Thursday, March 17, 2011


Umatilla Folklore

The Umatilla Birdman

The first man to fly over the Wallowa and Blue Mountains was E-tsa-wis-no. It was long, long ago. He had studied the swans in their flights overhead in the fall and the spring, and finally he felt sure that he could do the same thing. So he tried. Being of a persevering type, he bumped his nose and skinned his shins thousands fo times in his efforts to imitate the swans. "I can fly, if I try hard enough," was what he always said. He swung his arms and went through awkward motions for five years before he made any headway. Then he caught the knack of the thing, and finally one morning he could fly! So it came about that when the Spring migration of swans began the next year, E-tsa-wis-no went aloft to join the flight-without a word of farewell to his family! The next fall he was seen flying North. Regularly, twice annually, for three years, he seen overhead in company with the swans in their seasonal migrations, but after that he was seen no more. This is a true story. . .

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