As with other tribes, the Clatsop and Chinooks loved telling legends. The legend teaches a lesson. It was usually the grandparents who told the legend because all of the other tribe members are busy doing chores. Usually the legends ended with a lesson of some sort so in the future if the children ran into that same problem that was in the legend, they would hopefully make the right decisions.

The following is one of the Story of Creation.

Long, long ago when Toolux, old man South Wind, was traveling north, he met Quoots-hooi who was an old giantess. "Will you give me some food?" asked South Wind. "I am very hungry."

I have no food," answered the giantess, "but here is a net. You can catch some fish for yourself if you wish." So Old Man South Wind dragged the net down to the ocean and with it caught a grampus or little whale. Taking out his knife, he was about to cut the whale and take out the blubber.

But the old giantess cried out, "Do not cut it crossways. Take a sharp shell and split it down the back."

But South Wind did not take to heart what the old woman was saying. He cut the fish crossways and began to take off some blubber. He was startled to see the fish change into a huge bird. It was so big that when it flew into the air it hid the sun, and the noise of its wings shook the earth. It was Hahness, the Thunderbird.

Thunderbird flew to the north and lit on the top of the Saddleback Mountain, near the mouth of the Columbia River. There it laid a nest full of eggs. Toolux and Quoots-hooi journeyed north in search of Hahness. One day while the giantess was picking berries on the mountainside, she found its nest. She broke one egg, but it was not good. She threw it down the mountainside. Before the egg reached the valley, it became an Indian.

The old giantess broke some other eggs and then threw them down the mountainside. They too became Indians. Each of Thunderbird's eggs became an Indian.

When Hahness returned and found its eggs gone, it went to Toolux. Together they tried to find the old giantess, to get revenge on her. But they never found her, although they traveled north together every year. That is how the Chinook were created. And that is why Indians never cut the first salmon across the back. They know that if they should cut the fish the wrong way, the salmon would cease to run. Always, even to this day, they slit the first salmon down the back, lengthwise.

This is one of the legends that helped to name those gusty warm orographic winds that batter the eastern slopes of the Rocky mountains and the coast of Southern California called the Chinook and Santa Ana Winds.