In late September, the Kingdom's four Longships set out once more from the camp at South Port, bidding farewell to the newly built camp of thatched huts, and also to the fifty Kingdom sailors on shore and the dozen-odd tribal women who had newly joined them.
"We came from the north... and they go toward the north... We reached the river, and that is where the tribes part ways!... In the black forest, on the white beach, in the cold winds of autumn and winter, such partings are just like those of our ancestors!..."
Elder Woji of the Coos People led more than a hundred of his clansmen in singing a song of farewell to kin and friends. That muddied tone, filled with stops, fricatives, rasping sounds, and nasals, carried a deep and desolate flavor. The language of the Coos People belonged to the special Coosan family, different from the tribes on all three sides around them. In these ancient songs, some unique secret seemed to be hidden, the origin of an ancient tribe... only all of it would scatter in later ages, never to be heard again.
The fleet continued north, and along the way appeared long white dunes that stretched for more than a hundred li. Beneath the early-autumn sunlight, they were soft and beautiful, like the long feathers left behind by the white-egret sacred bird in tribal myth, spreading and extending along the edge of the coast.
In later generations, the name of this stretch of dunes would be Umpqua Beach. And the broad Umpqua River flowed down from the upper reaches of the beach, from three or four hundred li inland. The origin of the name "Umpqua" also referred to the roaming Indian tribe in the upstream forests, the Umpqua People. And this word was also