Legends & Tales Of Mount St. Helens

The Demons In Spirit Lake

One of the best stories about Spirit Lake and Seatco is the story of Paul Kane, 1847. His adventures to the Cascade Tribe record the stories associated with the volcano and the lake.

Coming from Canada, his arrival to the tribe took him through the forbidden Toutle River valley and along the Cowlitz River channel. When they first saw him, they thought that he was a ghost from Spirit Lake, and hid from him in their dwellings.

Ella Clark describes the Seatco as not one entity but as a group of entities. She calls them the souls of the wicked who band together. The Seatco is just one of many evil spirits that makes a single entity. The other spirits do not have names as we would understand; they are simply called the Genii.

The most powerful, also known as 'Seatco' is described as a demon that was so huge that its own hand could stretch out to 12 miles and seize any people who venture to close to the shore.

Beside demonic watery hands and mimicking noises, there were ghost waterfalls, fish with the heads of bears, and a hypnotizing ghost elk that was used by Seatco to drown its victims.

--Ella E. Clark

Pg. 63-64

Spirit Lake lies at the base of Mount St. Helens. Because of the Indians' fear of the lake, Paul Kane, a Canadian artist wandering through the Northwest in 1847, could not hire anyone to accompany him to the lake and the mountain. There were several traditions about it. At certain spots, it was said; the sound of waterfalls could be heard from places where there were no waterfalls. Hunters and fishermen and women picking berries stayed away from Spirit Lake, and they warned their children and grandchildren to stay away from the home of demons and the lake of strange noises.

The lake at the foot of the beautiful mountain Loo-wit was the home of many evil spirits. They were the spirits of people from different tribes, who had been cast out because of their wickedness. Banding themselves together, these demons called themselves Seatco, and gave themselves up to wrongdoing.

The Seatco were neither men nor animals. They could imitate the call of any bird, the sound of the wind in the trees, the cries of wild beasts. They could make these sounds seem to be near or seem to be far away. So, they were often able to trick the Indians. A few times, Indians fought them. But whenever one of the Seatco was killed, the others took twelve lives from whatever band dared to fight against them.

In Spirit Lake, other Indians said, lived a demon so huge that its hand could stretch across the entire lake. If a fisherman dared to go out from shore, the demon's hand would reach out, seize his canoe, and drag fisherman and canoe to the bottom of the lake.

In the lake also was a strange fish with a head like a bear. One Indian had seen it, in the long-ago time. He had gone to the mountain with a friend. The demons that lived in the lake ate the friend, but he himself escaped, running in terror from the demons and from the fish with the head of a bear. After that, no Indian of his tribe would go near Spirit Lake

An Indian hunter, seeking food for his starving tribe, once followed a giant elk to the edge of the lake. The elk plunged into the water, and the hunter followed him. At once the demons stretched out their long arms and drew him to the bottom of the lake. The elk was only a ghost, which the demons had sent out to lure the man to his death. On a certain night each year, the elk and the Indian hunter appear in the mists over the lake.

In the snow on the mountaintop above the lake, other Indians used to say, a race of man-stealing giants lived. At night the giants would come to the lodges when people were asleep, put the people under their skins, and take them to the mountaintop without waking them. When the people awoke in the morning, they would be entirely lost, not knowing in what direction their home was.

Frequently the giants came in the night and stole all the salmon. If people were awake, they knew the giants were near when they smelled their strong, unpleasant odor. Sometimes people would hear three whistles, and soon stones would begin to hit their lodges. Then they knew that the giants were coming again.