Salmon is the personified chief of the fish and the greatest of the first-foods on which Chinookan life depended. In the Kathlamet myth he travels up the Columbia through the country of the myth-people, and at each place he learns what befell his kin and repays those who had wronged them, his progress upriver doubling as the setting-in-order of the river's places and creatures. Because the salmon runs were the foundation of the Chinookan economy, the being's yearly return is met with the observances owed a returning benefactor, above all the careful handling of the first fish so that the salmon-people will keep coming back.