“The Little People in the Pacific Northwest”

V.1

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The first time I met a little person, I was about 19 and camped on the Wynoochee river near the coast of Washington. Myself and a friend had jeeped upriver to steelhead for a weekend, and made camp on a broad sand and cobble bar set against a gentle turn of the alder dotted river side. We first spent the weekend wetting lines in ever-present drizzle for fall steelhead, with not much luck. There were a few silvers in the stream, and the odd chinook, but mostly a “camping” trip by the end of the 2nd day. On the night of the 3rd day, we each made our tents after cooking some soggy hamburgers found in the bottom of the cooler. We hadn’t packed up much food, lots of spices and herbs for all those steely-heads we dreamed we would be feasting on riverside…but not much real food.

After dinner, we zipped up for the night. I had brought a book with me to read, Les Miserables, and had gotten to reading through midnight when I began to hear coyotes howling and yipping off in the distance, possibly across the river. I set to reading by my lantern light again, determined to figure out why this book was so popular, when the mess of coyotes started to sound much closer. I shut my lantern off and lay there in the dark of my tent on the rivers edge, listening now. The coyotes were clearly a pack nearby, having a scuffle, as I began to hear snarling and coyote barks and growls. Pretty soon the ruckus was much closer, now picking up in intensity. From the sounds of things, it was two packs of coyotes having a turf war. The chaotic ruckus of snarling and yipping seemed to form in my imagination by the sound of it, a giant rolling ball of coyote faces and legs propelling itself along the river cobble with a ferocious noise.

Quickly the packs of warring coyotes were in our camp, wrestling and biting and tearing at one another. By the waning light of our campfire, it was quite the light and shadow show to witness. But being curious, I unzipped my tent down to the screen window, and watched as coyotes rolled and tussled through the burning embers like little dust devils of fur and teeth in the dark coastal night. One particularly large and well furred coyote was making a mess of a group of the smaller ones, and soon enough they took to swimming across the short Wynoochee river to the alders on the other side. Not wasting any time, the big coyote took off downriver with its eyes on the other little pack the whole time, his pack in tow. They all took off in a sudden storm of howls that went down to your bones, just the vibration of their voices carrying in that foggy night, echoing off through the tall cedars beyond.

I lay there with my light off contemplating reading again, but the coyote show pretty much topped it all off, so I called it a night and shut my eyes, listening to the sounds of the coyotes disappear downriver. The next morning I woke up to the sounds of the river bubbling, and the birds chirping in the early sunrise…but I could not move a muscle. I lay there a moment to assess my situation, believed it to be sleep paralysis, and so tried to wrench myself out of it. Hard as I tried, I could not move a finger, I felt suddenly trapped, and a fear crept into me. I was stuck laying in my cot, with my eyes and ears awake, but nothing else working. This went on until suddenly I heard a giggling from behind my head, outside of the tent.

I heard small footsteps on the cobble outside my tent fabric wall, and that giggle laughing, like a little girl, but fully grown, and not quite human. I was in my head while this was happening, rationalizing it away as a nightmare, as a sleep paralysis dream . . . yet, I was fully awake, cognizant of everything around me, and I do recall this very clearly like a lived memory, which it is, to this day nearly 20 years later. As I lay there still frozen, this giggling little thing walked right up to the tent wall so that I could see its size by its shadow as the sunrise cast its silhouette, which by the looks of it was toe to toe with the tent wall. I slept against the tent wall, which means I was looking up at this thing looking down on me, if only the tent fabric didn’t seperate my sight . . . that giggling, it’s right over me now, I want to say it is a she by the sound of the laughter, but it’s hard to say about the little people. I am not afraid, but I am concerned about not leaving this world, I was suddenly wrestling this things power against me with a righteous internal fury. What was a frozen body is suddenly a jiggling mass of human flesh, still refusing to do my bidding, but moving at last. Not quite the righteous fury I had hoped for a second before, but I gained enough strength to turn my head to the tent wall and see three little fingers push against the tent fabric towards my face, then slide their fingers down the tent like that as they walked away.

The second their little feet could stop being heard, I was free of the spell of that little person. I could move, and I jolted up and unzipped my tent in a flurry to try to get a glimpse of the little person who had bewitched my physical body! But no such luck was to be immediately found. I decided then to stoke up the coals and make a morning fire, get the coffee percolating, and maybe even toast up some stale white bread. By the time the coffee was percolated, my fishing buddy was rolling out of his sack, “Don’t you think it’s foggy enough without adding to it?” He was making a jab at my smoking habit, but sure enough without me noticing a thick fog had socked in around us. I had my coffee, and told my buddy I was going to jeep downriver and hit a hole to see what shook. He said “F it”, and went back to sleep.

I got in my jeep, fired up the straight six cylinder, and started downstream on a big cobble bank to the aforementioned fishing hole. It felt like I was in a dream driving there, the fog was so utterly impenetrable, and it swirled around like it was a liquid instead of a fog; so dense the jeep lights looked like I was running into a cement wall, or perhaps driving through a pool of liquid cement. Eventually, I nosed down an embankment and got myself where I wanted to be. I hopped out of my jeep, grabbed my spinning rod and reel, kissed my lucky blue fox vibrax spinner #4 in green and silver, and got to casting that little eddy pool on the Wynoochee. It wasn’t my third cast when a dandy steelhead nailed my spinner, and even with all the bonks on the noggin I’ve had since then, I can recall the look in that steelheads eye when it saw me standing there just as it was hooked. It’s that moment when we as indian fishers and hunters and gatherers, we project a piece of our human essence out to that animal or plant we are taking, and in the taking, we find many full circles of giving most especially.

We give our humanness to these things, involuntarily in the moment perhaps, but voluntary in the acceptance of this way of life. That steelhead took on a human form then, a whole person stood under that cold late fall water, inside that dark frost rimmed eddy pool. A fine line ran taught between us for that moment, and he thrashed his long and powerful body with all his might, danced on the top water, and pulled on me every inch. As I pulled him ashore, now a steelhead, I knelt down in excitement and screamed that battle cry of my ancestors into the foggy morning light. The first steelhead of the trip, three days in, I was going to eat good today! I packed it up immediately and got to jeeping back. We fished the rest of the day in anticipation and excitement of more steelhead, dreaming up whole schools that were certainly, definitely running up strongly now . . . but all we saw were the occasional big old king salmon swim lazily past, completely disinterested in our gear. That night we sat around the alderwood fire, and we shared my one coal roasted steelhead, full of all the spices, lemon, onion, and herbs we brought. It was the best steelhead I have ever eaten.

I would later lose my jeep to the Wynoochee river, having been temporarily turned into a river raft for about 30 seconds before the motor took us under in a deep pool and sunk us flat. Boy was it an experience watching the river flow past my jeep windows completely submerged underwater, which is something to be said about jeep cherokee window seals . . . at any rate, I ran my driver window down to the shock of everything on my body, as the cold late fall river water jetted inside with a fury. I swam out of my jeep, from what seemed a chaotic mess underwater, to a suddenly peaceful riverside when I was above water. I had forgotten to grab my pistol however, so I had to make several bare-eyed jaunts back down into the depths of the Wynoochee, and into my Jeep, to recover it and my blackpowder pistol supplies, all gifted to me by my Grandpa DePoe for graduating high school after 5 years.

On many years of reflection, I don’t think one should mess around with the little people unless you are familiar with them, or unless you are willing to put all your luck on the line. But, if the situation arises where you have no choice in the matter, take the rough transformations to come as life saving gifts, rather than bad luck. Train tracks sometimes switch rough, but that other line could have been a dead end. The little people are magical and lucky folk, living in the middle places between this world and the sky world, ferry keepers of the many spirits across the eternal river . . . They are not bad, but they are people and as complex as you or I. They once lived at the mouth of the Chetco with the Wild People, about 8,300 years ago from Creation. It was said that was our first village. The thing about the Wild People and the Little People, is that they are purists, and live in a higher state of being than we do because of it. There was once a time, according to my oral tradition, that we all lived this way, able to perform great feats of magic on this earth as human Dee-ni.

We all lived once in a pure state of huu-cha~’, the good and right way of being by Creator’s first laws. Yet we find ourselves now in a different time of living than then, really, not so long ago. It was about 7,300 years ago that Mt. Mazama blew when the Headman of the Underworld fought with our Creator K’way-vsh-ne on the rim of the lava lake of his burning mountain. I mention this as it is significant to me that the Little People & Wild People both disappeared relatively shortly before this also significant event in our oral history. It was after this hard fought battle at Mt. Mazama that Creator sealed away that bad headman, and also across the land the chaotic and bad spirits & monsters, he sealed them underground as well. The good & right spirits & beings of this land, he counciled with to leave the affairs of the people to the people, giving us the dominion of this land for the first time in our long and ancient history.

Since then, there have been many stories arise of sightings and experiences with the Little People here in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. To this very day, people report having experiences with them around the Pacific Northwest through the whole of Northern California, with a hotspot of reports surrounding the Mt. Shasta area. Not coincidentally, we hold that Mt. Shasta is the earthly lodge built by the Creator for himself, then later his daughter whose lodge is the second peak of Mt. Shasta. It is said in our coast Dené prophecy, when that mountain starts to smoke again, that we will know our Creator has returned to us on this earthly plane.

Shvm.