The Ozette Prairies of Olympic National Park - Natural Resources ...

Everybody worked hard. Must’ve been there for two weeks.
Big Bill remembers lots of the names and stories about his ancestors because they talked about the old
people when he was young. The old people put aside food for the ancestors and would burn it, especially
up in the prairies because that would keep the ghosts up there making things go right. Food that you
burned for the dead was multiplied and kept the ghosts eating well (J. Powell, NB. 1978, #1, p. 61).
Harold (Hal, Hallie B.) George [1978, notes in various Quileute notebooks, esp. J.Powell Quileute Note-
book 1978:#1] – Quileute & Makah born Aug 15, 1894, along the Fraser River in B.C., although his parents
were Makah and Quileute. “Hal was born up on the Fraser River. They used to go there fishing every
year, certain time of the year—the Makahs and from LaPush. There’s an Indian village there and that’s
where they went. There weren’t any doctors and she (Hal’s mother) bled to death. It was her first baby.
So that’s why Hal’s aunt and grandmother (Quileute extended kinship categories) raised him. Sally
Payne Oby (usually Obi, 1st husband, Yashik Oby) Brown (2nd husband, Tommy Brown) had no children
and raised Hal along with Mrs. Old Man Gray, who also had no children [Verne Ray, random notes
c 1954]. Hal met Frachtenberg at Chemawa School and served, while a youth, as ethnographic informant,
later working with numerous other anthropologists, as well, and finally Jay Powell in 1978. Powell’s
notes on Hal are written in NB 1978.1 and on facing pages of a xerox copy of Frachtenberg’s Quil. fIeldnotes
which George and Powell reviewed and annotated liberally in 1978-9.
I heard (that around 1890) women used to be put to work for quarreling by the police, e.g. putting in the
road from LaPush to Mora, so many days punching the road for an offense. In those days there was no
Thunder Road trail, it was swampy back there and to get to Mora you took a canoe from the basin. Men
were put to work ringing the trees, the village area was still overgrown [note in Fr. NB 1.3].
A trail led from old Mora to Sat’ayaqw and as far as “little Prairie.” It was burned every fall to encour-
age further growth. Mark Willliams was trying to burn the prairie (hokwalillowot, “burning the prairie)
and get matches from a Whiteman. Kwadis was a black bulb, peeled and cooked by steaming and eaten.
Kwala, “camas,” and t’obiya, “strawberry” were picked in the prairies. Katil (“medicine”) crabapple bark
was used for a spring tonic mixed with licorice from the alder and bearberry bark. q’aq’wa’, a type of
fern roots (p.44).
They think that it was easy, but we had to work hard. Sure, the talaykila pots’oqw (old people) just gath-
ered what the great nature provided. They’d say, “T’siq’ati, t’siq’ati, t’siq’ati” (It’s the nature spirit, nature
spirit, nature spirit) when they were picking or eating food. But, we needed lots of food to get through
the winter and sometimes even more because winter was the time when there were potlatches and meant
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