Pacific Northwest Lost Island Paradise
In 1886, the American historian Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832-1918) related the Okanagan myth of their lost island paradise of “Samah-tumi-whoo-lah”:
“Long, long ago, when the sun was young and no bigger than a star, there was an island far off in the middle of the ocean. It was called Samah-tumi-whoo-lah, meaning White Man’s Island. On it lived a race of giants – white giants. Their ruler was a tall white woman called Scomalt. … She could create whatever she wished.
For many years the white giants lived at peace, but at last they quarreled amongst themselves. Quarreling grew into war. The noise of battle was heard, and many people were killed. Scomalt was made very, very angry … she drove the wicked giants to one end of the White Man’s Island. When they were gathered together in one place, she broke off the piece of land and pushed it into the sea. For many days the floating island drifted on the water, tossed by waves and wind. All the people on it died except one man and one woman.
… Seeing that their island was about to sink they built a canoe [and] … after paddling for many days and nights, they came to some islands. They steered their way through them and at last reached the mainland.”
The Okanagan feared any dramatic change in the heavens as an ominous portent of another Great Flood. The fear that the sun might once again wander or the sky might fall became an obsession. And they believed that in a time to come,
“…[the] lakes will melt the foundations of the world, and the rivers will cut the world loose. Then it will float as the island did many suns and snows ago. That will be the end of the world.”
. . . .
The territory of the Okanagan First Nation includes parts of British Columbia, Washington and Idaho. Their story of a lost island paradise in “the middle of the ocean” may refer to Antarctica before the “foundations of the earth” “cut the world loose.”
Antarctica is an island in the middle of the ocean, just like the lost land of Okanagan mythology.
. . . .
Please see also the lost island paradise of India.
See Atlantis Books.
