Reading Notes, Pacific NW Tales, Part A: Why There Are No Snakes on Takhoma

(Mount Rainier / Takhoma)

Once upon a time, Tyhee Sahale, the chief god, became angry with the people so he ordered a medicine man to take his bow and shoot at arrow into a cloud that hung low over Takoma. The medicine man shot a arrow into the cloud and then he shot another arrow that stuck to the tail end of the first one. Then he shot another arrow that stuck into the second one. He kept shooting arrows into the one before it to create an arrow that reached from the cloud ot the earth. The medicine man told his wife and his children to climb up the arrow chain and he told the good animals to follow them. Then he climbed onto the arrow trail behind them. As he was about ot walk into the cloud, he looked back and saw that animals that were bad started climbing up the arrow trail so he broke the chain and the bad animals fell back to the mountain. Then it immediately began to rain and it rained until the land flooded and all of bad animals drowned. When the waters evaporated, the medicine man, his wife, and his children walked back down to the mountain side and so did the animals, living a life on Takhoma where bad animals no longer existed.

Story source: Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest, especially of Washington and Oregon, by Katharine Berry Judson (1910).