to the Grizzly Woman who serves up feces, calling them “good berries" - see her “Stylistic Stratification in an Oral Tradition" (1968) p. 251.
12 See translation of Boas by Dietrich Bertz (1977) p. 28-30; and Teit Mythology of the Thompson (1912) pp. 283-285.
13 Toelken “The ‘Pretty Language’ of Yellowman" (1969) p. 221. Coyote is “an enabler whose actions, good or bad, bring certain ideas and actions into the field of possibility, a model who symbolizes abstractions in terms of real entities" (p. 222). For instance, when Coyote loses his eyes and replaces them with amber balls, this “allows us to envision the possibility of such things as eye disease, injury, or blindness.”
14 It should be significant that “Kaiyam" is not told among the Lillooet today (information from Randy Bouchard).
NOTES ON THE COSMOGONY AND HISTORY OF THE SQUAMISH INDIANS OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 1
The following notes on the cosmogony and history of the Squamish Indians of British Columbia, a sept of the great Salishan stock, were gathered by myself from an aged Indian of that sept some time last summer. Through the kindness of the Roman Catholic bishop of the district, Bishop Durieu, I received a cordial reception at the hands of the chief men of the tribe, and on learning what I wanted they brought out of his retirement the old historian of the tribe. He was a decrepit creature, stone-blind from old age, whose existence till then had been unknown to the good bishop who himself has this tribe in charge. I am disposed, therefore, to think that this account has not been put into English before.
I first sought to learn his age, but this he could only approximately give by informing me that his mother was a girl on the verge of womanhood when Vancouver sailed up Howe Sound at the close of last century. He would, therefore, be about 100 years old. His native name, as near as I could get it is Mulks.2 He could not understand any English, and as his archaic Squamish was beyond my poor knowledge of the language, it was necessary to have resort to the tribal interpreter. The account will, in consequence, be less full and literal.
Before the old man could begin his recital, some preparations were deemed necessary by the other elderly men of the tribe. These consisted in making a bundle of short sticks, each about six inches long. These played the part of tallies, each stick representing to the reciter a particular paragraph or chapter in his story. They apologized for making these, and were at pains to explain to me that these were to them what books were to the white man. These sticks were now placed at intervals along a table round which we sat, and after some animated discussion between the interpreter, who acted as master of ceremonies, and the other old men as to the relative order and names of the tallies, we were ready to begin. The first tally was placed in the old man’s hands and he began his recital in a loud, high-pitched key, as if he were addressing a large audience in the open air. He went on without pause for about ten minutes, and then the interpreter took up the story. The story was either beyond the interpreter’s power to render into English, or there was much in it he did not like to relate to a white man, for I did not unfortunately get a fifth of what the old man had uttered from him, and it was only by dint of questioning and cross-questioning that I was enabled to get anything like a connected narrative from him at all. The old man recited his story chapter by chapter, that is, tally by tally, and the interpreter followed in like order. The following is the substance of what I was able to record:
In the beginning there was water everywhere and no land at all. When this state of things had lasted for a long while, the Great Spirit determined to make land appear. Soon the tops of the mountains showed above the water and they grew and grew till their heads reached the clouds. Then he made the lakes and rivers, and after that the trees and animals. Soon after this had been done, Kalana, the first man, was made. The Great Spirit bestowed upon him the three things an Indian cannot do without, viz., a wife, a chisel or adze, and a salmon trap. Kalana was a good man and obeyed the Great Spirit’s commands, and in course of time his wife bore him many sons and daughters, who spread out over the land and peopled it. When the land was full of people and Kalana had grown very old, the Great Spirit took him away one day and the people saw him no more.
Now, as Kalana had advanced in years the people had become very wicked and vexed the Great Spirit. And after he left them they became worse. When this state of things had been going on for a long time, the Great Spirit made the waters rise up over all the land above the tops of the highest mountains, and all the people were drowned except one man named Cheatmuh, the first-born of Kalana, and his wife. These two escaped in their canoe, which floated about on the water for a long time, and at last, when they were nearly dead with hunger, settled on the top of a high mountain which was not quite covered with water. After this the water subsided, and Cheatmuh and his wife descended from the mountain and built themselves a house, and in course of time repeopled the land again with their offspring. A long interval now went by and the people were happy and prosperous. Many salmon came up the Squamish every season, and there was food for everybody and to spare.
But the Great Spirit became angry with them again a second time after Cheatmuh’s death, and this time punished them by sending a great snow-storm upon the land. Day after day, and moon after moon, the snow fell in tiny flakes, covering everything and hiding all the land, and the streams, and the rivers, and the trees. The snow was remarkable for its extreme fineness, and it penetrated everywhere. It came into their houses and put out their fires, and into their clothes and made them wet and cold. (In this part of his recital the old man was exceedingly interesting and graphic in his description, the very tones of his voice lending themselves to his story, and I gathered, long before the interpreter took up the story, that he had told of something that was very small and had penetrated everywhere.) Soon all the stores of fish and all available firewood was consumed, and no more could be got. Starvation and cold assailed them on every side, and soon the children and old people began to die in scores and hundreds. But still the snow came down and the misery of those that were left increased. Dead bodies lay around everywhere, dead and dying lying together.
(Here the old man’s voice was hushed to a plaintive wail, and the faces of his audience were an eloquent index of the tragic interest of this story of their ancestors’ misfortunes.)
Everything that could possibly afford sustenance was eagerly sought out and eaten. The hair was scraped from their store of skins, and the latter, soaked in the snow to make them soft, were then torn into pieces and devoured. But soon even this source of supply failed them, and their only hope now lay in the approaching salmon season. But when this long-looked-for relief came it was found that the salmon were so thin that there was nothing on them but the skin and bones. It was impossible to cure salmon of this description; moreover they did not come in their usual numbers, and soon this miserable supply failed them also. By the help of this poor diet the more hardy of them managed to keep body and soul together for some time longer, but all who were sickly and weak gradually died off, so that in a little time there remained but a few only of the whole tribe alive. All this time the snow had continued to fall, though it was long past the beginning of summer; and now even the salmon skins and bones were consumed, and all had died of starvation but two, a man and his daughter, who lived apart by themselves.
These two it seems had managed better than the rest. They were the fortunate possessors of a dog, which they killed after the salmon had failed them, and this they ate, bit by bit, as long as it lasted. They also burrowed down through the snow to the moss beneath, which they gathered, and, after wiping the slime of the salmon on it for flavouring, they then made soup from it. This, together with the dog, had enabled them to outlive all the rest of the tribe. But still the snow came down, and now they also had exhausted their resources and nothing remained to them but to lie down and die as the others had done.
As they sat lamenting their lot, the man happened to look sound-wards, and then he saw a large fish-hawk swoop down upon the water and rise again with a large salmon in its claws. Hastily getting out his canoe he launched it, and with his bow and arrows ready at hand, he paddled out to sea and presently got
