NESTELAH'S JOURNEY

The 'wishing stone' monument is located on a well-traveled gravel road approximately 12 miles east of the town of Oroville, Washington. This border town is shown on your road map near the junction of the Okanogan and Similkameen rivers. Kelowna is the nearest large Canadian town, located to the north" (page 3).
"After reading the Nestelah story, families can retrace Nestelah's legendary journey by car. From Spokane, for example, the Nestelah 'wishing stone' monument is an easy two day trip offering numerous educational stops at Native American cultural and historical sites. Vacationers can extend their visit to 3-5 days, for a leisurely trip which includes the Kalispel and Colville reservations" (page 2).

Changing People To Stone

All over the world, people love to give name to local mountains, spinning yarns about the fate of the petrified formations with resemblances to familiar folklore characters. In a regional variant of Blue Flower's destiny, for example, the Swinomish describe the transformation of three sisters into peaks on a mountain local residents now call Baker. the Kalispel tell how Coyote created Metaline Falls, and the Columbia River people tell another story of how Coyote transmuted two of his sons into rocks.

Coyote is the great transformer deity in Salish myth, responsible for the metamorphosis of the world into the existing ecology. In this role, he represents all the superhuman powers which shape and modify the earth's geography. Although coyote often brings chaos into the lives of his human hosts, he also sometimes chooses (seemingly at whim) to serve as an agent of ethical discipline.

One of the morals woven into the Blue Flower story, for example, is a warning against intertribal feuding over camas fields. For thousands of years, camas provided critical nutrition ot the Salish and Kootenai peoples of the region. As a result, occupants of favored camas harvesting areas developed elaborate trade agreements with their neighbors, to ensure peaceful sharing of this resource. For the Kalispel, this involved extensive trading of camas for dried salmon, produced in surplus by the Shrowyelpi at Kettle Falls" (page 10).