel of the Columbia River, a few miles below where the Klickitat pours in from the north is a bare, flat-topped mass of basalt and sand known as Memaloose Island. Fittingly chosen by the sages of the wild tribes that in ages past lived on the great plains of the upper Columbia basin, it was used as a burial place of the dead. This Isle of the Dead was a neutral burying ground used in common by all the tribes inhabiting either side of the river form the Cascades to and beyond the Blue mountains, among then being the Cascades, Klickitats, Snakes, Wascos, Bannocks and Umatillas.
     Weird scenes had their reflection in the stream as the centuries went by, and the red men floated their precious freight down their beloved river or paddled up from the Cascades to this water-guarded ground where the dead would be safe from ravenous beasts, chanting the death song on the way. To this mausoleum of nature the dead man and his canoe were carried and raised to the top of the rock. The canoe was placed with the bow slightly raised, a hole bored in the stern for the egress of water and the body resting therein, covered with mats. Some tribes used houses built of cedar bark, where the bodies were buried with weapons, trinkets and apparel.
     There is also a little Memaloose island just above the Cascades and another just below The Dalles which were used as temporary burying grounds, it being intended that the bodies in time would be removed to Memaloose island.
     The white man's lack of regard or reverence for things which might be sacred to the Indians went as far as desecration of the dead and this Indian City of the dead was repeatedly pillaged for the curiosities it contained until now only bleaching bones remain.
     When the white man had settled the country in considerable numbers and had begun to pillage Memaloose island it was soon dis-continued as a burial place and many bodies and trinkets were removed and buried elsewhere.
     Among the curiosities mentioned were tomahawks, knives, flint-lock guns, arrow-heads, beads of stone and glass of all sizes and colors, silver and copper coins and brass ornaments, coins used by the Hudson's Bay company, coins with the log cabin stamped on one side and the beaver on the other, elk teeth, some of them colored permanently green by the long contact with corrosive metals and sometimes worn by white men as a charm. Other relics of various kinds may be seen in curiosity shops and among citizens from The Dalles to Portland and elsewhere.
     The smaller burial islands were completely over flowed by the great flood of 1894, sweeping them clear of everything. At this time a large portion of Memaloose was flooded, the water taking everything in its path except that heavier materials. After the waters subsided bushels of relics were gathered by curiosity seekers and practically nothing was left but the decaying skeletons.
     As a landmark to travelers on train, auto or boat the island can be readily distinguished by a large white monument which rises abruptly from its basalt setting, contrasting with the natural bleakness of the scene. This marks the grave of Major Victor Trevitt, an Oregon pioneer, member of the Legislature and friend of the Indians, who was buried here in accordance with his request that he be buried with honest people.
     The origin or relation of the many tribes and nations is indicated by funeral rites and sculchers. Conditions of environment caused burial of the dead in the treeless prairies, while in the forest country of the western lowland disposal of the dead was generally by elevating the corpse up on a scaffold or platform supported by poles or placed in the interlocking branches of spruce or fir trees.
     At the old Clatsop village of Gotat, the dead were thus rocked in canoe or cradle on the branches of gnarled spruces, so close to the surf that they were often foam-flecked from the waves when the seas ran high.
     Mount Coffin, an isolated rocky hill 40 miles east of Astoria was the cemetery of many villages, abundant room being afforded by the galleried cliffs of basalt. Lewis and Clark described this landmark and later explorers and pioneers tell of the superstitious dread in which it was held by passing Indians.
     Twenty miles east of Mount Coffin on the Oregon side is a low island of solid rock, its surface only slightly above the line of winter flooding. This island, known as Coffin Rock, was also crowded with the canoe-coffins of the Multnomahs and Cowlitz Indians.
     In passing these islands and other cemeteries the Indians steered their canoes as far away as possible and spoke in whispers. The spirits of their people were believed to haunt those places, and, though no Indian had ever been harmed, by these spirits, yet the dread persisted, that superstition and unreasonable fear of the departed, even as it exists today under certain circumstances of isolation and contact.
     These spirits and other malevolent spirits were known by the Indians of the northwest coast country as "skookums." The word in the Chinookian jargon means powerful, mighty.
     Swan in his enchanting story of early northwest life, tells of an Indian friend of his, a certain Joe, who passed Swan's cabin in his canoe, apparently deaf to all hailings for him to come ashore and visit. Puzzled by the strange conduct, Swan followed in his own canoe, and, on over taking Joe, soon found out the cause of that friend's aloofness.
     Joe explained that a relative had died and that his "skookum" was hovering about, and if the "skookum" heard Joe called by name and could locate him a disaster would follow.
     So Joe was no longer Joe, but Charley, and for a year he would answer to no other name. Swan eventually learned that the name-changing was a common practice among relatives of the deceased for the purpose of the alluding mysterious "skookums."
     The barking dogs, when no apparent cause was visible, was attributed to "skookums" by the Indians.
     For the last voyage the canoe of the hunter or the fisherman, or the smaller one in which the klootchman had paddled over miles of river and lake searching for wapato, served as a coffin for these individuals when life was ended.
     Until the coming of the whites good serviceable canoes would devoted by the Indians to sepulcher; thereafter, to make these desirable means of transportation useless to the grave despoilers, burials were made in canoes with large holes cut in them in order to frustrate robbery which would have been inevitable otherwise.
     In spirit land the departed were supposed to have need of the material things of life - weapons of the hunt and fishing equipment, deerskin and the garments and other necessities. The Indian woman, likewise, had buried with her the favorite basket of her weaving, her most prized deerskin leggings, her beads and various ornamental and useful things pertaining to her sex. Nor would these votive offerings ever profaned by Indians of other tribes.
     Many wars and quarrels had their inception on account of the despoilment of these graves by avaricious and callous whites.
     For a year the dead lay accoutered in their canoes, or, upriver and on the debauching plains, swathed in mats of reed, on platform of driftwood or in niche of basalt cliff. Then their bones were gathered and buried with those of their ancestors.
     The Klickitats have a legend of Memaloose island in which earthly romance and mysticism are strangely intermixed.
     Before the white man came a young chief and a maiden loved each other devoutly. Suddenly the chief went over the spirit trail. The maid mourned for him almost to the point of death, and the young chief likewise could find no rest or happiness in the land of spirits in his yearning for her. Then a vision appeared to her one night summoning her to the land of the spirits. The maiden told her father of the vision, and he made ready a canoe and rowed with her in the night up the Great River to the spirit island. Through the darkness as they neared the island of death they heard the sound of singing, dancing and great joy. Four spirit people met them on the shore, the maiden landing, but the father returning to his home. And at the great dance house the maid met her lover, who was now more beautiful than when on earth.

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©  Jeffrey L. Elmer