Thomas Doty – Storyteller

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Boats

Native people of the West have been water people for a long time. Boats are common in ancient myths. In a Takelma story, the White Duck sisters paddle across the sea from the Village Beyond the Sunset to the Rogue River. In another story, Coyote refuses to be ferried across the river to the Land of the Dead. At a sacred island in Tule Lake, a quarter mile of ancient stories were carved into a shoreline cliff by people standing in boats. Since that mythic time when the world was nothing but water, native waterways have been well-traveled.

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