The Tragedy of Pillar Rock
An old resident recounts the Indigenous legend of how a powerful magician created a massive rock formation on the Columbia River.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
All travelers on the river are familiar with Pillar Rock, fourteen miles from Astoria, on the Washington shore. A pillar-shaped rock, several hundred yards from the shore, rising upwards of twenty-five feet above the water, gives the name to the place. Many years ago, long before John Jacob Astor’s expedition, Chief Skamokawa, a mighty chieftain known as a magician, inhabited the north shore. He had a son whose prowess with the canoe and spear was the envy of the tribes. Unmindful of the wrath of his father, the youth married the daughter of a Nehalem chieftain. When they set out in a canoe to return to his native heath, the mighty Skamokawa caught sight of them. In his anger, he called upon his magician’s skill, seized the cliff on which he stood, and tore from it a huge shaft, hurling it upon the canoe and its two occupants, impaling them beneath the mass where they are supposed to remain to this day.
“In his anger, he called upon his magician’s skill, seizing the cliff on which he stood, tore from it a huge shaft, and hurled it upon the canoe.”
This legend serves as an early example of regional myth-making that was often used to explain the landscape's features. While the reporting style is clearly filtered through an external settler lens, it documents the enduring cultural significance of the Columbia River's geology to the local Indigenous peoples.
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