William Hartless Reminisces about the Kalapuyans of Oregon

William Hartless. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology, Bureau of Ethnology Collection

In 1914, linguist Leo Frachtenberg interviewed William Hartless, a Kalapuyan who lived near Corvallis, Oregon. His stories were reprinted in Kalapuya Texts by Melville Jacob who warned readers that Franchtenberg's work "exhibited seriously defective phonetic workmanship." Jacob went on to suggest that "the better quality" of the work collected from William Hartless "is possibly due to the talent of Mr. Hartless for linguistic work." Below is a description of a forest fire in the valley.

When the mountains burned the last time, I was perhaps thirteen, or perhaps fifteen were my years (age), at that time when the mountains were ablaze. It is said that it burned in three places. I was living at Salem at that time. Salem was still small then. The reason I know about it (is), I had gone away to pick hops at Eugene. Only there were hops there at that time. The smoke was dark over the country, we could not see anything, (not) anything at a short distance away. We nearly could not see even across a road, (or) a fence on the other side of the road. That is how the smoke's darkness was. The mountains burned from the Yamhill (country) nearly to the ocean, and yonder there to where they name it the Tillamook country, and yonder to there to where they name it the Columbia. I know that the mountains burned over that much of the country. Now I know only that (about it), I have long ago forgotten the rest of it (of the details of the story), when the country burned.

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