The Salish People: Volume I. Charles Hill-Tout

he boldly entered the village.

      Now the animals of this country were different from those elsewhere; they all partook of the nature of dogs, and were employed as such by the people. There were bear-dogs, grizzly-dogs, wolf-dogs, rattlesnake-dogs, and all other kinds of dogs. As soon as Benign-face in his dog form was perceived someone cried out: “Here’s a strange dog, let us have a dog-fight.” One of the smaller dogs was turned loose and set on to worry the stranger. But Benign-face ran at it, and ripped it up with his sharp stone ears in a trice. Then another, and another, sprang at him; but he served them all in the same way, and presently there was only the rattlesnake-dog left. This he had to fight in a different manner. Instead of rushing at it, as he had at all the others, he began dancing round it and pawing the ground, as if in play. These antics put the rattlesnake-dog off his guard; and he did not attempt to strike the intruder at the first approach, but waited for him to come nearer. This was what Benign-face wanted, and, stretching out his fore-paws as if in play, he seized his opportunity, and cut the rattlesnake in pieces with his stone claws. When the people saw that the intruder had killed all their dogs, they hastened to fetch their weapons to kill him. But Benign-face rushed at them, and slashed and cut them with his sharp two-bladed tail so swiftly that in a short time not a man, woman, or child of them remained alive. He now resumed his own form, and restored all the animals to life again, but took from them their dog-nature, giving them the natures proper to their kind, and bade them go live in the woods. He next restored the people to life, but, after he had reproached them for their wickedness, transformed them all into ants. The two brothers now joined him, having thrown aside their eaglet-skins; and from this place they travelled down to Harrison Lake.

      Here they heard of a man who caused wind-storms to arise at his wish, so that those who were on the lake were never sure of getting back safe again. He did this to upset their boats, in order that his cannibal brother, Seal-man, might have their bodies for his dinner. Seeking this man out, Benign-face said to him: “I am told you are a very great man, and have medicine to make the wind rise when you wish to. Is the report true?” The shaman, not knowing who his questioner was, and proud of his powers, declared it was quite true. When asked what use he put his powers to, he boldly confessed that he used them to upset and drown people on the lake, that his brother might have their bodies. This made Benign-face very angry, and, calling Seal-man to him, he deprived him of his arms and legs, giving him flippers in their stead, and commanded him to eat no more human flesh, but to feed thereafter on fish. Thus it is that the seal has flippers, and feeds on fish. But the shaman he punished by transforming him into a smooth-faced rock, whereon men might paint, which rock may be seen on the shore of the lake, according to Mischelle, with its painted figures upon it, to this day.

      Ascending the Fraser once more, they came to the region of the Lillooet. On Bridge River Benign-face found the people very poor and miserable. They did not know how to catch the salmon which passed up the river. So Benign-face stretched his leg 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 Neqoistem.

      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 gun-powder; 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. 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 [see below] .⁸

      1 Reprinted, with acknowledgement, from Folk-lore 10 (June 1899) pp. 195-216. “To those familiar with Dr. G. M. Dawson’s ‘Notes on the Shuswap’ it will be seen at once that Sqaktktquaclt of the Thompson and Skilap of the Shuswaps are one and the same person, only in the case of the former we have an abundance of detail which is wanting in Dr. Dawson’s account of the latter. In the spelling of native words I have followed the phonetics of Dr. Boas as used in his Reports on the N.W. Tribes of Canada” - Hill-Tout. These spellings have here been normalized: all the letters of a word have been used, but none of the phonetic markings.

      2 “In the mythological stories all animals were originally human. Their present bestial natures were imposed upon them by some hero or other of the old time, for some misdeed or by the enchantment of some wizard. Do we not see in this belief the explanation of their totemic systems and crests?” - Hill-Tout. The themes of this story are analysed by Boas in Tsimshian Mythology (1916) p.1009, and treated in the section “Transformer Myths” pp. 586-620, Pertinent analogues will be mentioned in the footnotes which follow.

      3 “Whose name was Clatkeq, which means in English ‘Funny-man.’ Mischelle had never heard of a name for the eldest boy. It is difficult to gather whether the children of the woodpecker by his bear-wives had human or animal forms at this time. Sometimes the recital seems to imply the former, at another time the latter. After the flight there is no doubt that the black bear’s sons had human forms” -Hill-Tout.

      4 “From this time onwards the youngest, who seems to have been suddenly endowed with supernormal ‘power,’ occupies the foremost place in the recital, the elder brother becoming a very subordinate personage” - Hill-Tout.

      5 ‘Keekwilee’ is the Jargon term for the native winter, semi-subterranean dwellings of the interior tribes, full descriptions of which will be found in the 6th Report of Dr. Boas on the North-western Tribes of Canada (Trans. British Association, 1890), or in ‘Notes on the Shuswap People of British Columbia’by Dr. G. M. Dawson” - Hill-Tout.

      6 For analogues, see Boas Tsimshian Mythology (1916) p. 609. This striking medical innovation brought about the “Origin of the Fountain People” in a story of that title in Teit “Traditions of the Lillooet” (1912) p. 368.

      7 For analogues, see Boas Tsimshian Mythology (1916) p. 609. In the minds of the Lillooet, this story accounted for the range of shades of hair and skin in their Shuswap neighbours in Teit “Traditions of the Lillooet” (1912) pp. 357-358. Dan Milo in “The Story of the Grizzly and Black Bears” limits the choice to one, the alder, and suggests this is the Adam and Eve story of the Indian people — in Oliver Wells Myths and Legends of the Staw-loh Indians (1970) pp.3-5.

      8 “A variant version, much less full but useful for comparison, has been given by Dr. Boas in his Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Kiiste Amerikas, p. 16"— Note by Editor of Folk-lore. This story “Qals” appears on pp. 19-24 of the translation by Dietrich Bertz, available at present in typescript from the British Columbia Indian Language Project (1977). A close analogue, “Myth of the Qeqals, or the Black-bear Children,” appears in the report on the Chehalis in volume III of the present edition.

NOTES ON THE NTLAKAPAMUQ [THOMPSON] OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, A BRANCH OF THE GREAT SALISH STOCK OF NORTH AMERICA1

      The following notes on the Ntlakapamuq [Thompson] are a summary of the writer’s studies of this division of the Salish of British Columbia. They treat to some extent of the ethnography, archaeology, language, social customs, folklore, etc., of this tribe, recording much, it is believed, not hitherto gathered or published. For my folklore, ethnography, and social customs notes I am chiefly indebted to Chief Mischelle, of Lytton, than whom there is probably no better informed man in the whole tribe.

Ethnography

      The Thompson is one of the most interesting of the five groups