Forest Hiker

In 1938, Oregon became the largest supplier of timber in the country. By that time demand for timber was once again on the rise, fueled by the wartime demand for construction materials.  In the boom and bust cycles that so often characterize extractive industries, Oregon was once again riding a boom in demand, and a consequent increase in cutting and production.

The Invasion of the Night School Loggers:

By the mid-1940’s thoughtful leaders were voicing concerns about the accelerated cutting that was quickly consuming the vast private and public timber stands in Oregon and Washington. Halfway through the war, Lyle Watts, the chief of the Forest Service called for regulation “to stop destructive cutting”. He estimated that as much as 10% of the country’s timber supply was coming from the public forests. If this trend continued, he worried that foresters would soon “exceed sustained-yield cutting budgets.”

To the contemporary reader it may seem obvious that at some point the amount of timber extracted can exceed nature’s ability to replenish it. In theory, there is a mathematical inflexion point where the value extracted from the forest ecosystems can cover their cost of effective management – in perpetuity. Extract more, and the forest ecosystems suffer. Exploit the forest and its communities too heavily and risk heavier long-term costs, more waste, volatility, lessened safety and possibly disaster.

On the other hand, take a more expansive view of what constitute legitimate “external costs” and it becomes clear that the underlying regenerative aspects of the forest need to be conserved and nurtured. No doubt we will discuss long into the night how these eco-system benefits should be distributed, but most important is that we recognize the broader benefits provided by forest eco-systems to carbon sequestration, tourism, water quality, biodiversity, availability of fish, recreation, hunting and timber. I would like to believe that thoughtful planners have recognized that the multi-faceted forest benefits require proportional investment to preserve and enhance. One of the most important aspects of such an approach is the concept of a sustainable harvest level.

Lyle Watt’s adoption of “sustained-yield cutting budgets” was not the first effort to adopt these “scientific” metrics to forestry. As early as 1934, C.J. Buck, a regional forester in Forest Service Region 6 urged the Northwestern states to adopt sustained-yield management policies. He singled out Clatsop County as an example “cut-out and get-out” logging practices that increased the effect of the boom and bust cycle on families and communities. These voices calling for sustainable forestry weren’t just coming from administrators, and editorial boards. David Mason, a Portland forester closely associated with the lumber trade association developed the most coherent sustained-yield proposal in hopes of stabilizing cutting schedules that were driving down timber prices.

But not all were in accord with this idea. Joseph Kinsey Howard, a progressive journalist from Montana saw all this effort to protect the interests of “the greatest number in the long run” as anti-competitive and an effort to restrain free enterprise. He clearly identified that the depression-era version of sustainability was focused on local sawmills. America, he wrote, was “almost alone among civilized nations” to permit timber owners to harvest as they wished. To restrict private enterprises to use only a few eligible sawmills would inevitably be anti-competitive, he insisted.

Crow’s Pacific Coast Lumber Digest was always good for a juicy quotation. They called the sustained-yield forest management “a sustained grab”, “one more big step” in the direction of “the Russian Plan, wherein crack-pot night-school loggers sent out of Washington will… swarm over our forests and tell our loggers how to cut down their trees.”*

* *Robinson, Landscapes of Conflict, Pg. 15

With the economy heating up public opinion was shifting away from social planning, and Congress was vigorously dismantling strategic New Deal programs, such as the National Resources Planning Board. Increasing wartime demand had so buoyed commodity prices that the idea of controlling harvests suddenly fell out of favor with timber owners. But even as this shift was occurring, policymakers continued to promote the idea of sustainable forestry. Oregon’s Postwar Readjustment and Development Commission maintained that the sustained-yield programs would prevent ghost towns and “abandoned sawmill communities.”**

**Robinson, Landscapes of Conflict, Pg. 150

But the post-war building boom soon silenced discussion of sustained-yield harvests, as the country geared up to produce 15 million housing units over the next ten years. Nonetheless the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Forest Service continued to try to implement cooperative sustained-yield units, but times were changing dramatically and both agencies moved to increase their allowable cut. As a glut of harvesting began, the private timber operators went on the offensive asking for access roads, better funding for firefighting and insect research and increased harvesting of dead and dying timber.

By 1947 had become the most timber dependent state in the union, with more than 2,000 large wood extraction companies operating throughout the state. The fundamental question of how much wood could be reasonably extracted from the forests was no closer to be answered than it was in the 1930’s.

Decadent Old Growth:

During the immediate post-war period the country sustained a tremendous building boom as the GI’s came home and housing starts began to bulge simultaneously with the arrival of the “boomer” generation. This period was characterized by a technological optimism that touted the “self-evident” benefits of scientific forest management that treated timber like a crop. At the heart of this approach was the notion of sustained-yield forest management, though the implementation of this concept differed markedly on the ground.

By now Oregon and Washington held 39% of the nation’s standing timber and produced 30% of its timber needs. William Robbins, notes in his excellent environmental history of those time, “Landscapes of Conflict”, that Oregon had become the most timber dependent state in the union by 1947 “with more than 2,000 large and small lumbering and logging operations” with a combined payroll exceeding all other work in the state. H.V. Simpson, the Secretary-Manager of the West Coast Lumber Association (WCLA) averred that Oregon, “once it had been relieved of stagnant old-growth timber” would lead the way into a new era of “orderly cropping of forest products.”* (* Robinson, Landscapes of Conflict, Pg. 35)

Stuart Moir, an officer to several Northwest lumber trade associations suggested that the region become the “nation’s wood lot.” In his optimistic view the removal of trees didn’t represent lost assets, but rather the liberation of valuable space to grow more trees, more efficiently. Forests had to be thinned, protected from natural blight and fire, and harvested according to scientifically deduced schedules that optimized the return based on the trees’ growth rates and prevailing timber prices. This optimization included the “conversion” of “decadent” old-growth forests into faster growing stands of younger trees with harvesting scheduled 80 to 100 years hence

The bullish housing market during the post-war years, especially in California was putting enormous pressure on the timber industry, which was harvesting at unprecedented rates. There was strong pressure to increase the building of access roads. Even the esteemed private colleges of Reed College and Lewis and Clark joined the frenzy by producing a joint report that confirmed the need for more than 14, 475 miles of access roads. Occasionally, I encounter the remnants of tarmac on remote logging roads; this eroding infrastructure dates to that period of aggressive industrial penetration. With few real restraints holding back the allowable cut, the market became the deciding factor in forest management. Market forces could apparently trump scientific management.

The 1970’s: Controversy over spraying the Pacific Northwest timberlands

If you rummage around the Internet like so many of us do, you might stumble across the website for the Alsea Clinic, a modest community health care provider for a remote logging community deep in the Oregon Coastal Forests. Listed among its officers is the secretary: Bonnie Hill. She has served on the board since before the clinic opened and she’s lived in Alsea for 39 years – almost as long as the trees!

Her mention on the board roster states simply that “I, and others who lived in Alsea before the clinic was formed can remember so clearly what it was like to drive over the mountain for every medical need: aching ear infections in crying little children,
injuries that occurred at school in P.E. or athletic events, frequent problems for the elderly, etc.” She was the local high school teacher at the time, and she mobilized the community to establish this remote health center. Nice contribution, end of story? Hardly!

Bonnie may have helped found Alsea Rural Health Care, Inc., but this was the culmination and the spark of a huge political conflagration that ultimately changed logging practices across the entire Pacific Northwest. Nowhere in this modest description does it give Bonnie the credit for exposing one of the most egregious problems literally swirling out from Oregon’s vast logging operations.

In the early seventies, just as I was attending college in Portland, Bonnie was teaching high school in remote Alsea. Being in touch with parents across this forest community she soon became aware of the alarming increase in “miscarriages” across the community. Way before the Internet made such research easily accessible to most people, she began to research the issue and she learned of a study published by James Allen (University of Wisconsin) that linked a similar rise in the early pregnancy loss among rhesus monkey that had been exposed to TCDD, a highly toxic dioxin contained in the 2,4,5-T chemical herbicide used by the timber companies to combat the infamous Tussock moth infestations.

Since the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s hugely influential book, “Silent Spring”, wherein she described the awful and cumulative effects of using DDT, a nationwide struggle was occurring to do away with the use of DDT on foodstuffs, around protected natural areas, and around people. The ban took many years to be applied broadly, and some of the last holdouts were the timber industry who continued to argue that its use in the forest not only necessary to battle the invading Tussock Moth, but that its “ancillary benefits” included helping those people “who might be allergic to the tussock-moth hairs.” As late as 1974, the Forest Service sprayed 421,000 acres in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. But the tide of public opinion was already shifting and despite a 98% “kill rate” for the Tussock moth, opposition began to mount. Evergreen State College Etymologist, Steven Herman called it an “etymological My Lai” – referring to the infamous massacre committed by American troops in Vietnam in 1968.

In response to the overwhelming opposition to DDT that was making its application even for forestry purposes nearly impossible, the Dow Chemical began to develop a civilian use for the highly successful defoliant used across Vietnam, the stuff commonly referred to as “Agent Orange”. Dow Chemical called it Silvex – a compound that included 2,4,5 –T, an herbicide that killed fast-growing hardwoods thus permitting the slower growing Douglas Fir seedling access to the sun. The initial spraying occurred in the early seventies in the Siuslaw National Forest, near Alsea.

Jean Anderson, a clinical psychologist who lived on a cattle ranch adjoining the Siuslaw National Forest was another of the early objectors who began peppering the Forest Service with complaints about the spraying program. She and her husband began to collect scientific information about 2,4,5 – T and were alarmed to realize that emerging scientific information seemed to indicate that the dioxin was one of the most deadly toxins known to man. When she tried to get hold of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the spraying, she was told that it was too expensive to circulate copies to the community. In 1978, the Forest Service worked with the EPA to review 2,4,5 –T and Silvex, but they simultaneously authorized its use “only after all alternatives had been considered”. Over the next several months howls of protest were met with equally indignant howls from the other side, but the effect was to escalate this issue to the national stage, where the renowned commentator, Jack Anderson latched on to the disturbing evidence of tripled miscarriage rates in Alsea.

Bonnie Hill had not just read James Allen’s early research but she had conducted her own survey of the community’s childbearing mothers. She correlated the information about the time, place and circumstances of these miscarriages against the aerial spraying schedules published by the logging companies. The data showed a high correlation, though Bonnie never claimed a cause-and effect relationship. But by now the EPA was worried. They soon sent a team to visit Alsea, which quickly resulted in a broader survey that covered 1,600 acres across Lincoln and Benton Counties, which confirmed significantly higher miscarriage rates in the study area. With such results the EPA was compelled to issue orders to cease using 2,4,5 – T and Silvex, which contained the same toxin.

Now it was lumber’s turn to voice its outrage, launch a slew of lawsuits and public education campaigns. They also marched out their sympathetic experts “in the weed science and toxicology fields” who claimed the Alsea study was flawed. But when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision, the momentum of the controversy shifted dramatically as the weight of evidence became too preponderant to overcome. The incoming Reagan administration tried briefly to negotiate a settlement with Dow Chemical, but once again newly released data about the virulence of the 2,4,5 –T toxin overwhelmed those secret negotiations and in 1981 Dow Chemical and the EPA ceased any further registrations for 2,4,5 –T.

So, I would respectfully submit that the description of Bonnie Hill’s contribution to her community’s health was much greater than founding a humble community clinic. As this book tries to point out what see you on the surface of the forest and its residents may not be the entire story – and that’s especially true of Bonnie Hill and the modest community of Alsea tucked into the Siuslaw National Forest.

 The 1980’s: Endangered Species Act changes NW logging

In the 1980’s America took a step to the right, and habitat protection took a back seat to market principles. Reagan brought with him a cadre of unequivocal opponents of conservation, environmentalism, and habitat protection. James Watt, Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, was famously hostile to environmental concerns. During his tenure, he set a record for the least species listed under the Endangered Species Act. But such is the nature of a bureaucracy that it tends to blunt the most extreme elements of any administration, regardless of direction.

Reagan’s assistance secretary of agriculture went so far as to delay the implementation of the Northwest land management plans and warn Forest Service planners to de-emphasis protecting wildlife and scenery. Compounding this not-so-benign neglect, Senator Mark Hatfield and Les AuCoin continued to press the Forest Service to support unsustainable levels of cutting on federal timberlands.

Excessive cutting on private timberlands was putting pressure on the public agencies to increase the supply of logs off the federally controlled lands. In 1949 the BLM increased their allowable cut and authorized the construction of more roads. By 1951, the New York Times reported that “More and more lumber operators are looking to national and state-owned forests to piece out their operations.”

Given the feverish demand for increased lumber supplies it is not surprising that both the academic and scientific communities also began to respond to the pressure. University of Oregon professor Louis Hamill suggested shortening the rotational harvest cycle from 100 years to 80 years. Studies produced by the well-respected Portland-based colleges of Lewis and Clark and Reed during this period affirmed the need to build over 14,000 miles of new access roads. At that time Crown Zellerbach estimated that Oregon’s timber stands alone could sustain annual harvests of 8-10 billion board feet for another fifty years. With more intensive forestry management, their forester predicted that the cut could even be increased to 14 billion board feet!

In effect the marketplace and improving production techniques were driving the definition of forest practices, not a concern for the welfare of the forests, or the protection of critical habitat and ecosystem services like clean water, and salmon friendly spawning grounds. Historian Richard Rajala concluded that the timber companies’ focus on profit maximization during this period made it impossible to achieve “a meaningful integration of science and forest law.” His research supported the view that forest research was only permitted to inform public policy if both the corporate and government representatives approved. In a prescient conclusion Rajala asserted that “science needed the sanction of the dominant interests in the political economy” to disrupt the current unsustainable forest practices.

For some time now, fish biologists had been warning over the fragmentation of the old growth forests, and the silting of the salmon spawning grounds by the excessive road building. But when the challenge came it flew in on silent wings from an unexpected quarter.

Under the requirements of the National Forest Management Act the Forest Service was required to identify and protect any “indicator species” that were endangered by industrial uses of the forest. Citing the Endangered Species Act, the Sierra Club brought several suites against the Forest Service in 1987 for not listing the Northern Spotted Owl as an endangered species. This was an important watershed in the national debate about natural resource management and environmental protection. Heretofore, the environmental case had been made almost exclusively on emotional grounds that frequently pitted non-resource based urban communities against those that were dependent upon the forests around them. The introduction of scientific methodology and empirical data to this debate turned the tables on the parties. And the Pacific Northwest lumber interests were soon predicting the demise of the region’s timber industry and warning that the Northwest’s rural communities would be hit by massive reductions in the labor force.

In 1988 Thomas Ward, the well-respected Forest Service biologist was appointed to chair the Interagency Scientific Committee charged with sorting out the conflicting resource management issues. A year later Ward released the Committee’s recommendation that called for establishing Habitat Conservation Areas (HCA’s) across the owls’ established range. In 1991 Federal District Judge William Dwyer issued an injunction barring timber sales on all public lands that included any Spotted Owl habitat. His injunction also accused Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush, as well as Mark Hatfield and other Pacific Northwest politicians of increasing the annual harvest so much that it directly contributed to the endangerment of the Northern Spotted Owl.

In 1992 Clinton convened the so-called “Forest Summit” in Portland. The outcome of this most recent confab was the further reduction of the federal timber harvests by 75% from the unsustainable cutting limits of the 1980’s. These reductions led to a decline in Pacific Northwest timber industry employment of 16,695 jobs – way below the 65,000 jobs that the industry sponsored Northwest Forest Research Council had projected.

Finally in 2011, after a long wait the Agriculture department proposed new forest planning rules that had been mandated by the 1976 National Forest Management Act. The rules are intended to guide forest managers decide what areas may be logged, and which should be spared. The fundamental principle guiding the 1976 National Forest Management Act is that the health of the forests and their wildlife are to be valued as highly as the interests of the timber companies. The Clinton administrations wholeheartedly supported this perspective, but the subsequent Bush administrations strove to roll this balance back to favor the commercial interests of the timber and mining companies using public lands.

The Obama administrations newly proposed rules are replete with lofty goals like maintaining “viable” animal populations, but critic claim they are vexingly vague on how to measure the quality of the forest ecosystems and how to ensure that the rules are maintained. So far the Obama administration seems to be trying to finesse the issue with palliatives and smiles. The environmentalists want to see more teeth in their proposals.

 The Hidden Culprit: Technology

By the 1960’s mechanization in the logging industry was beginning to have an impact upon employment. Over the previous several decades logging had moved away from the railroad logging, and the use of the “big wheels” used to haul the logs out of the forest. By the 1930’s gasoline powered tractors had taken over the heavy lifting. But the biggest change didn’t come until the 1950’s with the invention of the gasoline powered saw and diesel-powered yarding machines. This triggered a shift away from felling and bucking the trees by hand – an enormous increase in productivity! But that productivity increase came at a price – fewer loggers were needed. By mid-century the logging crews had atrophied to 30% of their original complement.

During the booming 1980’s nearly 200 sawmills had closed and employment in the timber industry had slipped by 25,000 jobs – all due to the increased introduction of technology that permitted increasing volumes of production with ever shrinking numbers of workers.

But of course, this drop in the timber industry employment became a potent argument used by the industry to argue for more logging and increases in the allowable cut on public lands. The loss of jobs they contended was entirely due to the pressures from environmental groups that were stalling progress on implementing timber sales. While litigation did play an important role in redefining the forest management rules in the Pacific Northwest, it would be incorrect to lay the entire blame for the employment decrease in the timber industry at the feet of the environmentalists.

 O & C Counties

 One of the factors affecting Oregon’s forests is the treatment of the so-called “O & C” county lands. To encourage the building of a rail link between Portland and San Francisco in 1866, the federal government offered a huge reward in the form of a land grant of 3,700,000 acres. This was to be parceled out in checkerboard pattern and was intended to be resold to settlers at $2.50 per acre. But in 1916, most of the land was reconveyed to the federal government and since then 18 counties where the O&C lands are located have received payments from the federal government to compensate for the loss of timber and tax revenues. The final extension of these payments that occurred in 2012 is expected to be the last renewal of the program.

In recent years many of the counties have relied on this source of funds to fund their local governments. However, the legislative mandates that have served as the legal basis for these payments has changed over the years, and the payment amounts have gradually diminished. Currently, the underlying statute that governs these payments is an extension of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000, which was renewed in 2012.

Faced with a gradually diminishing stream of revenues from the O&C lands, several counties in Oregon found themselves unable to fund even the most basic functions of local government, such as policing and jailing criminals. Since these counties cannot declare bankruptcy and yet they must provide county services mandated by the state, some counties have considered merging.

Overall the financial pressure caused many of the affected counties to increase their harvests on the O&C lands to the point that it was devastating the wildlife habitat and led to the eradication of many species over much of the affected forestland.

One of the worst affected counties, Josephine County near the California border, proposed a property tax, which failed to gain voter approval. As a consequence Josephine County had to reduce its staff by 2/3 and release inmates from the county jail because there were no funds to maintain them in jail. The situation was so dire in some counties that in 2012 the Oregon Legislature specifically permitted the counties to divert monies intended for the maintenance of forest roads to be used instead to pay for law enforcement patrols. I guess this goes to show that it really is the “wild west” in some parts of Oregon.

Sources: Robinson, Landscapes of Conflict, Pg. 210, 322-329

 Current issues: Landslides and clear-cutting

Landslides are endemic to Oregon, where the high moisture content can turn soil into pudding and turn gentle slopes into torrents of mud and debris. In 1996 landslides killed 5 people in Oregon and caused damage to more than 100 homes in the Portland area. In December of 2007 a landslide swept down from a clear cut west of Clatskanie and nearly buried some buildings and its inhabitants in Woodson. In 1933 four people were killed in the same area by landslides.

In 1997 the Department of Forestry was asked by the Legislature to put an end to logging on very steep slopes. A 1999 study by the department established that many of the landslides on forestlands were linked to debris flows emanating from clear-cut areas. As a result the Department of Forestry has come under increasing pressure to restrict logging on steeper slopes.  In 2003 the Department responded with OAR 629-623-000 which defines the forestry practices as they relate to landslides. It defines any slope steeper than 80%, or a draw steeper than 70% as too dangerous to log. But the regulation also contains an escape hatch that permits a geotechnical specialist to determine the slope steepness based on site-specific measures that presumably override the prevailing gradient and thus permit less restrictive logging practices. The intent of the semi-voluntary restrictions is to limit ground disturbances on high-risk sites. When applied, the rules are intended to “prevent local over-steepening and slope gouging by cable yarding.” The rules also require loggers to minimize the buildup of “slash” on the steep slopes below any high-risk sites. The construction of skid trails on high-risk sites was also prohibited.

Past studies had also revealed that most landslide damage on forestlands were attributable to the road systems built to support the logging activities. In addition these studies found that road-associated landslides were typically about four times larger in volume than non-road associated landslides. Of course much of this road-associated damage is invisible to the general public that rarely enters the timberlands to see the effects of washed out roads. But for the industry these costs are not trivial.

After the slides in Woodson splashed into public view to reveal the hidden dangers of clear cutting and road building, pressure began to build on the Department of Forestry to eliminate logging on steep slopes. In response to calls for a moratorium on steep slope logging, but the DoF responded with a additional voluntary measures.

According to the noted environmental historian William G. Robbins, “logging practices in some parts of the state continue to be problematic, despite the Department of Forestry’s assertions to the contrary. Several people died in landslides brought about by steep slope logging. The Board of Forestry voted to ask loggers to voluntarily restrict steep slope logging. But public pressure pushed the issue before the legislature and the legislature added further restrictions, but the rules applying these additional safeguards have yet to be published.

The other perennial issue that has divided opinions about logging is the highly visible concern over the practice of clear-cutting. This concern was the direct result of the massive increase in timber harvesting that occurred from the 1970’s through the end of the century. During that period public opinion shifted dramatically in response to the highly visible deforestation in such well travelled corridors like the foothills of Mt. Hood, the Coastal Mountains, and the Siskiyou’s. Several books were published during this period that focused exclusively on clear-cutting, including Chris Anderson’s Edge Effects (1993), and the Sierra Club large format publication (1995) entitled, “Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry.”

The industry’s response was (and remains) that some tree species, including the ubiquitous Douglas Fir, are shade intolerant and therefore must be planted en masse. This means that the site must be clear-cut to remove any trees that might crowd out the sunlight and thus stunt the growth of the trees. Foresters insist that the practice of clear-cutting is not just necessary to reduce costs, but is essential to produce a lush new forest. The industry experts claim that the practice replicates the actions of forest fires that “transforms a biological desert” into a highly productive forest that can help watersheds by replacing old growth trees with “higher water yielding younger trees.”

In February 2013 this issue erupted once again. The catalyst was a proposed Forest Service’s timber sale that included 16,215 acres along the western border of Oregon’s only national park. This threat to one of Oregon’s most renowned views quickly galvanized a broad array of opponents that vehemently opposed the cutting of trees 300-400 years old. The logging roads would access forest that had not seen commercial logging for more than 60 years and served as wilderness in one of Oregon’s highest-valued recreation areas. According to Oregon Wild’s website, “the Bybee logging project would log 1,300 acres in the proposed Crater Lake Wilderness. This would effectively cut off several intact wildlife corridors with logging and road building.  The project includes 12 miles of new roads…(and) would be enough to fill 7000 log trucks.”

The US Forest Service and industry representatives counter that the proposed timber harvesting activity would be conducted with extraordinary care. Clear-cuts would be limited to three-quarter-acre patches that “would blend with the vegetation in the Crater lake National Park” which already has open patches from wildfires and previous logging activities. The loggers would avoid old growth timber as defined by the Northwest Forest Plan, but environmentalists counter that the thinning objectives stated in the proposal do not distinguish between old growth and younger stands. Both Oregon Wild and Cascadia Wildlands are challenging the Bybee timber sale.

Of particular note in this debate is the introduction of smaller scale clear cutting dimensions. Though this is a great improvement, I suspect that this issue will not disappear since Oregon’s population continues to urbanize and loose its ties to the resource harvesting industries that once dominated public opinion in this region of the country.

Sources: Oregonian, Logging Battle Lines drawn near Crater Lake, February 27, 2013

Two-spirit Woman: the Kootenai Doomsday Prophetess

 The arrival of fur traders into the remote western valleys of the Canadian Rockies was the catalyst for the transformation of a big boned gangly Kootenai Indian girl, Ququnok Patke (One-Standing-Lodge-Pole-Woman), into the most famous and influential seers in the Pacific Northwest.

During the winter of 1808, Quqonok would have attained marriageable status, but none of the young men had sought her out, given her remarkable stature. Had this been any other Indian lass, her story might have succumbed to the miserable fate of an awkward second wife. But Ququnok was about to step into what can only be described as a “cultural singularity” that arose from the collision of two utterly different worlds. And with her strong personality this narrative would take an entirely unexpected turn.

Ququnok undoubtedly participated in the startling encounter when the first North Western Company brigade managed to cross the Continental Divide and stumbled down the deep drifts that coated the western slopes of the Canadian Rockies. It is unclear who was more astonished; the Kootenai Indians who inhabited this remote fastness nestled among the silvery peaks of the Continental Divide, or the voyageurs that had hauled their sleds through country so remote and primeval that they actually feared attack by woolly mammoths. But for Ququnok this January morning in 1808 was a life altering experience, because we know that when the fur traders left a few days later, Ququnok went with them.

From the Northwest Company trader, David Thompson we hear that she subsequently married his servant, Boisvert, but that her “conduct had become so loose” that Thompson was forced to expel her from his base at Kalispell House. After that she returned home to her own people in the Lower Kootenai country, but when she arrived she announced that she had been transformed into a male!

She told her astonished band,

“I’m a man now. We Indians did not believe the white people possessed such power from the supernaturals. I can tell you that they do – greater power than we have. They changed my sex while I was with them. No Indian is able to do that.”

With that she announced that henceforth she would be called Kauxuma nupika, (Gone-to-the-spirits). Instead of dresses she had worn in the past, she now sported men’s shirts, leggings, breech cloths and she began to carry a gun. Her tribe remained skeptical, but she was undeterred and soon announced her intention to take a “wife”. But all the girls she approached refused her. Furious, Kauxuma let it be known that she would have her revenge using newfound supernatural powers. Understandably, people began to avoid her.

Eventually, she took up with another Kootenai women who had been abandoned by her husband. The two were inseparable, and the new “wife” was constantly pestered for details about the relationship. It was even rumored that Kauxuma had fashioned an artificial phallus of leather. But this buffalo dildo did not fool her lover and soon the relationship soured. Things went from bad to worse in a hurry, and the two had to be separated after Kauxuma became so jealous she pierced her partner’s arm with an arrow.

In keeping with her unrestrained lifestyle Kauxuma now set out to fulfill the ideals of a Kutenai warrior, including raiding, horse theft and fighting.  Eventually, she was able to join a raiding party, but the sortie was unsuccessful in locating horses to steal. During their return Kauxuma’s brother noticed that she refused to strip with the other warriors as they crossed several rivers that lay athwart their route, but instead she lingered to cross after the others had continued onwards. Suspicious, her brother decided to hang back and watch her when she stripped off her pants. Apparently, he was able to confirm that she had not actually acquired the appurtenances of the male gender, and remained physically a women. Upon Seeing her brother spying on her, Kauxuma had quickly crouched in the rushing mountain waters, claiming that her foot had been caught between two rocks. Thus it came as no surprise that Kauxuma now assumed the name, Sitting-in-the-water-Grizzly (qanqon kdmek klatda). Most of the warriors cheered her decision being unaware that it implied a very self-serving interpretation of the events. But her brother, knowing the truth of it, refused to acknowledge her new name and instead insisted on calling her ‘Qanqon’, a sardonic twist on her newly assumed name.

But all that didn’t really matter, because Kauxuma had realized a much larger vision, one that wasn’t defined by Kootenai custom, or influenced by fur traders’ motives. She saw the raw chaos of two worlds colliding and she had begun to prophesy a vision that despite its gloomy predictions turned out to be remarkably close to the truth.

Her prophecy narrative was incendiary and alarming in the extreme. The white traders were bringing small pox to kill the Indians she warned. Two giants would follow turning over the earth as they came and burying the Indians and their lodges as it rolled across the country. All the Indians would die she insisted!

In July of 1809, David Thompson encountered her on Rainy Lake, near the Upper Columbia River reporting that,

“She had set herself up for a prophetess and gradually had gained, by her shrewdness, some influence among the natives as a dreamer, and expounder of dreams. She recollected me before I did her, and gave a haughty look of defiance, as much to say, I am now out of your power.”

At the time he wrote this in his journal, Thompson had no inkling of the influence that this prophetess’ visions would have, even to the distant shores of the Pacific. To Thompson, this recalcitrant prophetess must have seemed like an enterprising provocateur that parlayed her exposure to the white traders into cunning deceits designed to enrich her. Like an annoying gadfly, she would turn up wherever the traders built their forts and preach her anti-colonial views to the indigenous tribes. At Fort Chipewyan in the far north, her insidious rhetoric nearly launched a revolt against the vulnerable fort.

Undoubtedly, Kauxuma was an “odd duck”, but these were very unusual circumstances. During her time with Boisvert and later as she visited the outposts of the fur traders she undoubtedly spent considerable time listening to the Cree, the Chipewyan’s and the Catholic Iroquois as they shared their indigenous interpretations of the agrarian colonization that was sweeping across the lands to the east of the Rockies. As Thompson may have done, one could see Kauxuma as a skilled charlatan who could turn a tale to her benefit. From the anthropologists’ perspective, Kauxama’s prophesies fit into the greater narrative about the indigenous cultural revival that included the contemporaneous Prophesy Dance and the reassertion of an Indian identity in the face of a massive colonial onslaught. From the traditional perspective of the male-dominated Indian elders, her warrior aspirations made a mockery of the Indians’ value systems. Her anti-colonial and hopeless prophesies undermined the motivations that sustained the far-flung Northwest trading culture. There were many that would gladly silence her to still the growing panicamong the Indians.

From the perspective of an historian of lesbianism, Kauxuma stands out as a lonely example of an inspired individual that tried not just to compete in a male dominated culture, but also to speak “truth to power” as the modern expression goes. As an individual, Kauxuma seems to have had an intense and uncompromising character, with a significant “anger management problem” and a predilection for resorting to violence – not someone you might want to spend much time with. And yet all that met her noted her intelligence, and persuasiveness. She was, no doubt, an extraordinary person!

Until now, Kauxuma had been an isolated oddity whose influence hardly extended beyond the reaches of her home tribe’s peregrinations in the Lower Kootenai country. But on June 15^th, 1811 that would change dramatically.

On that sunny day, Kauxuma was escorted into Astoria by a phalanx of local Chinooks, who were as mystified by the tall Algonquin-speaking Indian and his “wife” as the American were that soon debriefed them. It appeared from what they learned that this couple had managed the perilous journey from the verge of the Continental Divide all the way down the Columbia River, through the territories of countless feisty Indian tribes – all the way to the solitary outpost of the Americans at the mouth of the mighty Columbia River. Apparently, Kauxuma’s guise was successful in fooling the local Indians and the Americans. Alexander Ross describes their reception,

“Among the many visitors who every now and then presented themselves, were two strange Indians, in the character of man and wife, from the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains…. The husband was a very shrewd and intelligent Indian, who addressed us in the Algonquin and gave us much information respecting the interior of the country.”

Significantly, Kauxuma was also carrying a letter to John Stuart, an HBC trader thought to be traveling with Simon Fraser. This was critical intelligence for the Americans because it revealed that the Hudson Bay Company had begun to operate in the areas west of the continental divide.

The Astorians were still trying to sort out how to respond to this news, when they spotted a canoe rounding Tongue Point. Seated in the stern was what appeared to be an English officer and at his back fluttered the Union Jack. David Thompson had arrived just as the Americans were about to dispatch canoes upriver to explore the interior of the country. The Nor’Westers were warmly welcomed and Thompson had the run of the fort during his brief sojourn there. During that stay the Astorians shared the story of the two strange Indians that had arrived just prior to Thompson. Taken to meet the “odd couple”, Thompson immediately recognized Kauxuma and exposed her gender – much to the consternation of local Chinook and the Astorians who had been successfully deceived.

Tarrying only a week in Astoria, David Thompson set out out to retrace his considerable return trip all the way to the Continental Divide and from thence back to Montreal, where he would ultimately take up residence. Before leaving, he agreed to guide the Astorian, David Stuart and eight of his men to where they planned to build a fort at the foot of the “Falls of the Columbia”. But they weren’t the only fellow travellers.

Hearing that Thompson was bound to retrace his steps up the river, Kauxuma and his wife decided to follow suite. But it wasn’t long before it became apparent that the Kauxuma’s prophesies on the downward journey had so scared the Lower Columbia River Indians that the local Indians were intent upon killing Kauxuma. And so it was that the haughty dissembler now approached David Thompson to seek his protection during the journey upriver. Despite his misgivings, Thompson agreed to shelter Kauxuma and his ‘wife’ during the trip back up the Columbia River – a decision that made Nor’Westers’ own passage considerably more dangerous.

No sooner had he agreed to shelter the doomsday prophetess than Thompson came across the following scene, as he describes it in his journal:

“Having proceeded half a mile up a Rapid, we came to four men who were waiting for us … the four men addressed me, saying, when you passed going down to the sea, we were all strong in life, and your return to us finds us strong to live, but what is this we hear, casting their eyes with a stern look on her [the ‘man woman’], is it true that the white men … have brought with them the Small Pox to destroy us; and two men of enormous size, who are on their way to us, overturning the Ground, and burying all the Villages and Lodges underneath it; is this true, and are we all soon to die. I told them not [to] be alarmed, for the white Men who had arrived had not brought the Small Pox, and the Natives were strong to live, and every evening were dancing and singing… At all which they appeared much pleased, and thanked me for the good words I had told them; but I saw plainly that if the ‘man woman’ had not been sitting behind us they would have plunged a dagger in her…”

All along the journey up the Columbia River the two “bold adventurous amazons” would alternately canoe ahead of the main party, or at other times linger behind the Nor’Westers. Kauxuma’s four years of exposure to the white fur traders had not just given her an “insight” into what was coming, but it also imprinted on her the  opportunistic culture of the French Canadian trappers that helped manipulate the credulous natives to her advantage. Concocting visions that were designed to astonish, Kauxuma and his wife now announced that the great white chief was about to inundate them with everything they wanted. In their gratitude for these glad tidings the local Indians showered the couple with gifts. By the time the expedition parted ways with “Two-Spirit Woman”, she and her consort disappeared into the long shadows of history leading 26 horses laden with all manner of Indian wealth.

Over the next 26 years we hear little of our “man-like woman”. Mostly she remains a background figure, accompanying several trading sorties into the region. Finally reports circulate of how she had mediated between a group of Flat Heads and a marauding party of Blackfoot Indians. Apparently during the negotiations, she tricked the Blackfoot into waiting long enough for the Flat Heads to make their escape. For nearly thirty years she had sown fear with her disturbing visions and reckless deceits, but on that fateful day in 1837 her legendary dissimulation was her final undoing.

In the end it wasn’t the small pox, or her supernatural juggernauts that buried her, or even the Indians that wanted to silence her doomsday diatribes. Trying to find meaning in the chaotic changes affecting her world, Kauxuma ultimately lost her life for one of the most traditional reasons: tribal warfare.

Bibliography:

1. Kauxama Nupika, or also known as Gone to the Spirits. Robert Clark, River of the West, 1995, Harper Collins Publishers, NY. Pg 69

2. Epic Wanderer, David Thompson – The Mapping of the Canadian West, 2003 D’Arcy Jenish, Doubleday Canada, Toronto, Canada, Pg. 181

3. Schaeffer’s “Kutenai Female Berdache”, 1811 http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/Schaeffer%27s_%22Kutenai_Female_Berdache%22,_1811

4. Oregon and the Collapse of Illahee by Gray H. Whaley 2010, University of North Carolina Press

The Indians of the Lower Columbia had little use for horses, as the forests were far too dense to traverse with the cumbersome horse, and besides their highways were the rivers and streams of the coastal range where narrow footpaths shared by man and beast alike were the only solution. But instead of horses they did accumulate a craven race of husky-like dogs whose only purpose it appeared was to alert the village of unknown intruders. According to some, these dogs were not eaten, but we do know that Lewis and Clark has acquired, by the time they reached the Columbia, quite a preference for “filet fido” and purchased many dogs from the villages that they passed – a fact did did not go unnoticed among the Indians who did not themselves consume the dogs.

Somewhere down in the same lower reaches of Indian society were the pot-bellied little children that scampered around the camps and buried themselves in the ragged hides inside the lodges. These little urchins had the run of the camps and were left mostly unattended with a resultingly high mortality rate. They grew up with the dogs, were fed and clothed with whatever came to hand. As soon as they could run, they commenced to hunt and fish. With the enthusiasm for mayhem that only untempered children are apt to display, they would be known to frequent the spawning streams and slaughter the migrating salmon until they were weary, and then abandon their spoils on the rocks to rot. By thirteen or fourteen the boys would begin to seriously hunt. In the early 1800′s when the old Queen Anne muskets were becoming more common among the Indians, these youths would carefully load a charge alongside a single shot (these both being expensive) and then go out to hunt. But the cost of the powder and the ball were such that it was only economical if you could shoot more than one animal per shot! So these enterprising Indian kids would float in covering their canoe with ” green boughs so that it would appear to be a mere floating heap of brushwood, and lying in ambush under this the hunter would patiently wait for hours for the birds to come near or for a favoring winds to float him into their midst.” This really appealed to the these young Indian kids – “the stealthiness, and the ease of it, and because it meant many birds with one shot”.

One young fourteen-year old is said to have observed a big cougar preparing to cross a creek on a log. Rather than shoot the cat as it passed broadside to him, the Indian snuck up the side of the ravine and positioned himself so that the cougar would walk right up to the end of his muzzle. “Blowed a hole in that cougar that a bull bat could a’flew through without ‘tetching’ his wings on either side.” Reminding the boy of the unreliability of the old Queen Anne rifle, he asked him why he would take on such a huge danger. The boy is reported to have replied that his own life was the cheapest of his possessions – he had paid nothing for it, but the cougar of immeasurable value in honor, in reward and status.

The Indians claim that time flows differently on the reservation, for me it’s  true when I’m off the reservation. So this is a short piece on what the mushrooms think about “being late”:

And I’m stamping through the Douglas fir
in search of the tell-tale yellow chanterelles,
But they are buried deep and all I get
are earthy whiffs of mushroom smells.
Time ebbs and flows in the misty forest;
underground it answers to no one at all,
Stretching moments into eternities,
the earth breaths unhurried for one and all.

Jim

Upon reading my materials and observations on the Oregon Coast Range the question frequently arises as to what distinguishes my perspectives on this landscape from that of others. I can’t say I really thought much about this while I was busily wearing out my hiking boots. But perhaps my thirst for exploring our trackless wilderness is a bit out of the ordinary, or else I would have encountered more like-minded spirits.

But my proclivity for getting lost in the woods is not something new. I grew up deep in the Bavarian Alps surrounded by precipitous peaks. In the winter the mountains blocked the sun for much of the day, and the avalanches roared into the valley whenever we had a heavy snowfall. Mountains loomed large in my youth, as the home of mysterious folk-lore spirits, as an inviting network of precarious cliff clinging goat trails, an unending inventory of musty caves to be explored, a trove of abandoned World War II arms caches and a playground of lofty eyries from which to view the world beyond my valley. Constantly warned off these perilous slopes by my cautious parents, I was not to be deterred from crawling up the most precarious faces and poking into every crevasse to tease out the myriad secrets these crags had to offer. There was something in me that reveled in the experience of being beyond the orderly reach of civilization. In my passionate teen years I was given to reciting Lord Byron’s romantic verse from the top of mountain peaks. Somehow the thrill of the claiming for myself these secret places deep in the forest or high up on the forbidden rock faces was a romantic urge that never quite left me…

Having grown up amongst Europe’s Celtic runes, the roman roads and the gothic churches, evidence of history’s long sweep was commonplace. So I was always a bit baffled by the reverence my friends and relatives from America felt in visiting the local castle. But when I came to Oregon and beheld for the first time the vast and empty spaces of eastern Oregon, I felt a similar awe. And every time I walk deep in the forests, I am reminded of how little time has past since this land was completely primeval. Where European civilization emerged from the woods and marshes well over 2000 years ago, here in the Pacific Northwest man has only just emerged from the domination of our colossal rain forests. Standing deep in the Oregon’s coastal forests, amongst the noble Western Cedars, beneath the huge Sitka Spruce giants and the ubiquitous Douglas fir I feel as if I am transported back in time to a time when men’s mark on nature was still fresh.  These are literally the densest forests on earth, and their dark loamy environment fed by nutrient rich high latitude ocean weather simply reeks with life. In the dark and close confines of Oregon’s coastal forest life as we know it ceases and the rules are reversed. Hundreds of people have been lost in these forests, never to reappear. Planes go down into the forest canopy and it closes around the wreckage forever hiding the remains. Even DB Cooper and all his loot was swallowed alive. Apply your sensible Boy Scout wisdom about following water to safety and it will most assuredly lead you to your doom in this primeval jungle. Civilization simply does not penetrate into these remote ravines. When I am in the deep forests and utterly alone, it’s exhilarating to think back to a time thousands of years ago when we had not yet mastered our environment and were still inexorably subject to the whims of nature.

My father was an ex-US diplomat who made a living writing books about diplomacy, novels about spies and articles about hunting and fishing throughout central Europe and Asia. He and my mother managed two hunting reserves in Bavaria and in Austria. That meant we spent almost every dawn and dusk in the woods observing the movement of the deer, roebucks and chamois – learning their territories, tallying the game and planning how to cull the herds during the fall hunting season. In the summer we maintained our hunting cabins, as much of the reserve was too high and remote to reach by car, and in the winter we skied up to the feeding stations to dispense the hay. In my early teens I was taught to track, spot and identify animals with a fair degree of accuracy – since we kept a running inventory of all the game based on individual sightings – and I was an essential part of that summer-long effort. In the Alps hunting co-exists alongside high altitude cattle management, selective logging, mushroom gathering, tourism and border patrolling, so I was constantly talking with the upland farmers, the foresters, the old women who stalked the chanterelles, and the border patrol to learn more about the movement of our herds. Unlike the United States there was a symbiotic relationship between all these parties and we learned from each other even as we crossed paths high up in the range. Since logging was done selectively the impact to the wildlife was minimal, our control of the game population protected the farmers’ crops, and our concealed mountain trails served the mushroom scavengers and foresters to climb the steep slopes. Thus I came to consider the forest from many angles and to appreciate the interwoven network that sustained this delicate ecosystem.

Perhaps the most poignant lesson I learned about this symbiotic relationship and the meaning of stewardship occurred one summer when I was 10 years old and had brought back some firecrackers from the US. With the intensity only a 10 year old can muster I laid siege to a giant ant pile behind the neighboring farmer’s barn. When my pyrotechnics exploded scattering a full third of the heap, the farmer’s wife appeared and read me the riot act for my wanton destruction of this ant pile. It seems that the family bible, handed down from generation to generation, had reported faithfully on this insect colony that had sprung up alongside the new farm when it was founded in 1060 AD!

I was surprised to find that in Oregon there existed an almost adversarial relationship between all these parties, each vying to harvest one part of the ecosystem, with little regard to the impact for others and without any comprehensive sense of stewardship for the overall health of the habitat over the coming decades and centuries. For me the forest cannot be seen in isolation or even from one perspective at a time – it is inextricably linked to the communities around it, the ecology inside, the geology underneath and subject to the weather wafting through it.

Stop and listen the next time you are deep in the woods – to the multilayered saga being told all around you. Hear the grandiose themes of geological transformation, the infinitely complex life and death dance that sustains fish, fowl, fur and flower. While you are knee deep in the crunchy spring snow, can you hear the distant cacophony of human destruction, or sense the microcosmic drama of 16,000 invertebrates living beneath your every footstep? This is a world that runs itself, no batteries needed. It is both off the grid, and it is the only grid. Like a blind man groping around the edges of an unfamiliar object, I come here to feel the limits of our influence and to understand the real shape of things.