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From: Steady Eddie
Date: 1/12/2002
Time: 10:12:34 AM
Remote Name: 206.163.13.40
Out on Long Island, in Willapa Bay, there exists a forest of old growth Cedar trees. It is now a protected area where no logging or development is allowed. It is open, however, for hiking and exploring. You can get to it only by boat or canoe. You will see huge Cedars, many centuries old. No matter how big these Cedars are, they are not as big as the Cedars used to make an ocean going War Canoe. Where, in pre-history Washington State, were there Giant Cedars? The Olympic Mountains. There exists a whole body of thought that suggests the Chinook simply "bought" their very large War Canoes from the Indians in the Olympics, who then delivered them, paddling down the Coast through the just-off-shore Pacific, and into the mouth of the Columbia. They were then finished by the Chinook, painted and decorated. How then did the Indians that delivered the unfinshed War Canoes get back home? They traveled with the Chinook northward in small canoes, up the Black River to the headwaters source at Black Lake, portaged overland to Puget Sound, where it was a straight shot (nearly) to get home. (Do an Internet search: keyword "Black River"). There is a story there of a young man that traveled this in a Kayak. He befriended a farmer near Little Rock, Washington, had dinner with the farmer's family, after which the farmer showed him the "groove" behind his barn, which is a small ditch on a short portage overland. This is the remains of where thousands of canoes were dragged through there, forming the groove. It still exists today. This route overland by water was traveled by members of a Hudson's Bay group, whose story is also on the 'Net. Happy hunting.
Steady Eddie