Wish-Poosh Story

 

 

My name is Katrina Miller Walsey. I'm a member of the Yakama Nation. My Indian name is yut-te-le-low-wit. With my job I do a lot of story telling. We have done stories; they're from the Pushami storybook and we do some about the beavers, the big frog, and these stories are of the landmarks that are within the Yakama Reservation, or that we can see. They're like, "Oh, that's where it came from" and so we can see how the animals had made these landmarks.

Wish-Poosh Story: How the Yakama River and Union Gap came to be.

The first story I always like to do is called the Wish-poosh (L) Story. It's about two big beavers. Long ago the animal people were here before us and so these two beavers, they didn't like each other very much and they're looking around for what they're fighting about. I don't know whether it be a girlfriend or a boyfriend. So these two beavers got in a fight and was started in Cle Elum. They were fighting and they were hitting each other and their tails were going everywhere. Pretty soon they made it all the way down to the Yakama Valley. And they made a river. And do you guys know what river that is? Yakama River! So that's how the Yakama River came down from Cle Elum is because these two big beavers were fighting and they still weren't done fighting. They came to the ridge. Since they were fighting so much they broke through that ridge and broke it through and it made a gap. Do you guys know what gap that might be? Union Gap! And so that's the moral of this story of how the Yakama River came to be and Union Gap.

We do the skits. We dress the kids up in beavers and we actually go down and fight around. And it's really good because even when we're doing the skits to non-Indians the kids, and even us, the adults, we'll hear, "Oh! You know, that's how Union Gap came." I always like to share these with the people of our community or even the non-members too, and to show them how important everything is to us—the mountains, the lakes, the streams, the animals.

I always try to incorporate that the animal people were here first and they got the earth ready for us. We've got to be thankful for them, just like the elk. He was like, "I give up my life for them. They can eat me and use my hides for buckskin." All the time I wear my regalia and I'll show them it will clothe us. We've got to be thankful for the elk or for the salmon, and the roots and the berries because like they say, the roots are our big sisters and our big brothers and just everything we're thankful for—all the natural surroundings I'm thankful for.

The Big Frog: Creation of Charlie's Pond

There's also one called the Big Frog. He was a really big frog and he was sitting there along the stream enjoying the sun. Pretty soon it started to rain. And he's like, "Oh no! I better jump in the stream before I get wet." So he got ready to jump in the stream, but he jumped over the stream and he made a big hole. The rainwater filled this hole and that's how we got Charlie's Pond. There is a Charlie's Pond on the Yakama Reservation. So that's always a fun one because the kids could relate to Charlie's Pond down the road here.