| What: I stumbled upon this by reading old newspaper articles in
the Northwest room of the Main Spokane Public library. The articles
discussed how scientists had come to this cave to try to figure out how on
the hottest days of the year icicles can be hanging inside the cave. No
scientist had ever been able to understand it, but they figured it had
something to do with the minerals in the basalt of the walls that formed the
cave. Inside the cave at different dig levels had been discovered animal
skins and tule mats that indicated that the cave had been used by both fur
traders and earlier by local Indians to store perishable items. This is an
interesting place. There is a spring here. What if someone bought the
property and reopened the cave and restored its former miraculous
properties? In the book "Visible
Bones", by Jack Nisbet, in the chapter "Reburying Jaco Finlay" on page 226,
"Jeanette was born on the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation, even though her
parents were enrolled Spokane. What the white people call Middle Spokane,
those are my people. They fished at the mouth of the Little Spokane, and
they told Jaco Finlay to build the first Spokane House near their village
there. They ran horses on Peone Prairie to the north. Seated at the feet of
her elders, Jeannette heard the stories that took a long time to tell and
were full of the nuance of languages spoken by the separate bands. She heard
all about the point of land formed by the joining of the Spokane and Little
Spokane River, and the sustenance it provided for the Middle Spokanes.
"There was a village there for many
generations," she said. "The people stored bitterroot and camas in
pits on the Spokane side. There were caves somewhere around where a
golf course is now that held ice all through the year, and that's where they
would keep their fish. The elders talked about those places." |
