En-am-tues - The Wishing Stone - Okanogan There were three brothers, all great warriors. They lived in Okanogan country. Choo'-pahk - Sticking - was the oldest; the second brother was Scra'-kan - Copper - and the youngest was Nak-ka'-tuya-Cut-up. Among the Kalispel people lived a maiden named Scoo'-mdt-Virgin. Her father was chief of the Kalispels. One sun Scoo'-malt filled a basket with camas roots and started for the Okanogan country. She hoped to please the handsome, coppery Scra'-kan and become his wife. Upon reaching the summit of the range overlooking the Okanogan Valley from the east, she stopped to make herself beautiful. She combed and braided her long black hair and painted her face with red earth paint. In their dreams the three brothers saw Scoo'-malt coming, and they went to meet her. Each asked her to marry him, and then the younger brothers fought. Nak-ka'-fuya slashed the shoulders off Scra'-kan, while Scra'-kan knocked. Nak-ka'-fuya down and kicked him into a long heap, flat on the ground. Coyote came along as the brothers were fighting, and he laughed at seeing them fighting so hard over the Kalispel maiden. He thought it was a good joke, but his glee angered the girl, and she spoke sharply to him. Her words, in turn, angered Coyote. He would show the maiden that she could not talk that way to him. With the help of his great medicine-power he moved the brothers back to where they had been when they started to meet Scoo'-malt, and he changed them into mountains. Then he made Scoo'-malt helpless by turning her lower body into stone. Taking her basketful of et-quah (camas), Scoo'-malt threw it back to her people, to the Kalispel country, so that none would grow in the land of the Okanogans, and she transformed the rest of herself into stone, to remain there in sight of her stone lovers forever. Coyote was amused. To the stone maiden, he said: "Because you are a stranger in this place, you will help the coming generations by giving them good luck, but they will have to pay you to make their wishes happen." Then he turned to the mountains that had been warriors, and said: "Choo'-pahk, because you are proud and would not take part in the fight, you will stand with your head high and stately. You, Scra'-kan, because a virgin of another land came to court you, will be loved always by the women for your handsome coppery body. The women will like pieces of it for decorating their arms and hands. Nak-ka'-tuya, because you were beaten and kicked to the ground, you will lie in shame as a mountain ridge for other generations to see." That is why Choo'-pahk (Mt. Chopaka) looks so proud and fine. Scra'-kan, nearby, to the north and west, stands without shoulders, a sharp-pointed peak (in British Columbia). Across the valley of the Similkameen River lies Nak-ka'-fuya (Mt. Richter, B. C.) The maiden still sits on the summit where she stopped that day long ago to comb her hair and paint her face with the red earth paint. The people call her En-am-tues-Sitting-on-the-summit. The place where she sits is Mock-fsin-Knoll-be-tween-a-divide. There the people have gone for many generations to ask for good luck and to pay for their asking with gifts so that their wishes would come true.[1] 1- En-am-tues is known to the whites as the Tee-hee-hee stone. Tee-hee-hee, which is not an Okanogan word, may be a comparatively modern corruption of the verb meaning "to wish" in the Chinook jargon, the old-time trade language of the Northwest. Derived from the pure Chinook tikekh, "to wish" in the jargon is given variously as: t'keh, te-ke, tik-eh, lik-eigh, tak-eigh, tick-ey, fikky, and so forth. The "wishing stone," or Camas-woman, as it frequently is called, is one of many wishing stations or shrines in the Northwest where the Indians made offerings. To pass Camas-woman without depositing a gift was said to bring sorrow and ill-luck. In return for even the smallest gift, the older generations of Indians believed she would grant any wish that might be asked. The sick supplicated for health, the poor for worldly goods, the ambitious for success in war, the chase, love, and other undertakings. After the Indians' contact with the fur-traders, coin entered largely into the gifts, and the white men, learning of the Camas-woman's influence, robbed her of all her wealth. When the Colville Reservation was thrown open to settlement in 1900, a prospector dynamited the shrine to see if it concealed anything of value.The stone, originally about five feet in height, is now a pile of its shattered parts. After it was blasted, some of the Indians gathered up the fragments and heaped them to a height of six or seven feet. Mourning Dove remembers when the stone was intact. En-am-tues, situated on a divide overlooking the Okanogan Valley from the east, is seven miles west and south of Molson, Washington. One of the main cross-country trails passed by it, but there are no modern roads in the vicinity. The camas which the maiden threw back to her people is the "black camas" that grows on Camas Prairie near Calispell Lake, Pend Oreille County, Washington. Kalispel Indians who dig the root receive as high as a dollar a gallon for it from people of their own and other tribes. The Kalispel country always has been noted for its rich camas grounds. The name, Scra'-kan, applied to one of the brother-mountains, is a modern Okanogan word that originally was used to designate the copper kettles traded to the Indians by the fur companies. Before the coming of the whites, gold nuggets and copper were made into bracelets, the pieces strung together. An ornament of this kind was called skel-ear-qu-nekst'', which means "circle-around-the-wrist," and this word was the only one by which either of the metals was known. Taken from Coyote Tales by Humishuma, Colville-Okanogan for Mourning Dove [Christine Quintasket], 1933 Come visit us at. "Keeper of Stories". http://www.newkeeperofstories.com/ or Come visit us. "Native Village" [email protected]