Dohkwibuhch

Dohkwibuhch (Lushootseed dukʷibəł, 'the Changer') is the creator of Snohomish and broader Puget Sound Salish tradition. He is said to have begun creation in the east and moved westward, giving each people its own language; when he reached Puget Sound he was so pleased that he stopped there and scattered all the remaining languages, accounting for the region's linguistic diversity. Because he made the sky too low, the assembled peoples and animals, coordinating with the shout 'Yah-hoh!', pushed it up with poles — the widely anthologized 'Pushing Up the Sky' story. As the Changer he also travelled the land transforming beings into their present forms, a role documented ethnographically by Haeberlin and Gunther.

Domains

• creation
• language

Powers

• to create the peoples of the world and assign each its own language
• to have set the sky so low that the people together pushed it up with poles

Sources

• Ella E. Clark, Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest, University of California Press, 1953.
• Hermann Haeberlin and Erna Gunther, The Indians of Puget Sound, University of Washington Publications in Anthropology 4(1), 1930.