Chinook Thunderbird totem pole
How were the first Chinook born?
In the beginning, the first men came down from the sky. They were Thunderbird’s children. Thunderbird laid eggs on Saddle Mountain (in modern Oregon).
Early Chinook history
More Native creation stories
All our Native American articles
Then a giantess – a really enormous woman – rolled five of those eggs down the mountain. Five men, each a different color, were born from those five eggs. So then they were in the valley.
History of eggs
Where did Chinook women come from?
When the men were in the valley, they found women there and pulled them out of the rocks. That was the beginning of the Chinook people.
(This is only one version of this story, and there are many others.)
