across the river here, and the rocks rose up and became a fall, at the foot of which the salmon now congregated in great numbers. He then taught the people to make and use three different types of salmon spear, which they use to this day in that region. The name of this fall in the native tongue is Neqoi'stem.
At this point in the recital Mischelle's memory gave out. He could only remember beyond this that the hero and his brothers parted later, and that Benign-face travelled all over the world, and that in one place, which the Indians now think must have been the white man's country, he taught the people how to make and use the plough and the waggon. He transformed himself into these two latter objects, that they might have a pattern to work by. For the waggon he made wheels by turning his arms and legs into circles, with his body between them, thus assuming the form of a waggon. He also taught them to make and use gunpowder; only this powder made no noise nor any smoke in going off. The gun was formed out of the stalk of the sugar-corn. It was not aimed at the object, as we aim the gun, but thrust out towards it, though it never left the hand.
This story is the longest in my collection. I have not attempted to curtail it, but have given it in all its detail as Mischelle gave it to me.[1] Others will be found in the Report of the Committee for the Ethnological Survey of Canada, together with other data appertaining to the work of that Committee (Trans. British Association, 1898).
Buckland College,
Vancouver, B.C.
- ↑ A variant version, much less full but useful for comparison, has been given by Dr. Boas in his Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas, p. 16.—Ed.
