Hi BW. There were eyewitnesses to the great quake of Jan. 26, 1700. They may be stories, or myths told by the Indians, but these myths are not just from one area. Take Care…Don in creepy town

"Bibliography and Index of Indian Tales in Special Collections University of Washington Libraries" (Edwards, 1983), an index of Indian myth story motifs and characters. Under the motif or character name of "earthquake", most of the entries in Edwards (1983) are from the Yurok (northern California) and Haida (northern Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands).

All of the earthquake-related Yurok stories are contained in "Yurok Myths" (Kroeber, 1976). These include the relatively unambiguous story of co-seismic subsidence and tsunami "How the Prairie Became Ocean" (Kroeber, 1976; BB3) (previously discovered by D. Carver and G. Carver). The Yurok stories include a character called "Earthquake" (Kroeber, 1976; stories B5, C1, C5, F1, L1, P1, P6, W1, X1, and BB3).

Haida earthquake stories appear in several volumes (Tora, 1976; Barbeau, 1928, Swanton, 1905), and feature an Atlas-like and/or hero-figure who causes earthquakes by moving his hands and feet, or by stomping on the ground, or by boiling over duck grease. This figure is variously known as "Stone Ribs", "Strong Man who holds up the World", and "Sacred One both Still and Moving". The Haida and Yurok areas are located at the north and South ends of Cascadia, where earthquake activity is more frequent than on the Washington and Oregon coastal margin.

Within Cascadia, from Vancouver Island, several stories clearly set in historical (not mythic) time, and possibly related to great Cascadia earthquakes. One such story is of the destruction of a village on Vancouver Island's Pachena Bay, "The tsunami at !ANAQTL'A or 'Pachena Bay'" related during 1964 by Louis Clamhouse, published in Arima et al. (1991, p. 231), and cited in Hutchinson and McMillan (1997).

"They had practically no way or time to try to save themselves. I think it was at nighttime that the land shook.... I think a big wave smashed into the beach. The Pachena Bay people were lost.... But they who lived at Ma:lts'a:s, :House-Up-Against-Hill." the wave did not reach because they were on high ground... Because of that they came out alive. They did not drift out to sea with the others."

Another story describes a great ebb and flow of the sea in Barkley Sound (Sproat, 1987; cited by Clague, 1995). Hutchinson and McMillan (1997) note that the story of a flood is widespread throughout the tribes of the Pacific Northwest.

Hill-Tout (1978) records a Cowichan tradition of strong shaking. The Cowichan Valley is located on southeastern Vancouver Island.

"In the days before the white man there was a great earthquake. It began about the middle of one night .... threw down ... houses and brought great masses of rock down from the mountains. One village was completely buried beneath a landslide."

• Cascadia Subduction Quake