Chinook elder to discuss book on his youth, tribal customs

Friday, April 20, 2007
by DEAN BAKER Columbian staff writer

Celebrated author George Aguilar, a 76-year-old Chinook elder, will speak in Vancouver Tuesday about a book he has written of his youth along the Columbia River.

"Nearly seventy-five years of my lifetime have come and gone since hearing of the sparse historical events from the old-timers," Aguilar said in a press release from Washington State University Vancouver, where he plans to speak. "It's my turn now."

Entered in the 2006 Oregon Book Award competition, it won the Sarah Winnemucca Award for creative nonfiction.

Aguilar's talk will be from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in Room 129 in the university's administration building.

In his book, "When the River Ran Wild! Indian Traditions on the Mid-Columbia and the Warm Springs Reservation," he recounts hearing stories of watching his grandmother make moccasins by the light of a coal-oil lamp and of being strapped to the back of his aunt's horse on the way to the huckleberry grounds.

He also listened to tales at a site called "Coyote's Fishing Place," where his uncles built scaffolds and taught him how to catch salmon as the fish made their seasonal runs up the river.

A member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, Aguilar was born and lived on the tribes' Oregon reservation for 70 years.

A soldier in the U.S. Army from 1949 to 1952, he also worked as a fisherman, transient field worker, timber faller, carpenter, service station retailer, auto mechanic, and owner and dealer of blackjack gaming tables. He was the construction manager for the tribes and continues to work as a general building and reforestation contractor.

His research for this book has taken him into libraries and archives throughout the Pacific Northwest.

A review in The Western History Quarterly says his book "is both a family history and a detailed record of the Kiksht Chinook's age-old customs and subsistence practices, many of which are no longer used by contemporary Indians. Aguilar's opening chapter describes the various Native groups that once lived along the Columbia River Gorge, their prophecies and their subsequent removal to reservations."

The quarterly notes that Aguilar drew on tribal lore and writings from the journals of Lewis and Clark and early ethnographers to cover such topics as ethnobotany, hunting and tanning, salmon fishing, spiritualism and ceremonies, ancestral name-giving and genealogy dating back two centuries.

The WSU program is sponsored by the Center for Columbia River History and Associated Students of WSU Vancouver.

If you go

What: Chinook elder George Aguilar will speak on his book, "When the River Ran Wild! Indian Traditions on the Mid-Columbia and the Warm Springs Reservation"

When: 7 to 8:30 p.m., Tuesday

Where: Administration Building, Room 129, Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 N. E. Salmon Creek Ave.

Cost: Free

Information: Call Sheri Byrd, WSU Office of Marketing and Communications, 360-546-9602, byrds@vancouver.wsu.edu

Dean Baker writes about history. Reach him at 360-759-8009 or e-mail dean.baker@columbian.com

Source : http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/04202007news129508.cfm