The Indians about Panama "had some notion of Noah's flood, and said that when it happened one man escaped in a canoe with his wife and children, from whom all mankind afterwards proceeded and peopled the world." The Indians of Nicaragua believed that since its creation the world had been destroyed by a deluge, and that after its destruction the gods had created men and animals and all things afresh.
"The Mexicans," says the Italian historian Clavigero, "with all other civilized nations, had a clear tradition, though somewhat corrupted by fable, of the creation of the world, of the universal deluge, of the confusion of tongues, and of the dispersion of the people; and had actually all these events represented in their pictures. They said, that when mankind were overwhelmed with the deluge, none were preserved but a man named Coxcox (to whom others give the name of Teocipactli), and a woman called Xochiquetzal, who saved themselves in a little bark, and having afterwards got to land upon a mountain called by them Colhuacan, had there a great many children ; that these children were all born dumb, until a dove from a lofty tree imparted to them languages, but differing so much that they could not understand one another. The Tlascalans pretended that the men who survived the deluge were transformed into apes, but recovered speech and reason by degrees."
In the Mexican manuscript known as the Codex Chimal-popoca, which contains a history of the kingdoms of Culhuacan and Mexico from the creation downwards, there is contained an account of the great flood. It runs thus. The world had existed for four hundred years, and two hundred years, and three score and sixteen years, when men were lost and drowned and turned into fishes. The sky drew near to the water ; in a single day all was lost, and the day of Nahui-Xochitl or Fourth Flower consumed all our subsistence (all that there was of our flesh). And that year was the year of Ce-Calli or First House ; and on the first day, the day of Nahui-Atl, all was lost.
The mountains themselves were sunk under the water, and the water remained calm for fifty and two springs. But towards the end of the year Titlaca-huan had warned the man Nata and his wife Nena, saying, "Brew no more wine, but hollow out a great cypress and enter therein when, in the month of Toçoztli, the water shall near the sky." Then they entered into it, and when Titlacahuan had shut the door of it, he said to him, "Thou shalt eat but one sheaf of maize, and thy wife but one also." But when they had finished, they came forth from there, and the water remained calm, for the log moved no more, and opening it they began to see the fishes. Then they lit fire by rubbing pieces of wood together, and they roasted fishes. But the gods Citlallinicue and Citlallotonac at once looked down and said, "O divine Lord, what fire is that they are making there ? wherefore do they thus fill the heaven with smoke?" Straightway Titlacahuan Tetzcatlipoca came down, and he grumbled, saying, " What's that fire doing here?" With that he snatched up the fishes, split their tails, modelled their heads, and turned them into dogs.
In Michoacan, a province of Mexico, the legend of a deluge was also preserved. The natives said that when the flood began to rise, a man named Tezpi, with his wife and children, entered into a great vessel, taking with them animals and seeds of diverse kinds sufficient to restock the world after the deluge. When the waters abated, the man sent forth a vulture, and the bird flew away, but finding corpses to batten on, it did not return. Then the man let fly other birds, but they also came not back. At last he sent forth a humming-bird, and it returned with a green bough in its beak In this story the messenger birds seem clearly to be reminiscences of the raven and the dove in the Noachian legend, of which the Indians may have heard through missionaries.
The Popol Vuh, a book which contains the legendary history of the Quiches of Guatemala, describes how the gods made several attempts to create mankind, fashioning them successively out of clay, out of wood, and out of maize. But none of their attempts were successful, and the various races moulded out of these diverse materials had all, for different reasons, to be set aside. It is true that the wooden race of men begat sons and daughters and multiplied upon the earth, but they had neither heart nor intelligence, they forgot their Creator, and they led a useless life, like that of the animals. Even regarded from the merely physical point of view, they were very poor creatures. They had neither blood nor fat, their cheeks were wizened, their feet and hands were dry, their flesh was languid. "So the end of this race of men was come, the ruin and destruction of these wooden puppets ; they also were put to death.
Then the waters swelled by the will of the Heart of Heaven, and there was a great flood which rose over the heads of these puppets, these beings made of wood." A rain of thick resin fell from the sky. Men ran hither and thither in despair. They tried to climb up into the houses, but the houses crumbled away and let them fall to the ground : they essayed to mount up into the trees, but the trees shook them afar off: they sought to enter into the caves, but the caves shut them out. Thus was accomplished the ruin of that race of men : they were all given up to destruction and contempt. But they say that the posterity of the wooden race may still be seen in the little monkeys which live in the woods ; for these monkeys are very like men, and like their wooden ancestors their flesh is composed of nothing but wood.
The Huichol Indians, who inhabit a mountainous region near Santa Catarina in Western Mexico, have also a legend of a deluge. By blood the tribe is related to the Aztecs, the creators of that semi-civilized empire of Mexico which the Spanish invaders destroyed ; but, secluded in their mountain fastnesses, the Huichols have always remained in a state of primitive barbarism. It was not until 7 that the Spaniards succeeded in subduing them, and the Franciscan missionaries, who followed the Spanish army into the mountains, built a few churches and converted the wild Indians to Christianity. But the conversion was hardly more than nominal. It is true that the Huichols observe the principal Christian festivals, which afford them welcome excuses for lounging, guzzling, and swilling, and they worship the saints as gods. But in their hearts they cling to their ancient beliefs, customs, and ceremonies : they jealously guard their country against the encroachments of the whites : not a single Catholic priest lives among them ; and all the churches are in ruins.
The Huichol story of the deluge runs thus. A Huichol was felling trees to clear a field for planting. But every morning he found, to his chagrin, that the trees which he had felled the day before had grown up again as tall as ever. It was very vexatious and he grew tired of labouring in vain. On the fifth day he determined to try once more and to go to the root of the matter.
Soon there rose from the ground in the middle of the clearing an old woman with a staff in her hand. She was no other than Great-grandmother Nakawe, the goddess of earth, who makes every green thing to spring forth from the dark underworld. But the man did not know her. With her staff she pointed to the south north, west, and east, above and below ; and all the trees which the young man had felled immediately stood up again. Then he understood how it came to pass that in spite of all his endeavours the clearing was always covered with trees. So he said to the old woman angrily, " Is it you who are undoing my work all the time ?" " Yes," she said, " because I wish to talk to you." Then she told him that he laboured in vain.
" A great flood," said she, " is coming. It is not more than five days off. There will come a wind, very bitter, and as sharp as chile, which will make you cough. Make a box from the salate (fig) tree, as long as your body, and fit it with a good cover. Take with you five grains of corn of each colour, and five beans of each colour ; also take the fire and five squash-stems to feed it, and take with you a black bitch." The man did as the woman told him. On the fifth day he had the box ready and placed in it the things she had told him to take with him. Then he entered the box with the black bitch; and the old woman put on the cover, and caulked every crack with glue, asking the man to point out any chinks. Having made the box thoroughly water-tight and air-tight, the old woman took her seat on the top of it, with a macaw perched on her shoulder. For five years the box floated on the face of the waters. The first year it floated to the south, the second year it floated to the north, the third year it floated to the west, the fourth year it floated to the east, and in the fifth year it rose upward on the flood, and all the world was filled with water.
The next year the flood began to abate, and the box settled on a mountain near Santa Cantarina, where it may still be seen. When the box grounded on the mountain, the man took off the cover and saw that all the world was still under water. But the macaws and the parrots set to work with a will: they pecked at the mountains with their beaks till they had hollowed them out into valleys, down which the water all ran away and was separated into five seas. Then the land began to dry, and trees and grass sprang up. The old woman turned into wind and so vanished away. But the man resumed the work of clearing the field which had been interrupted by the flood. He lived with the bitch in a cave, going forth to his labour in the morning and returning home in the evening. But the bitch stayed at home all the time. Every evening on his return the man found cakes baked ready against his coming, and he was curious to know who it was that baked them. When five days had passed, he hid himself behind some bushes near the cave to watch. He saw the bitch take off her skin, hang it up, and kneel down in the likeness of a woman to grind the corn for the cakes. Stealthily he drew near her from behind, snatched the skin away, and threw it on the fire.
" Now you have burned my tunic !" cried the woman and began to whine like a dog. But he took water mixed with the flour she had prepared, and with the mixture he bathed her head. She felt refreshed and remained a woman ever after. The two had a large family, and their sons and daughters married. So was the world repeopled, and the inhabitants lived in caves
The Cora Indians, a tribe of nominal Christians whose country borders that of the Huichols on the west, tell a similar story of a great flood, in which the same incidents occur of the woodman who was warned of the coming flood by a woman, and who after the flood cohabited with a bitch transformed into a human wife. But in the Cora version of the legend the man is bidden to take into the ark with him the woodpecker, the sandpiper, and the parrot, as well as the bitch. He embarked at midnight when the flood began. When it subsided, he waited five days and then sent out the sandpiper to see if it were possible to walk on the ground. The bird flew back and cried, " Ee-wee-wee ! " from which the man understood that the earth was still too wet. He waited five days more, and then sent out the woodpecker to see if the trees were hard and dry. The woodpecker thrust his beak deep into the tree, and waggled his head from side to side ; but the wood was still so soft with the water that he could hardly pull his beak out again, and when at last with a violent tug he succeeded he lost his balance and fell to the ground. So when he returned to the ark he said, " Chu-ee, chu-ee! " The man took his meaning and waited five days more, after which he sent out the spotted sandpiper. By this time the mud was so dry that, when the sandpiper hopped about, his legs did not sink into it; so he came back and reported that all was well. Then the man ventured out of the ark stepping very gingerly till he saw that the land was dry and flat.
In another fragmentary version of the deluge story, as told by the Cora Indians, the survivors of the flood would seem to have escaped in a canoe. When the waters abated, God sent the vulture out of the canoe to see whether the earth was dry enough. But the vulture did not return, because he devoured the corpses of the drowned. So God was angry with the vulture, and cursed him, and made him black instead of white, as he had been before; only the tips of his wings he left white, that men might know what their colour had been before the flood. Next God commanded the ringdove to go out and see whether the earth was yet dry. The dove reported that the earth was dry, but that the rivers were in spate.
So God ordered all the beasts to drink the rivers dry, and all the beasts and birds came and drank, save only the weeping dove (Paloma llorona), which would not come. Therefore she still goes every day to drink water at nightfall, because she is ashamed to be seen drinking by day ; and all day long she weeps and wails In these Cora legends the incident of the birds, especially the vulture and the raven, seems clearly to reflect the influence of missionary teaching.
A somewhat different story of a deluge is told by the Tarahumares, an Indian tribe who inhabit the mountains of Mexico farther to the north than the Huichols and Coras. The greater part of the Tarahumares are nominal Christians, though they seem to have learned little more from their teachers than the words Señor San Jose and Maria Santis-sima, and the title of Father God (Tata Dios), which they apply to their ancient deity the sun-god They say that when all the world was water-logged, a little boy and a little girl climbed up a mountain called Lavachi (gourd) to the south of Panalachic, and when the flood subsided the two came down again. They brought three grains of corn and three beans with them. So soft were the rocks after the flood that the feet of the little boy and girl sank into them, and their footprints may be seen there to this day. The two planted corn and slept and dreamed a dream, and afterwards they harvested, and all the Tarahumares are descended from them Another Tarahumare version of the deluge legend runs thus. The Tarahumares were fighting among themselves, and Father God (Tata Dios) sent much rain, and all the people perished. After the flood God despatched three men and three women to repeople the earth. They planted corn of three kinds, soft corn, hard corn, and yellow corn, and these three sorts still grow in the country.
The Caribs of the Antilles had a tradition that the Master of Spirits, being angry with their forefathers for not presenting to him the offerings which were his due, caused such a heavy rain to fall for several days that all the people were drowned : only a few contrived to save their lives by escaping in canoes to a solitary mountain. It was this deluge, they say, which separated their islands from the mainland and formed the hills and pointed rocks or sugar-loaf mountains of their country.
The Papagos of south-western Arizona say that the Great Spirit made the earth and all living creatures before he made man. Then he came down to earth, and digging in the ground found some potter's clay. This he took back with him to the sky, and from there let it fall into the hole which he had dug. Immediately there came out the hero Montezuma, and with his help there also issued forth all the Indian tribes in order. Last of all appeared the wild Apaches, who ran away as fast as they were created. Those first days of the world were happy and peaceful. The sun was then nearer the earth than he is now: his rays made all the seasons equable and clothing superfluous.
Men and animals talked together: a common language united them in the bonds of brotherhood. But a terrible catastrophe put an end to those golden days. A great flood destroyed all flesh wherein was the breath of life : Montezuma and his friend the coyote alone escaped. For before the waters began to rise, the coyote prophesied the coming of the flood, and Montezuma took warning, and hollowed out a boat for himself, and kept it ready on the top of Santa Rosa. The coyote also prepared an ark for himself; for he gnawed down a great cane by the river bank, entered it, and caulked it with gum. So when the waters rose, Montezuma and the coyote floated on them and were saved ; and when the flood retired, the man and the animal met on dry land. Anxious to discover how much dry land was left, the man sent out the coyote to explore, and the animal reported that to the west, the south, and the east there was sea, but that to the north he could find no sea, though he had journeyed till he was weary. Meanwhile the Great Spirit, with the help of Montezuma, had restocked the earth with men and animals
The Pimas, a neighbouring tribe, related to the Papagos, say that the earth and mankind were made by a certain Chiowotmahke, that is to say Earth-prophet.
Now the Creator had a son called Szeukha, who, when the earth began to be tolerably peopled, lived in the Gila valley. In the same valley there dwelt at that time a great prophet, whose name has been forgotten. One night, as the prophet slept, he was wakened by a noise at the door. When he opened, who should stand there but a great eagle ? And the eagle said, " Arise, for behold, a deluge is at hand." But the prophet laughed the eagle to scorn, wrapt his robe about him, and slept again. Again, the eagle came and warned him, but again he would pay no heed.
A third time the long-suffering bird warned the prophet that all the valley of the Gila would be laid waste with water, but still the foolish man turned a deaf ear to the warning. That same night came the flood, and next morning there was nothing alive to be seen but one man, if man indeed he was ; for it was Szeukha, the son of the Creator, who had saved himself by floating on a ball of gum or resin. When the waters of the flood sank, he landed near the mouth of the Salt River and dwelt there in a cave on the mountain ; the cave is there to this day, and so are the tools which Szeukha used when he lived in it. For some reason or other Szeukha was very angry with the great eagle, though that bird had warned the prophet to escape for his life from the flood. So with the help of a rope-ladder he climbed up the face of the cliff where the eagle resided, and finding him at home in his eyrie he killed him. In and about the nest he discovered the mangled and rotting bodies of a great multitude of people whom the eagle had carried off and devoured. These he raised to life and sent them away to repeople the earth.
Another version of the Pima legend runs as follows. In the early days of the world the Creator, whom the Indians call Earth Doctor, made the earth habitable by fashioning the mountains, the water, the trees, the grass, and the weeds ; he made the sun also and the moon, and caused them to pursue their regular courses in the sky. When he had thus prepared the world for habitation, the Creator fashioned all manner of birds and creeping things ; and he moulded images of clay, and commanded them to become animated human beings, and they obeyed him, and they increased and multiplied, and spread over the earth. But in time the increase of population outran the means of subsistence ; food and even water became scarce, and as sickness and death were as yet unknown, the steady multiplication of the species was attended by ever growing famine and distress. In these circumstances the Creator saw nothing for it but to destroy the creatures he had made, and this he did by pulling down the sky on the earth and crushing to death the people and all other living things. After that he restored the broken fabric of the world and created mankind afresh, and once more the human race increased and multiplied.
It was during this second period of the world that the earth gave birth to one who has since been known as Siuuhû or Elder Brother. He came to Earth Doctor, that is, to the Creator, and spoke roughly to him, and the Creator trembled before him. The population was now increasing, but Elder Brother shortened the lives of the people, and they did not overrun the earth as they had done before. However, not content with abridging the natural term of human existence, he resolved to destroy mankind for the second time altogether by means of a great flood. So he began to fashion a jar, in which he intended to save himself from the deluge, and when the jar should be finished, the flood would come. He announced his purpose of destruction to the Creator, and the Creator called his people together and warned them of the coming deluge. After describing the calamity that would befall them, he chanted the following staves :—
" Weep, my unfortunate people !
All this you will see take place. Weep, my unfortunate people !
For the waters will overwhelm the land. Weep, my unhappy relatives!
You will learn all. The waters will overwhelm the mountains."
Also he thrust his staff into the ground, and with it bored a hole right through to the other side of the earth. Some people took refuge in the hole for fear of the coming flood, and others appealed for help to Elder Brother, but their appeal was unheeded. Yet the assistance which Elder Brother refused to mankind he vouchsafed to the coyote or prairie wolf; for he told that animal to find a big log and sit on it, and so sitting he would float safely on the surface of the water along with the driftwood. The time of the deluge was now come, and accordingly Elder Brother got into the jar which he had been making against the great day ; and as he closed the opening of the jar behind him he sang—
" Black house ! Black house ! hold me safely in ;
Black house ! Black house ! hold me safely in,
As I journey to and fro, to and fro."
And as he was borne along on the flood he sang—
" Running water, running water, herein resounding,
As on the clouds I am carried to the sky.
Running water, running water, herein roaring,
As on the clouds I am carried to the sky."
The jar in which Elder Brother ensconced himself is called by him in the song the Black House, because it was made of black gum. It bobbed up and down on the face of the waters and drifted along till it came to rest beyond Sonoita, near the mouth of the Colorado River. There the jar may be seen to this day ; it is called the Black Mountain, after the colour of the gum out of which the jar was moulded. On emerging from the jar Elder Brother sang—
" Here I come forth ! Here I come forth !
With magic powers I emerge. Here I come forth !
Here I come forth ! With magic powers I emerge.
I stand alone ! Alone !
Who will accompany me ? My staff and my crystal
They shall bide with me."
The Creator himself, or Earth Doctor, as the Indians call him, also escaped destruction by enclosing himself in his reed staff, which floated on the surface of the water. The coyote, too, survived the great flood ; for the log on which he had taken refuge floated southward with him to the place where all the driftwood of the deluge was gathered together. Of all the birds that had been before the flood only five of different sorts survived ; they clung with their beaks to the sky till a god took pity on them and enabled them to make nests of down from their own breasts, and in these nests they floated on the waters till the flood went down. Among the birds thus saved from the deluge were the flicker and the vulture. As for the human race, some people were saved in the deep hole which the Creator had bored with his staff, and others were saved in a similar hole which a powerful personage, called the South Doctor, had in like manner made by thrusting his cane into the earth. Yet others in their distress resorted to the Creator, but he told them that they came too late, for he had already sent all whom he could save down the deep hole and through to the other side of the earth.
However, he held out a hope to them that they might still be saved if they would climb to the top of Crooked Mountain, and he directed South Doctor to assist the people in their flight to this haven of refuge. So South Doctor led the people to the summit of the mountain, but the flood rose apace behind them. Yet by his enchantments did South Doctor raise the mountain and set bounds to the angry water ; for he traced a line round the hill and chanted an incantation, which checked the rising flood. Four times by his incantations did he raise the mountain above the waters ; four times did he arrest the swelling tide. At last his power was exhausted ; he could do no more, and he threw his staff into the water, where it cracked with a loud noise. Then turning, he saw a dog near him, and sent the animal to see how high the tide had risen. The dog turned towards the people and said, " It is very near the top." At these words the anxious watchers were transformed into stone; and there to this day you may see them standing in groups, just as they were at the moment of transformation, some of the men talking, some of the women cooking, and some crying.
This Pima legend of the flood contains, moreover, an episode which bears a certain reminiscence to an episode in the Biblical narrative of the great catastrophe. In Genesis we read how in the days immediately preceding the flood, " the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them ; the same were the mighty men which were of old, the men of renown." In like manner the Pimas relate that when Elder Brother had determined to destroy mankind, he began by creating a handsome youth, whom he directed to go among the Pimas, to wed their women, and to beget children by them. He was to live with his first wife " until his first child was born, then leave her and go to another, and so on until his purpose was accomplished. His first wife gave birth to a child four months after marriage and conception.
The youth then went and took a second wife, to whom a child was born in less time than the first. The period was yet shorter in the case of the third wife, and with her successors it grew shorter still, until at last the child was born from the young man at the time of the marriage. This was the child that caused the flood which destroyed the people and fulfilled the plans of Elder Brother. Several years were necessary to accomplish these things, and during this time the people were amazed and frightened at the signs of Elder Brother's power and at the deeds of his agent." How the child of the young man's last wife caused the flood is not clearly explained in the story, though we are told that the screams of the sturdy infant shook the earth and could be heard at a great distance Indeed, the episode of the handsome youth and his many wives is, like the corresponding episode in the Biblical narrative, fitted very loosely into the story of the flood. It may be that both episodes were originally independent of the diluvial tradition, and that in its Indian form the tale of the fair youth and his human spouses is a distorted reminiscence of missionary teaching.
The Indians of Zuñi, a pueblo village of New Mexico, relate that once upon a time a great flood compelled them to quit their village in the valley and take refuge on a lofty and conspicuous tableland, which towers like an island from the flat, with steep or precipitous sides of red and white sandstone. But the waters rose nearly to the summit of the tableland, and the Indians, fearing to be swept off the face of the earth, resolved to offer a human sacrifice in order to appease the angry waters. So a youth and a maiden, the children of two Priests of the Rain, were dressed in their finest robes, decked with many precious beads, and thrown into the swelling flood. Immediately the waters began to recede, and the youth and maiden were turned into stone. You may still see them in the form of two great pinnacles of rock rising from the tableland
The Acagchemem Indians, near St. Juan Capistrano in California, " were not entirely destitute of a knowledge of the universal deluge, but how, or from whence, they received the same, I could never understand. Some of their songs refer to it ; and they have a tradition that, at a time very remote, the sea began to swell and roll in upon the plains and fill the valleys, until it had covered the mountains ; and thus nearly all the human race and animals were destroyed, excepting a few, who had resorted to a very high mountain which the waters did not reach. But the songs give a more distinct relation of the same, and they state that the descendants of Captain Ouiot asked of Chinigchinich vengeance upon their chief—that he appeared unto them, and said to those endowed with the power, ' Ye are the ones to achieve vengeance—ye who cause it to rain ! Do this, and so inundate the earth, that every living being will be destroyed.' The rains commenced, the sea was troubled, and swelled in upon the earth, covering the plains, and rising until it had overspread the highest land, excepting a high mountain, where the few had gone with the one who had caused it to rain, and thus every other animal was destroyed upon the face of the earth. These songs were supplications to Chinigchinich to drown their enemies. If their opponents heard them, they sang others in opposition, which in substance ran thus : ' We are not afraid, because Chinigchinich does not wish to, neither will he destroy the world by another inundation.' Without doubt this account has reference to the universal deluge, and the promise God made, that there should not be another."
The Luiseño Indians of Southern California also tell of a great flood which covered all the high mountains and drowned most of the people. But a few were saved, who took refuge on a little knoll near Bonsall. The place was called Mora by the Spaniards, but the Indians call it Katuta. Only the knoll remained above water when all the rest of the country was inundated. The survivors stayed there till the flood went down. To this day you may see on the top of the little hill heaps of sea-shells and seaweed, and ashes and stones set together, marking the spot where the Indians cooked their food. The shells are those of the shell-fish which they ate, and the ashes and stones are the remains of their fire-places. The writer who relates this tradition adds that "the hills near Del Mar and other places along the coast have many such heaps of sea-shells, of the species still found on the beaches, piled in quantities." The Luiseños still sing a Song of the Flood, in which mention is made of the knoll of Katuta
An Indian woman of the Smith River tribe in California gave the following account of the deluge.
At one time there came a great rain. It lasted a long time and the water kept rising till all the valleys were submerged, and the Indians retired to the high land. At last they were all swept away and drowned except one pair, who escaped to the highest peak and were saved. They subsisted on fish, which they cooked by placing them under their arms. They had no fire and could not get any, as everything was far too wet. At last the water sank, and from that solitary pair all the Indians of the present day are descended. As the Indians died, their spirits took the forms of deer, elks, bears, snakes, insects, and so forth, and in this way the earth was repeopled by the various kinds of animals as well as men. But still the Indians had no fire, and they looked with envious eyes on the moon, whose fire shone so brightly in the sky.
So the Spider Indians and the Snake Indians laid their heads together and resolved to steal fire from the moon. Accordingly the Spider Indians started off for the moon in a gossamer balloon, but they took the precaution to fasten the balloon to the earth by a rope which they paid out as they ascended. When they arrived at the moon, the Indians who inhabited the lunar orb looked askance at the newcomers, divining their errand. To lull their suspicions the Spider Indians assured them that they had come only to gamble, so the Moon Indians were pleased and proposed to begin playing at once. As they sat by the fire deep in the game, a Snake Indian dexterously climbed up the rope by which the balloon was tethered, and before the Moon Indians knew what he was about he had darted through the fire and escaped down the rope again. When he reached the earth he had to travel over every rock, stick, and tree ; everything he touched from that time forth contained fire, and the hearts of the Indians were glad. But the Spider Indians were long kept prisoners in the moon, and when . they were at last released and had returned to earth, expecting to be welcomed as the benefactors of the human race, ungrateful men killed them lest the Moon Indians should wish to take vengeance for the deceit that had been practised on them.
The Ashochimi Indians of California say that long ago there was a mighty flood which prevailed over all the land and drowned every living creature save the coyote alone. He set himself to restore the population of the world as follows. He collected the tail-feathers of owls, hawks, eagles, and buzzards, tied them up in a bundle, and journeyed with them over the face of the earth. He sought out the sites of all the Indian villages, and wherever a wigwam had stood before the flood, he planted a feather. In due time the feathers sprouted, took root, and flourished greatly, at last turning into men and women ; and thus the world was repeopled
The Maidu Indians of California say that of old the Indians abode tranquilly in the Sacramento Valley, and were happy. All on a sudden there was a mighty and swift rushing of waters, so that the whole valley became like the Big Water, which no man can measure. The Indians fled for their lives, but many were overtaken by the waters and drowned. Also, the frogs and the salmon pursued swiftly after them, and they ate many Indians. Thus all the Indians perished but two, who escaped to the hills.
But the Great Man made them fruitful and blessed them, so that the world was soon repeopled. From these two there sprang many tribes, even a mighty nation, and one man was chief over all this nation—a chief of great renown. Then he went out on a knoll, overlooking the wide waters, and he knew that they covered fertile plains once inhabited by his ancestors. Nine sleeps he lay on the knoll without food, revolving in his mind the question, ' How did this deep water cover the face of the world?' And at the end of nine sleeps he was changed, for now no arrow could wound him. Though a thousand Indians should shoot at him, not one flint-pointed arrow would pierce his skin. He was like the Great Man in heaven, for none could slay him henceforth. Then he spoke to the Great Man, and commanded him to let the water flow off from the plains which his ancestors had inhabited. The Great Man obeyed ; he rent open the side of the mountain, and the water flowed away into the Big Water.
According to Du Pratz, the early French historian of Louisiana, the tradition of a great flood was current among the Natchez, an Indian tribe of the Lower Mississippi. He tells us that on this subject he questioned the guardian of the temple, in which the sacred and perpetual fire was kept with religious care. The guardian replied that " the ancient word taught all the red men that almost all men were destroyed by the waters except a very small number, who had saved themselves on a very high mountain ; that he knew nothing more regarding this subject except that these few people had repeopled the earth." And Du Pratz adds, " As the other nations had told me the same thing, I was assured that all the natives thought the same regarding this event, and that they had not preserved any memory of Noah's ark, which did not surprise me very much, since the Greeks, with all their knowledge, were no better informed, and we ourselves, were it not for the Holy Scriptures, might perhaps know no more than they." Elsewhere he reports the tradition somewhat more fully as follows. "They said that a great rain fell on the earth so abundantly and during such a long time that it was completely covered except a very high mountain where some men saved themselves ; that all fire being extinguished on the earth, a little bird named Coüy-oüy, which is entirely red (it is that which is called in Louisiana the cardinal bird), brought it from heaven. I understood by that that they had forgotten almost all the history of the deluge."
The Mandan Indians had a tradition of a great deluge in which the human race perished except one man, who escaped in a large canoe to a mountain in the west Hence the Mandans celebrated every year certain rites in memory of the subsidence of the flood, which they called Mee-nee-ro-ka-ha-sha, " the sinking down or settling of the waters." The time for the ceremony was determined by the full expansion of the willow leaves on the banks of the river, for according to their tradition " the twig that the bird brought home was a willow bough and had full-grown leaves on it" ; and the bird which brought the willow bough was the mourning- or turtle-dove These doves often fed on the sides of their earth-covered huts, and none of the Indians would destroy or harm them ; even their dogs were trained not to molest the birds In the Mandan village a wooden structure was carefully preserved to represent the canoe in which the only man was saved from the flood " In the centre of the Mandan village," says the painter Catlin, " is an open, circular area of a hundred and fifty feet diameter, kept always clear, as a public ground, for the display of all their feasts, parades, etc., and around it are their wigwams placed as near to each other as they can well stand, their doors facing the centre of this public area.
In the middle of this ground, which is trodden like a hard pavement, is a curb (somewhat like a large hogshead standing on its end) made of planks and bound with hoops, some eight or nine feet high, which they religiously preserve and protect from year to year, free from mark or scratch, and which they call the ' big canoe': it is undoubtedly a symbolic representation of a part of their traditional history of the Flood; which it is very evident, from this and numerous other features of this grand ceremony, they have in some way or other received, and are here endeavouring to perpetuate by vividly impressing it on the minds of the whole nation.
This object of superstition, from its position as the very centre of the village, is the rallying-point of the whole nation. To it their devotions are paid on various occasions of feasts and religious exercises during the year."
On the occasion when Catlin witnessed the annual ceremony commemorative of the flood, the first or only man (Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah) who escaped the flood was personated by a mummer dressed in a robe of white wolf-skins, which fell back over his shoulders, while on his head he wore a splendid covering of two ravens' skins and in his left hand he carried a large pipe. Entering the village from the prairie he approached the medicine or mystery lodge, which he had the means of opening, and which had been strictly closed during the year except for the performance of these religious rites.
All day long this mummer went through the village, stopping in front of every hut and crying, till the owner of the hut came out and asked him who he was and what was the matter. To this the mummer replied by relating the sad catastrophe which had happened on the earth's surface through the overflowing of the waters, saying that " he was the only person saved from the universal calamity ; that he landed his big canoe on a high mountain in the west, where he now resides ; that he had come to open the medicine-lodge, which must needs receive a present of some edged tool from the owner of every wigwam, that it may be sacrificed to the water; for he says, ' If this is not done, there will be another flood, and no one will be saved, as it was with such tools that the big canoe was made.'" Having visited every wigwam in the village during the day, and having received from each a hatchet, a knife, or other edged tool, he deposited them at evening in the medicine lodge, where they remained till the afternoon of the last day of the ceremony.
Then as the final rite they were thrown into a deep pool in the river from a bank thirty feet high in presence of the whole village ; " from whence they can never be recovered, and where they were, undoubtedly, sacrificed to the Spirit of the Water." Amongst the ceremonies observed at this spring festival of the Mandans was a bull dance danced by men disguised as buffaloes and intended to procure a plentiful supply of buffaloes in the ensuing season ; further, the young men underwent voluntarily a series of excruciating tortures in the medicine lodge for the purpose of commending themselves to the Great Spirit But how far these quaint and ghastly rites were connected with the commemoration of the Great Flood does not appear from the accounts of our authorities.
This Mandan festival went by the name of 0-kee-pa and was " an annual religious ceremony, to the strict observance of which those ignorant and superstitious people attributed not only their enjoyment in life, but their very existence ; for traditions, their only history, instructed them in the belief that the singular forms of this ceremony produced the buffaloes for their supply of food, and that the omission of \ this annual ceremony, with its sacrifices made to the waters, would bring upon them a repetition of the calamity which their traditions say once befell them, destroying the whole human race, excepting one man, who landed from his canoe on a high mountain in the West. This tradition, however, was not peculiar to the Mandan tribe, for amongst one hundred and twenty different tribes that I have visited in North and South and Central America, not a tribe exists that has not related to me distinct or vague traditions of such a calamity, in which one, or three, or eight persons were saved above the waters, on the top of a high mountain. Some of these, at the base of the Rocky Mountains and in the plains of Venezuela, and the Pampa del Sacramento in South America, make annual pilgrimages to the fancied summits where the antediluvian species were saved in canoes or otherwise, and, under the mysterious regulations of their medicine (mystery) men, tender their prayers and sacrifices to the Great Spirit, to ensure their exemption from a similar catastrophe."
The Cherokee Indians are reported to have a tradition that the water once prevailed over the land until all mankind were drowned except a single family. The coming of the calamity was revealed by a dog to his master. For the sagacious animal went day after day to the banks of a river, where he stood gazing at the water and howling piteously. Being rebuked by his master and ordered home, the dog opened his mouth and warned the man of the danger in which he stood. " You must build a boat," said he, " and put in it all that you would save ; for a great rain is coming that will flood the land." The animal concluded his prediction by informing his master that his salvation depended on throwing him, the dog, into the water ; and for a sign of the truth of what he said he bade him look at the back of his neck. The man did so, and sure enough, the back of the dog's neck was raw and bare, the flesh and bone appearing. So the man believed, and following the directions of the faithful animal he and his family were saved, and from them the whole of the present population of the globe is lineally descended.
Stories of a great flood are widely spread among Indians of the great Algonquin stock, and they resemble each other in some details. Thus the Delawares, an Algonquin tribe whose home was about Delaware Bay, told of a deluge which submerged the whole earth, and from which few persons escaped alive. They saved themselves by taking refuge on the back of a turtle, which was so old that his shell was mossy like the bank of a rivulet. As they were floating thus forlorn, a loon flew their way, and they begged him to dive and bring up land from the depth of the waters. The bird dived accordingly, but could find no bottom. Then he flew far away and came back with a little earth in his bill. Guided by him, the turtle swam to the place, where some dry land was found. There they settled and repeopled the country.
The Montagnais, a group of Indian tribes in Canada who also belong to the great Algonquin stock, told an early Jesuit missionary that a certain mighty being, whom they called Messou, repaired the world after it had been ruined by the great flood. They said that one day Messou went out to hunt, and that the wolves which he used instead of hounds entered into a lake and were there detained. Messou sought them everywhere, till a bird told him that he saw the lost wolves in the middle of the lake. So he waded into the water to rescue them, but the lake overflowed, covered the earth, and overwhelmed the world. Greatly astonished, Messou sent the raven to search for a clod of earth out of which he might rebuild that element, but no earth could the raven find. Next Messou sent an otter, which plunged into the deep water, but brought back nothing. Lastly, Messou despatched a musk-rat, and the rat brought back a little soil, which Messou used to refashion the earth on which we live. He shot arrows at the trunks of trees, and the arrows were changed into branches : he took vengeance on those who had detained his wolves in the lake ; and he married a musk-rat, by which he had children, who repeopled the world.
In this legend there is no mention of men ; and but for the part played in it by the animals we might have supposed that the deluge took place in the early ages of the world before the appearance of life on the earth. However, some two centuries later, another Catholic missionary tells us that the Montagnais of the Hudson Bay Territory have a tradition of a great flood which covered the world, and from which four persons, along with animals and birds, escaped alive on a floating island. Yet another Catholic missionary reports the Montagnais legend more fully as follows. God, being angry with the giants, commanded a man to build a large canoe. The man did so, and when he had embarked in it, the water rose on all sides, and the canoe with it, till no land was anywhere to be seen. Weary of beholding nothing but a heaving mass of water, the man threw an otter into the flood, and the animal dived and brought up a little earth. The man took the earth or mud in his hand and breathed on it, and at once it began to grow. So he laid it on the surface of the water and prevented it from sinking. As it continued to grow into an island, he desired to know whether it was large enough to support him.
Accordingly he placed a reindeer upon it, but the animal soon made the circuit of the island and returned to him, from which he concluded that the island was not yet large enough. So he continued to blow on it till the mountains, the lakes, and the rivers were formed. Then he disembarked The same missionary reports a deluge legend current among the Crees, another tribe of the Algonquin stock in Canada ; but this Cree story bears clear traces of Christian influence, for in it the man is said to have sent forth from the canoe, first a raven, and second a wood-pigeon. The raven did not return, and as a punishment for his disobedience the bird was changed from white to black ; the pigeon returned with his claws full of mud, from which the man inferred that the earth was dried up; so he landed
The genuine old Algonquin legend of the flood appears to have been first recorded at full length by a Mr. H. E. MacKenzie, who passed much of his early life with the Salteaux or Chippeway Indians, a large and powerful branch of the Algonquin stock. He communicated the tradition to Lieutenant W. H. Hooper, R.N., at Fort Norman, near Bear Lake, about the middle of the nineteenth century. In substance the legend runs as follows.
Once upon a time there were certain Indians and among them a great medicine-man named Wis-kay-tchach. With them also were a wolf and his two sons, who lived on a footing of intimacy with the human beings. Wis-kay-tchach called the old wolf his brother and the young ones his nephews ; for he recognized all animals as his relations. In the winter time the whole party began to starve ; so in order to find food the parent wolf announced his intention of separating with his children from the band. Wis-kay-tchach offered to bear him company, so off they set together. Soon they came to the track of a moose. The old Wolf and the medicine-man Wis (as we may call him for short) stopped to smoke, while the young wolves pursued the moose. After a time, the young ones not returning, Wis and the old Wolf set off after them, and soon found blood on the snow, whereby they knew that the moose was killed. Soon they came up with the young wolves, but no moose was to be seen, for the young wolves had eaten it up. They bade Wis make a fire, and when he had done so, he found the whole of the moose restored and already quartered and cut up. The young wolves divided the spoil into four portions ; but one of them retained the tongue and the other the mouffle (upper lip), which are the chief delicacies of the animal. Wis grumbled, and the young wolves gave up these dainties to him. When they had devoured the whole, one of the young wolves said he would make marrow fat, which is done by breaking up the bones very small and boiling them. Soon this resource was also exhausted, and they all began to hunger again So they agreed to separate once more. This time Old Wolf went off with one of his sons, leaving Wis and the other young wolf to hunt together.
The story now leaves the Old Wolf and follows the fortunes of Wis and his nephew, one of the two young wolves. The young wolf killed some deer and brought them home in his stomach, disgorging them as before on his arrival. At last he told his uncle that he could catch no more, so Wis sat up all night making medicine or using enchantments. In the morning he bade his nephew go a-hunting, but warned him to be careful at every valley and hollow place to throw a stick over before he ventured to jump himself, or else some evil would certainly befall him. So away went the young wolf, but in pursuing a deer he forgot to follow his uncle's directions, and in attempting to leap a hollow he fell plump into a river and was there killed and devoured by water-lynxes. What kind of a beast a water-lynx is, the narrator did not know. But let that be. Enough that the young wolf was killed and devoured by these creatures. After waiting long for his nephew, Wis set off to look for him, and coming to the spot where the young wolf had leaped, he guessed rightly that the animal had neglected his warning and fallen into the stream. He saw a kingfisher sitting on a tree and gazing fixedly at the water. Asked what he was looking at so earnestly, the bird replied that he was looking at the skin of Wis's nephew, the young wolf, which served as a door-mat to the house of the water-lynxes ; for not content with killing and devouring the nephew, these ferocious animals had added insult to injury by putting his skin to this ignoble use.
Grateful for the information, Wis called the kingfisher to him, combed the bird's head, and began to put a ruff round his neck ; but before he had finished his task, the bird flew away, and that is why down to this day kingfishers have only part of a ruff at the back of their head. Before the kingfisher flew away, he gave Wis a parting hint, that the water-lynxes often came ashore to lie on the sand, and that if he wished to be revenged on them he must turn himself into a stump close by, but must be most careful to keep perfectly rigid and on no account to let himself be pulled down by the frogs and snakes, which the water-lynxes would be sure to send to dislodge him. On receiving these directions Wis returned to his camp and resorted to enchantments ; also he provided all things necessary, among others a large canoe to hold all the animals that could not swim.
Before daylight broke, he had completed his preparations and embarked all the aforesaid animals in the big canoe. He then paddled quietly to the neighbourhood of the lynxes, and having secured the canoe behind a promontory, he landed, transformed himself into a stump, and awaited, in that assumed character, the appearance of the water-lynxes. Soon the black one crawled out and lay down on the sand ; and then the grey one did the same. Last of all the white one, which had killed the young wolf, popped his head out of the water, but espying the stump, he grew suspicious, and called out to his brethren that he had never seen that stump before. They answered carelessly that it must have been always there ; but the wary white lynx, still suspicious, sent frogs and snakes to pull it down.
Wis had a severe struggle to keep himself upright, but he succeeded, and the white lynx, his suspicions now quite lulled to rest, lay down to sleep on the sand. Wis waited a little, then resuming his natural shape he took his spear and crept softly to the white lynx. He had been warned by the kingfisher to strike at the animal's shadow or he would assuredly be balked ; but in his eagerness he forgot the injunction, and striking full at his adversary's body he missed his mark. The creature rushed towards the water, but Wis had one more chance and aiming this time at the lynx's shadow he wounded grievously the beast itself. However, the creature contrived to escape into the river, and the other lynxes with it. Instantly the water began to boil and rise, and Wis made for his canoe as fast as he could run. The water continued flowing, until land, trees, and hills were all covered. The canoe floated about on the surface, and Wis, having before taken on board all animals that could not swim, now busied himself in picking up all that could swim only for a short time and were now struggling for life in the water around him.
But in his enchantments to meet the great emergency, Wis had overlooked a necessary condition for the restoration of the world after the flood. He had no earth, not even a particle, which might serve as a nucleus for the new lands which were to rise from the waste of waters. He now set about obtaining it. Tying a string to the leg of a loon he ordered the bird to try for soundings and to persevere in its descent even if it should perish in the attempt; for, said he, " If you are drowned, it is no matter: I can easily restore you to life." Encouraged by this assurance, the bird dropped like a stone into the water, and the line ran out fast. When it ceased to run, Wis hauled it up, and at the end of the line was the loon dead. Being duly restored to life, the bird informed Wis that he had found no bottom. So Wis next despatched an otter on the same errand, but he fared no better than the loon. After that Wis tried a beaver, which after being drowned and resuscitated in the usual way, reported that he had seen the tops of trees, but could sink no deeper.
Last of all Wis let down a rat fastened to a stone ; down went the rat and the stone, and presently the line slackened. Wis hauled it up and at the end of it he found the rat dead but clutching a little earth in its paws. Wis had now all that he wanted. He restored the rat to life and spread out the earth to dry ; then he blew upon it till it swelled and grew to a great extent. When he thought it large enough, he sent out a wolf to explore, but the animal soon returned, saying that the world was small. Thereupon Wis again blew on the earth for a long time, and then sent forth a crow. When the bird did not return, Wis concluded that the world was now large enough for all; so he and the animals disembarked from the canoe.
A few years later, in September 8, a German traveller obtained another version of the same legend from an old Ojibway woman, the mother of a half-caste. In this Ojibway version the story turns on the doings of Menaboshu, a great primeval hero, who, if he did not create the world, is generally believed by the Ojibways to have given to the earth its present form, directing the flow of the rivers, moulding the beds of the lakes, and cleaving the mountains into deep glens and ravines. He lived on very friendly terms with the animals, whom he regarded as his kinsfolk and with whom he could converse in their own language. Once he pitched his camp in the middle of a solitary wood. The times were bad ; he had no luck in the chase, though he fasted and hungered. In his dire distress he went to the wolves and said to them, " My dear little brothers, will you give me something to eat ?" The wolves said, " That we will," and they gave him of their food. He found it so good that he begged to be allowed to join them in the chase, and they gave him leave. So Menaboshu hunted with the wolves, camped with them, and shared their booty.
This they did for ten days, but on the tenth day they came to a cross-road. The wolves wished to go one way, and Menaboshu wished to go another, and as neither would give way, it was resolved to part company. But Menaboshu said that at least the youngest wolf must go with him, for he loved the animal dearly and called him his little brother. The little wolf also would not part from him, so the two went one way, while all the rest of the wolves went the other. Menaboshu and the little wolf camped in the middle of the wood and hunted together, but sometimes the little wolf hunted alone. Now Menaboshu was anxious for the safety of the little wolf, and he said to him, " My dear little brother, have you seen that lake which lies near our camp to the west ? Go not thither, never tread the ice on it! Do you hear ? " This he said because he knew that his worst enemy, the serpent-king, dwelt in the lake and would do anything to vex him. The little wolf promised to do as Menaboshu told him, but he thought within himself, " Why does Menaboshu forbid me to go on the lake ? Perhaps he thinks I might meet my brothers the wolves there ! After all I love my brothers ! " Thus he thought for two days, but on the third day he went on the lake and roamed about on the ice to see whether he could find his brothers. But just as he came to the middle of the lake, the ice broke, and he fell in and was drowned.
All that evening Menaboshu waited for his little brother, but he never came. Menaboshu waited for him the next day, but still he came not. So he waited five days and five nights. Then he began to weep and wail, and he cried so loud after his little brother, that his cries could be heard at the end of the wood. All the rest of the melancholy winter he passed in loneliness and sorrow. Well he knew who had killed his brother; it was the serpent-king, but Menaboshu could not get at him in the winter. When spring came at last, he went one bright warm day to the lake in which his little brother had perished. All the long winter he could not bear to visit the fatal spot. But now on the sand, where the snow had melted, he saw the footprints of his lost brother, and when he saw them he broke into lamentations so loud that they were heard far and near.
The serpent-king heard them also, and curious to know what was the matter, he popped his head out of the water. " Ah, there you are," said Menaboshu to himself, wiping away the tears with the sleeve of his coat, " you shall pay for your misdeed." He turned himself at once into a tree-stump and stood in that likeness stiff and stark on the water's edge. The serpent-king and all the other serpents, who popped out after him, looked about very curiously to discover who had been raising this loud lament, but they could discover nothing but the tree-stump, which they had never seen there before. As they were sniffing about it, " Take care," said one of them, " there's more there than meets the eye. Maybe it is our foe, the sly Menaboshu, in disguise." So the serpent-king commanded one of his attendants to go and search the matter out. The gigantic serpent at once coiled itself round the tree-stump and squeezed it so hard, that the bones in Menaboshu's body cracked, but he bore the agony with stoical fortitude, not betraying his anguish by a single sound. So the serpents were easy in their minds and said, " No, it is not he. We can sleep safe. It is only wood !" And the day being warm, they all lay down on the sandy beach of the lake and fell fast asleep.
Scarcely had the last snake closed his eyes, when Menaboshu slipped from his ambush, seized his bow and arrows, and shot the serpent-king dead Three also of the serpent-king's sons he despatched with his arrows At that the other serpents awoke, and glided back into the water, crying, " Woe! woe! Menaboshu is among us! Menaboshu is killing us !" They made a horrible noise all over the lake and lashed the water with their long tails Those of them who had the most powerful magic brought forth their medicine-bags, opened them, and scattered the contents all around on the banks and the wood and in the air Then the water began to run in whirlpools and to swell The sky was overcast with clouds, and torrents of rain fell First the neighbourhood, then half the earth, then the whole world was flooded. Frightened to death, Menaboshu fled away, hopping from mountain to mountain like a squirrel, but finding no rest for the soles of his feet, for the swelling waves followed him everywhere At last he escaped to a very high mountain, but soon the water rose even over its summit On the top of the mountain grew a tall fir-tree, and Menaboshu climbed up it to its topmost bough Even there the flood pursued him and had risen to his mouth, when it suddenly stood still. In this painful position, perched on the tree-top and surrounded by the heaving waters of the flood.
Menaboshu remained five days and five nights, wondering how he could escape At last he saw a solitary bird, a loon, swimming on the face of the water He called the bird and said, " Brother loon, thou skilful diver, be so good as to dive into the depths and see whether thou canst find any earth, without which I cannot live." Again and again the loon dived, but no earth could he find Menaboshu was almost in despair. But next day he saw the dead body of a drowned musk-rat drifting; towards him He caught it, took it in his hand, breathed on it, and brought it to life again Then he said to the rat " Little brother rat, neither you nor I can live without earth. Dive into the water and bring me up a little earth If it be only three grains of sand, yet will I make something out of it for you and me." The rat dived and after a long time reappeared on the surface.
It was dead, but Menaboshu caught it and examined its paws On one of the fore-paws he found two grains of sand or dust So he took them, dried them on his hand in the sun, and blew them away over the water Where they fell they grew into little islands, and these united into larger ones, till at last Menaboshu was able to jump down from the tree-top on one of them On it he floated about as on a raft, and helped the other islands to grow together, until at last they formed lands and continents. Then Menaboshu walked from place to place, restoring nature to its former beauty and variety He found little roots and tiny plants which he planted, and they grew into meadows, shrubs, and forests Many of the dead bodies of animals had drifted ashore Menaboshu gathered them and blew on them, and they came to life. Then he said, " Go each of you to his own place." So they went all of them to their places. The birds nested in the trees. The fishes and beavers chose for themselves the little lakes and rivers, and the bears and other four-footed beasts roamed about on the dry land Moreover, Menaboshu walked to and fro with a measuring-line, determining the length of the rivers, the depth of the lakes, the height of the mountains, and the form of the lands. The earth thus restored by Menaboshu was the first land in the world to be inhabited by the Indians ; the earlier earth which was overwhelmed by the flood was inhabited only by Menaboshu and the wolves and the serpent-king and his satellites So at least said the old Ojibway woman who told the story of the flood to the German traveller.
Another version of the same story has been recorded more briefly, with minor variations, among the Ojibways of south-eastern Ontario. It runs thus. Nenebojo was living with his brother in the woods. Every day he went out hunting, while his brother stayed at home. One evening when he returned he noticed that his brother was not at home ; so he went out to look for him. But he could find him nowhere. Next morning he again started in search of his brother. As he walked by the shore of a lake, what should he see but a kingfisher sitting on a branch of a tree that drooped over the water. The bird was looking at something intently in the water below him. " What are you looking at?" asked Nenebojo. But the kingfisher pretended not to hear him. Then Nenebojo said again, " If you will tell me what you are looking at, I will make you fair to see. I will paint your feathers." The bird gladly accepted the offer, and as soon as Nenebojo had painted his feathers, the kingfisher said, " I am looking at Nenebojo's brother, whom the water-spirits have killed and whose skin they are using as a door-flap." Then Nenebojo asked again, " Where do these water-spirits come to the shore to sun themselves ? " The kingfisher answered, " They always sun themselves over there at one of the bays, where the sand is quite dry."
Then Nenebojo left the kingfisher. He resolved to go over to the sandy beach indicated to him by the bird, and there to wait for the first chance of killing the water-spirits. He first pondered what disguise he should assume in order to approach them unawares. Said he to himself, " I will change myself into an old rotten stump." No sooner said than done ; the transformation was effected by a long rod, which Nenebojo always carried with him. When the lions came out of the water to sun themselves, one of them noticed the stump and said to one of his fellows, " I never saw that old stump there before. Surely it can't be Nenebojo." But the lion he spoke to said, " Indeed, I have seen that stump before." Then a third lion came over to peer and make sure. He broke a piece off and saw that it was rotten. So all the lions were easy in their minds and lay down to sleep. When Nenebojo thought they were fast asleep he struck them on their heads with his stick. As he struck them the water rose from the lake. He ran away, but the waves pursued him. As he ran he met a woodpecker, who showed him the way to a mountain where grew a tall pine-tree. Nenebojo climbed up the tree and began to build a raft. By the time he had finished the raft the water reached to his neck. Then he put on the raft two animals of all the kinds that existed, and with them he floated about.
When they had drifted for a while, Nenebojo said, " I believe that the water will never subside, so I had better make land again." Then he sent an otter to dive to the bottom of the water and fetch up some earth; but the otter came back without any. Next he sent the beaver on the same errand, but again in vain. After that Nenebojo despatched the musk-rat to bring up earth out of the water. When the musk-rat returned to the surface his paws were tightly closed. On opening them Nenebojo found some little grains of sand, and he discovered other grains in the mouth of the musk-rat. So he put all the grains together, dried them, and then blew them into the lake with the horn which he used for calling the animals.
In the lake the grains of sand formed an island. Nenebojo enlarged the island, and sent out a raven to find out how large it was. But the raven never returned. So Nenebojo decided to send out the hawk, the fleetest of all birds on the wing. After a while the hawk returned, and being asked whether he had seen the raven anywhere, he said he had seen him eating dead bodies by the shore of the lake. Then Nenebojo said, " Henceforth the raven will never have anything to eat but what he steals." Yet another interval, and Nenebojo sent out the caribou to explore the size of the island. The animal soon returned, saying that the island was not large enough. So Nenebojo blew more sand into the water, and when he had done so he ceased to make the earth.
The same story is told, with variations, by the Timagami Ojibways of Canada. They speak of a certain hero named Nenebuc, who was the son of the Sun by a mortal woman. One day, going about with his bow and arrows, he came to a great lake with a beautiful sandy shore, and in the lake he saw lions. They were too far off to shoot at, so he waited till, feeling cold in the water, the lions came ashore to sun and dry themselves on the sandy beach. In order to get near them unseen, he took some birch-bark from a rotten stump, rolled it into a hollow cylinder and set it, like a wigwam, near the shore. Then he ensconced himself in it, making a little loophole in the bark, through which he could see and shoot the lions. The lions were curious as to this new thing on the shore, and they sent a great snake to spy it out. The snake coiled itself round the cylinder of bark and tried to upset it, but it could not, for Nenebuc inside of it stood firm.
Then the lions themselves approached, and Nenebuc shot an arrow and wounded a lioness, the wife of the lion chief. She was badly hurt, but contrived to crawl away to the cave in which she lived. The cave may be seen to this day. It is in a high bluff on the west shore of Smoothwater Lake. Disguised in the skin of a toad, and pretending to be a medicine-woman, Nenebuc was admitted to the presence of the wounded lioness in the cave; but instead of healing her, as he professed to do, he thrust the point of the arrow still deeper into the wound, so that she died. No sooner did she expire than a great torrent of water poured out of the cave, and the lake began to rise. " That is going to flood the world and be the end of all things," said Nenebuc. So he cut down trees and made a raft. And hardly was the raft ready, when the flood was upon him. It rose above the trees, bearing the raft with it, and wherever he looked he could see nothing but water everywhere.
All kinds of animals were swimming about in it; they made for his raft, and he took them in. For he wished to save them in order that, when the flood subsided, the earth should be stocked with the same kinds of animals as before. They stayed with him on the raft for a long while. After a time he made a rope of roots, and tying it to the beaver's tail, he bade him dive down to the land below the water. The beaver dived, but came up again, saying that he could find no bottom. Seven days afterwards Nenebuc let the musk-rat try whether he could not bring up some earth. The musk-rat plunged into the water and remained down a long time. At last he came up dead, but holding a little earth in his paws. Nenebuc dried the earth, but not entirely. That is why in some places there are swamps to this day. So the animals again roamed over the earth, and the world was remade.
The Blackfoot Indians, another Algonquin tribe, who used to range over the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains and the prairies at their foot, tell a similar tale of the great primeval deluge. " In the beginning," they say, " all the land was covered with water, and Old Man and all the animals were floating around on a large raft. One day Old Man told the heaver to dive and try to bring up a little mud. The beaver went down, and was gone a long time, but could not reach the bottom. Then the loon tried, and the otter, but the water was too deep for them. At last the musk-rat dived, and he was gone so long that they thought he had been drowned, but he finally came up, almost dead, and when they pulled him on to the raft, they found, in one of his paws, a little mud. With this, Old Man formed the world, and afterwards he made the people."
The Ottawa Indians, another branch of the Algonquin stock, tell a long fabulous story, which they say has been handed down to them from their ancestors. It contains an account of a deluge which overwhelmed the whole earth, and from which a single man, by name Nana-boujou, escaped by floating on a piece of bark. The missionary who reports this tradition gives us no further particulars concerning it, but from the similarity of the name Nanaboujou to the names Nenebojo, Nenebuc, and Menaboshu, we may surmise that the Ottawa version of the deluge legend closely resembled the Ojibway versions which have already been narrated.
Certainly similar stories appear to be widely current among the Indian tribes of North-Western Canada. They are not confined to tribes of the Algonquin stock, but occur also among their northern neighbours, the Tinnehs or Denes, who belong to the great Athapascan family, the most widely distributed of all Indian linguistic families in North America, stretching as it does from the Arctic coast far into Mexico, and extending from the Pacific to Hudson's Bay, and from the Rio Colorado to the mouth of the Rio Grande Thus the Crees, who are an Algonquin tribe, relate that in the beginning there lived an old magician named Wissaketchak, who wrought marvels by his enchantments. However, a certain sea monster hated the old man and sought to destroy him. So when the magician was paddling in his canoe, the monster lashed the sea with his tail till the waves rose and engulfed the land. But Wissaketchak built a great raft and gathered upon it pairs of all animals and all birds, and in that way he saved his own life and the lives of the other creatures.
Nevertheless the great fish continued to lash his tail and the water continued to rise, till it had covered not only the earth but the highest mountains, and not a scrap of dry land was to be seen. Then Wissaketchak sent the diver duck to plunge into the water and bring up the sunken earth ; but the bird could not dive to the bottom and was drowned. Thereupon Wissaketchak sent the musk-rat, which, after remaining long under water, reappeared with its throat full of slime.
Wissaketchak took the slime, moulded it into a small disk, and placed it on the water, where it floated. It resembled the nests which the musk-rats make for themselves on the ice. By and by the disk swelled into a hillock. Then Wissaketchak blew on it, and the more he blew on it the more it swelled, and being baked by the sun it became a solid mass. As it grew and hardened, Wissaketchak sent forth the animals to lodge upon it, and at last he himself disembarked and took possession of the land thus created, which is the world we now inhabit A similar tale is told by the Dogrib and Slave Indians, two Tinneh tribes, except that they give the name of Tchapewi to the man who was saved from the great flood ; and they say that when he was floating on the raft with couples of all sorts of animals, which he had rescued, he caused all the amphibious animals, one after the other, including the otter and the beaver, to dive into the water, but none of them could bring up any earth except the musk-rat, who dived last of all and came up panting with a little mud in his paw. That mud Tchapewi breathed on till it grew into the earth as we now see it. So Tchapewi replaced the animals on it, and they lived there as before; and he propped the earth on a stout stay, making it firm and solid. The Hareskin" Indians, another Tinneh tribe, say that a certain Kunyan, which means Wise Man, once upon a time resolved to build a great raft.
When his sister, who was also his wife, asked him why he would build it, he said, " If there comes a flood, as I foresee, we shall take refuge on the raft." He told his plan to other men on the earth, but they laughed at him, saying, " If there is a flood, we shall take refuge on the trees." Nevertheless the Wise Man made a great raft, joining the logs together by ropes made of roots. All of a sudden there came a flood such that the like of it had never been seen before. The water seemed to gush forth on every side. Men climbed up in the trees, but the water rose after them, and all were drowned. But the Wise Man floated safely on his strong and well-corded raft. As he floated he thought of the future, and he gathered by twos all the herbivorous animals, and all the birds, and even all the beasts of prey he met with on his passage. " Come up on my raft," he said to them, " for soon there will be no more earth." Indeed, the earth disappeared under the water, and for a long time nobody thought of going to look for it. The first to plunge into the depth was the musk-rat, but he could find no bottom, and when he bobbed up on the surface again he was half drowned. " There is no earth !" said he. A second time he dived, and when he came up, he said, " I smelt the smell of the earth, but I could not reach it." Next it came to the turn of the beaver. He dived and remained a long time under water. At last he reappeared, floating on his back, breathless and unconscious. But in his paw he had a little mud, which he gave to the Wise Man. The Wise Man placed the mud on the water, breathed on it, and said, " I would there were an earth again !" At the same time he breathed on the handful of mud, and lo! it began to grow. He put a small bird on it, and the patch of mud grew still bigger. So he breathed, and breathed, and the mud grew and grew. Then the man put a fox on the floating island of mud, and the fox ran round it in a single day. Round and round the island ran the fox, and bigger and bigger grew the island. Six times did the fox make the circuit of the island, but when he made it for the seventh time, the land was complete even as it was before the flood.
Then the Wise Man caused all the animals to disembark and landed them on the dry ground. Afterwards he himself disembarked with his wife and son, saying, " It is for us that this earth shall be repeopled." And repeopled it was, sure enough. Only one difficulty remained with which the Wise Man had to grapple. The floods were still out, and how to reduce them was the question. The bittern saw the difficulty and came to the rescue. He swallowed the whole of the water, and then lay like a log on the bank, with his belly swollen to a frightful size. This was more than the Wise Man had bargained for; if there had been too much water before, there was now too little. In his embarrassment the Wise Man had recourse to the plover. " The bittern," he said, " is lying yonder in the sun with his belly full of water. Pierce it." So the artful plover made up to the unsuspecting bittern. " My grandmother," said he, in a sympathizing tone, " has no doubt a pain in her stomach." And he passed his hand softly over the ailing part of the bittern as if to soothe it. But all of a sudden he put out his claws and clawed the swollen stomach of the bittern. Such a scratch he gave it! There was a gurgling, guggling sound, and out came the water from the stomach bubbling and foaming. It flowed away into rivers and lakes, and thus the world became habitable once more.
Some Tinneh Indians affirm that the deluge was caused by a heavy fall of snow in the month of September. One old man alone foresaw the catastrophe and warned his fellows, but all in vain. " We will escape to the mountains," said they. But they were all drowned. Now the old man had built a canoe, and when the flood came, he sailed about in it, rescuing from the water all the animals he fell in with. Unable long to support this manner of life, he caused the beaver, the otter, the musk-rat, and the arctic duck to dive into the water in search of the drowned earth. Only the arctic duck came back with a little slime on its claws ; and the man spread the slime on the water, caused it to grow by his breath, and for six days disembarked the animals upon it. After that, when the ground had grown to the size of a great island, he himself stepped ashore. Other Tinnehs say that the old man first sent forth a raven, which gorged itself on the floating corpses and came not back. Next he sent forth a turtle-dove, which flew twice round the world and returned. The third time she came back at evening, very tired, with a budding twig of fir in her mouth The influence of Christian teaching on this last version of the story is manifest.
The Tinneh Indians in the neighbourhood of Nulato tell a story of a great flood which happened thus. In a populous settlement there lived a rich youth and his four nephews. Far away across the sea there dwelt a fair damsel, whom many men had wooed in vain. The rich young man resolved to seek her hand, and for that purpose he sailed to her village across the sea with his nephews in their canoes. But she would not have him. So next morning he was preparing to return home. He was already in his canoe down on the beach ; his nephews had packed up everything, and were about to shove off from the shore. Many of the villagers had come out of their houses to witness the departure of the strangers, and among them was a woman with her baby in her arms, an infant not yet weaned. Speaking to her baby, the fond mother said, "And what of this little girl ? If they want a little girl, why not take this one of mine ?" The rich young man heard the words, and holding out his paddle to the woman, he said, " Put her upon this, the little one you speak of." The woman put the baby on the paddle, and the young man drew the child in and placed it behind him in the canoe. Then he paddled away and his nephews after him. Meanwhile the girl whom he had asked to marry him came down to get water. But as she stepped on the soft mud at the water's edge she began to sink into it. " Oh ! " she cried, " here I am sinking up to my knees." But the young man answered, " It is your own fault." She sank still deeper and cried, " Oh ! now I am in up to my waist! " But he said again, " It is your own fault." Deeper yet she sank and cried, " Oh! I am in up to my neck!" And again he answered, "It is your own fault." Then she sank down altogether and disappeared.
But the girl's mother saw what happened, and angry at the death of her daughter, she brought down some tame brown bears to the edge of the water, and laying hold of their tails she said to them, " Raise a strong wind " ; for thus she hoped to drown the young man who had left her daughter to perish. The bears now began to dig the bottom in a fury, making huge waves. At the same time the water rose exceed-ingly and the billows ran high. The young man's four nephews were drowned in the storm, and all the inhabitants of that village perished in the waters, all except the mother of the baby and her husband ; these two were the only people that survived. But the young man himself escaped, for he possessed a magical white stone, and when he threw it ahead it clove a smooth passage for his canoe through the angry water; so he rode out the storm in safety. Still all around him was nothing but the raging sea. Then he took a harpoon and threw it and hit the crest of a wave. Soon after he found himself in a forest of spruce-trees. The land had been formed again. The wave he struck with his harpoon had become a mountain, and rebounding from the rock the harpoon had shot up into the sky and there stuck fast. The harpoon is there to this day, though only the medicine-men can "see it. After that the young man turned to the baby girl behind him in the canoe. But he found her grown into a beautiful woman with a face as bright as the sun. So he married her, and their offspring repeopled the drowned earth. But the man and the woman who had been saved from the waters in his wife's village became the ancestors of the people beyond the sea.
The Sarcees, another Indian tribe belonging to the great Tinneh stock, were formerly a powerful nation, but are now reduced to a few hundreds. Their reserve, a fine tract of prairie land, adjoins that of the Blackfeet in Alberta, a little south of the Canadian Pacific Railway. They have a tradition of a deluge which agrees in its main features with that of the Ojibways, Crees, and other Canadian tribes. They say that when the world was flooded, only one man and woman were left alive, being saved on a raft, on which they also collected animals and birds of all sorts. The man sent a beaver down to dive to the bottom. The creature did so and brought up a little mud, which the man moulded in his hands to form a new world. At first the world was so small that a little bird could walk round it, but it kept growing bigger and bigger. " First," said the narrator, " our father took up his abode on it, then there were men, then women, then animals, and then birds. Our father next created the rivers, the mountains, the trees, and all the things as we now see them." At the conclusion of the story the white man, who reports it, observed to the Sarcees that the Ojibway tradition was very like theirs, except that in the Ojibway tradition it was not a beaver but a musk-rat that brought up the earth from the water. The remark elicited a shout of approval from five or six of the tribe, who were squatting around in the tent. " Yes ! yes ! " they cried in chorus. " The man has told you lies. It was a musk-rat! it was a musk-rat!"
A different story of a great flood is told by the Loucheux or Dindjies, the most northerly Indian tribe of the great Tinneh family which stretches from Alaska to the borders of Arizona. They say that a certain man, whom they call the Mariner (Etroetchokren), was the first person to build a canoe. One day, rocking his canoe from side to side, he sent forth such waves on all sides that the earth was flooded and his canoe foundered. Just then a gigantic hollow straw came floating past, and the man contrived to scramble into it and caulk up the ends. In it he floated about safely till the flood dried up. Then he landed on a high mountain, where the hollow straw had come to rest. There he abode many days, wherefore they call it the Place of the Old Man to this day. It is the rocky peak which you see to the right of Fort MacPherson in the Rocky Mountains. Farther down the Yukon River the channel contracts, and the water rushes rapidly between two high cliffs. There the Mariner took his stand, straddlewise, with one foot planted on each cliff, and with his hands dipping in the water he caught the dead bodies of men as they floated past on the current, just as you might catch fish in a bag-net. But of living men he could find not one.
The only live thing within sight was a raven, who, gorged with food, sat perched on the top of a lofty rock fast asleep. The Mariner climbed up the rock, surprised the raven in his nap, and thrust him without more ado into a bag, intending to make short work of Master Raven. But the raven said, " I beg and entreat that you will not cast me down from this rock. For if you do, be sure that I will cause all the men who yet survive to disappear, and you will find yourself all alone in the world." Undeterred by this threat, the man let the raven in the bag drop, and the bird was dashed to pieces at the foot of the mountain.
However, the words of the raven came true, for though the man travelled far and wide, not a single living wight could he anywhere discover. Only a loach and a pike did he see sprawling on the mud and warming themselves in the sun. So he bethought him of the raven, and returned to the spot where the mangled body, or rather the bones, of the bird lay bleaching at the foot of the mountain. For he thought within himself, " Maybe the raven will help me to repeople the earth." So he gathered the scattered bones, fitted them together as well as he could, and by blowing on them caused the flesh and the life to return to them. Then the man and the raven went together to the beach, where the loach and the pike were still sleeping in the sun. " Bore a hole in the stomach of the pike," said the raven to the man, " and I will do the same by the loach." The man did bore a hole in the pike's stomach, and out of it came a crowd of men. The raven did likewise to the loach, and a multitude of women came forth from the belly of the fish. That is how the world was repeopled after the great flood .
In the religion and mythology of the Tlingits or Thlin-keets, an important Indian tribe of Alaska, Yehl or the Raven plays a great part. He was not only the ancestor of the Raven clan but the creator of men ; he caused the plants to grow, and he set the sun, moon, and stars in their places. But he had a wicked uncle, who had murdered Yehl's ten elder brothers either by drowning them or, according to others, by stretching them on a board and sawing off their heads with a knife. To the commission of these atrocious crimes he was instigated by the passion of jealousy, for he had a young wife of whom he was very fond, and he knew that according to Tlingit law his nephews, the sons of his sister, would inherit his widow whenever he himself should depart from this vale of tears.
So when Yehl grew up to manhood, his affectionate uncle endeavoured to dispose of him as he had disposed of his ten elder brothers, but all in vain. For Yehl was not a common child. His mother had conceived him through swallowing a round pebble which she found on the shore at ebb tide ; and by means of another stone she contrived to render the infant invulnerable. So when his uncle tried to saw off his head in the usual way, the knife made no impression at all on Yehl. Not discouraged by this failure, the old villain attempted the life of his virtuous nephew in other ways. In his fury he said, " Let there be a flood," and a flood there was which covered all the mountains. But Yehl assumed his wings and feathers, which he could put off and on at pleasure, and spreading his pinions he flew up to the sky, and there remained hanging by his beak for ten days, while the water of the flood rose so high that it lapped his wings. When the water sank, he let go and dropped like an arrow into the sea, where he fell soft on a bank of seaweed and was rescued from his perilous position by a sea otter, which brought him safe to land. What happened to mankind during the flood is not mentioned in this version of the Tlingit legend
Another Tlingit legend tells how Raven caused a great flood in a different way. He had put a woman under the world to attend to the rising and falling of the tides. Once he wished to learn about all that goes on under the sea, so he caused the woman to raise the water, in order that he might go there dry-shod. But he thoughtfully directed her to heave the ocean up slowly, so that when the flood came people might have time to load their canoes with the necessary provisions and get on board. So the ocean rose gradually, bearing on its surface the people in their canoes.
As they rose up and up the sides of the mountains, they could see the bears and other wild beasts walking about on the still unsubmerged tops. Many of the bears swam out to the canoes, wishing to scramble on board ; then the people who had been wise enough to take their dogs with them were very glad of it, for the noble animals kept off the bears Some people landed on the tops of the mountains, built walls round them to dam out the water, and tied their canoes on the inside. They could not take much firewood up with them ; there was not room for it in the canoes. It was a very anxious and dangerous time. The survivors could see trees torn up by the roots and swept along on the rush of the waters ; large devil-fish, too, and other strange creatures floated past on the tide-race. When the water subsided, the people followed the ebbing tide down the sides of the mountains ; but the trees were all gone, and having no firewood they perished of cold. When Raven came back from under the sea, and saw the fish lying high and dry on the mountains and in the creeks, he said to them, " Stay there and be turned to stones." So stones they became. And when he saw people coming down he would say in like manner, " Turn to stones just where you are." And turned to stones they were. After all mankind had been destroyed in this way, Raven created them afresh out of leaves. Because he made this new generation out of leaves, people know that he must have turned into stone all the men and women who survived the great flood. And that, too, is why to this day so many people die in autumn with the fall of the leaf; when flowers and leaves are fading and falling, we also pass away like them According to yet another account, the Tlingits or Kolosh, as the Russians used to call them, speak of a universal deluge, during which men were saved in a great floating ark which, when the water sank, grounded on a rock and split in two ; and that, in their opinion, is the cause of the diversity of languages. The Tlingits represent one-half of the population, which was shut up in the ark, and all the remaining peoples of the earth represent the other half This last legend may be of Christian origin, for it exhibits a sort of blend of Noah's ark with the tower of Babel.
The Haida Indians of Queen Charlotte Islands say that " very long ago there was a great flood by which all men and animals were destroyed, with the exception of a single raven. This creature was not, however, exactly an ordinary bird, but—as with all animals in the old Indian stories— possessed the attributes of a human being to a great extent. His coat of feathers, for instance, could be put on or taken off at will, like a garment. It is even related in one version of the story that he was born of a woman who had no husband, and that she made bows and arrows for him. When old enough, with these he killed birds, and of their skins she sewed a cape or blanket. The birds were the little snow-bird with black head and neck, the large black and red, and the Mexican woodpeckers. The name of this being was Ne-kil-stlas. When the flood had gone down Ne-kil-stlas looked about, but could find neither companions nor a mate, and became very lonely. At last he took a cockle (Cardium Nuttalli) from the beach, and marrying it, he constantly continued to brood and think earnestly of his wish for a companion. By and by in the shell he heard a very faint cry, like that of a newly born child, which gradually became louder, and at last a little female child was seen, which growing by degrees larger and larger, was finally married by the raven, and from this union all the Indians were produced and the country peopled."
The Tsimshians, an Indian tribe who inhabit the coast of British Columbia, opposite to the Queen Charlotte Islands, have a tradition of a great flood which was sent by heaven as a punishment for the ill-behaviour of man. First, all people, except a few, were destroyed by a flood, and afterwards they were destroyed by fire. Before the flood the earth was not as it is now, for there were no mountains and no trees. These were created by a certain Leqa after the deluge Once when a clergyman, in a sermon preached at Observatory Inlet, referred to the great flood, a Tsimshian chief among his hearers told him the following story " We have a tradition about the swelling of the water a long time ago. As you are going up the river you will see the high mountain to the top of which a few of our forefathers escaped when the waters rose, and thus were saved. But many more were saved in their canoes, and were drifted about and scattered in every direction. The waters went down again ; the canoes rested on the land and the people settled themselves in the various spots whither they had been driven. Thus it is the Indians are found spread all over the country ; but they all understand the same songs and have the same customs, which shows that they are one people."
The Bella Coola Indians of British Columbia tell a different story of the flood. They say that the great Masmasalanich, who made men, fastened the earth to the sun by a long rope in order to keep the two at a proper distance from each other and to prevent the earth from sinking into the sea. But one day he began to stretch the rope, and the consequence naturally was that the earth sank deeper and deeper, and the water rose higher and higher, till it had covered the whole earth and even the tops of the mountains. A terrible storm broke out at the same time, and many men, who had sought safety in boats, were drowned, while others were driven far away. At last Masmasalanich hauled in the rope, the earth rose from the waves, and mankind spread over it once more. It was then that the diversity of tongues arose, for before the flood all men had been of one speech.
The Kwakiutl, who inhabit the coast of British Columbia to the south of the Bella Coola, have also their legend of a deluge. " Very long ago," they say, " there occurred a great flood, during which the sea rose so as to cover everything with the exception of three mountains. Two of these are very high, one near Bella-Bella, the other apparently to the north-east of that place. The third is a low but prominent hill on Don Island, named Ko-Kwus by the Indians ; this they say rose at the time of the flood so as to remain above the water. Nearly all the people floated away in various directions on logs and trees. The people living where Kit-Katla now is, for instance, drifted to Fort Rupert, while the Fort Ruperts drifted to Kit-Katla. Some of the people had small canoes, and by anchoring them managed to come down near home when the water subsided. Of the Hailtzuk there remained only three individuals : two men and a woman, with a dog. One of the men landed at Kâ-pa, a second at another village site, not far from Bella-Bella, and the woman and dog at Bella-Bella. From the marriage of the woman with the dog, the Bella-Bella Indians originated. When the flood had subsided there was no fresh water to be found, and the people were very thirsty. The raven, however, showed them how, after eating, to chew fragments of cedar (Thuya) wood, when water came into the mouth. The raven also advised them where, by digging in the ground, they could get a little water ; but soon a great rain came on, very heavy and very long, which filled all the lakes and rivers so that they have never been dry since. The water is still, however, in some way understood to be connected with the cedar, and the Indians say if there were no cedar trees there would be no water. The converse would certainly hold good." J
The Lillooet Indians of British Columbia say that in former times, while they lived together around Green Lake and below it on the Green River, there came a great and continuous rain, which made all the lakes and rivers overflow their banks and deluge the surrounding country. A man called Ntcinemkin had a very large canoe, in which he took refuge with his family. The other people fled to the mountains, but the water soon covered them too ; and in their distress the people begged Ntcinemkin to save at least their children in his canoe. But the canoe was too small to hold all the children, so Ntcinemkin took one child from each family, a male from one, a female from the next, and so on. But still the rain fell and the water rose till all the land was submerged, except the peak of the high mountain called Split (Ncikato), which rises on the west side of the Lower Lillooet Lake, its pinnacle consisting of a huge precipice cleft in two from top to bottom. The canoe drifted about on the flood until the waters sank and it grounded on Smimelc Mountain. Each stage in the sinking of the water is marked by a flat terrace on the side of the mountain, which can be seen there to this day.
The Thompson Indians of British Columbia say that once there was a great flood which covered the whole country, except the tops of some of the highest mountains The Indians think, though they are not quite sure, that the flood was caused by three brothers called Qoaqlqal, who in those days travelled all over the country working miracles and transforming things, till the transformers were themselves transformed into stones Be that as it may, everybody was drowned in the great flood except the coyote and three men ; the coyote survived because he turned himself into a piece of wood and so floated on the water, and the men escaped with their lives by embarking in a canoe, in which they drifted to the Nzukeski Mountains.
There they were afterwards, with their canoe, transformed into stones, and there you may see them sitting in the shape of stones down to this day. As for the coyote, when the flood subsided, he was left high and dry on the shore in the likeness of the piece of wood into which, at the nick of time, he had cleverly transformed himself So he now resumed his natural shape and looked about him He found he was in the Thompson River country.
He took trees to him to be his wives, and from him and the trees together the Indians of the present day are descended Before the flood there were neither lakes nor streams in the mountains, and therefore there were no fish When the waters of the deluge receded, they left lakes in the hollows of the mountains, and streams began to flow down from them towards the sea. That is why we now find lakes in the mountains, and fish in the lakes. Thus the deluge story of the Thompson River Indians appears to have been invented to explain the presence of lakes in the mountains ; the primitive philosopher accounted for them by a great flood which, as it retired, left the lakes behind it in the hollows of the hills, just as the ebbing tide leaves pools behind it in the hollows of the rocks on the sea-shore.
The Kootenay Indians, who inhabit the south-eastern part of British Columbia, say that once upon a time a chicken-hawk (Accipiter Cooperi) forbade his wife, a small grey bird, to bathe in a certain lake. One day, after picking berries on the mountain in the hot sun, she was warm and weary, and seeing the lake so cool and tempting she plunged into it, heedless of her husband's warning. But the water rose, a giant rushed forth, and ravished the bird, or rather the woman ; for in these Indian tales no sharp line of distinction is drawn between the animal and the human personages. Her angry husband came to the rescue and discharged an arrow which struck the giant in the breast. To be revenged, the monster swallowed all the waters, so that none remained for the Indians to drink. But the injured wife plucked the arrow from the giant's breast, and the pent-up waters gushed forth and caused a flood. The husband and his wife took refuge on a mountain, and remained there till the flood subsided. In another version of this Kootenay story, a big fish takes the place of the giant and is killed by the injured husband ; the spouting blood of the fish causes the deluge, and the man, or the hawk, escapes from it by climbing up a tree. The scene of the story is laid on the Kootenay River near Fort Steele
Legends of a great flood appear to have been current among the Indian tribes of Washington State. Thus the Twanas, on Puget Sound, say that once on a time the people were wicked and to punish them a great flood came, which overflowed all the land except one mountain. The people fled in their canoes to the highest mountain in their country —a peak of the Olympic range—and as the water rose above it they tied their canoes with long ropes to the highest tree, but still the water rose above it. Then some of the canoes broke from their moorings and drifted away to the west, where the descendants of the persons saved in them now live, a tribe who speak a language like that of the Twanas. That, too, they say, is why the present number of the tribe is so small. In their language this mountain is called by a name which means " Fastener," because they fastened their canoes to it at that time. They also speak of a pigeon which went out to view the dead.
The Clallam Indians of Washington State, whose country adjoins that of the Twanas, also have a tradition of a flood, but some of them believe that it happened not more than a few generations ago. Indeed about the year 878 an old man asserted that his grandfather had seen the man who was saved from the flood, and that he was a Clallam Indian. Their Ararat, too, is a different mountain from that on which the Twana Noah and his fellows found refuge. The Lummi Indians, who live near the northern boundary of Washington State, also speak of a great flood, but no particulars of their tradition are reported. The Puyallop Indians, near Tacoma, say that the deluge overspread all the country except one high mound near Steilacoom, and this mound is still called by the Indians " The Old Land," because it was not submerged.
" Do you see that high mountain over there ?" said an old Indian to a mountaineer about the year 860, as they were riding across the Cascade Mountains. " I do," was the reply. " Do you see that grove to the right ?" the Indian next asked. " Yes," answered the white man. " Well," said the Indian, " a long time ago there was a flood, and all the country was overflowed. There was an old man and his family on a boat or raft, and he floated about, and the wind blew him to that mountain, where he touched bottom. He stayed there for some time, and then sent a crow to hunt for land, but it came back without finding any. After some time it brought a leaf from that grove, and the old man was glad, for he knew that the water was abating."
When the earliest missionaries came among the Spokanas, Nez Perces, and Cayuses, who, with the Yakimas, used to inhabit the eastern part of Washington State, they found that these Indians had their own tradition of a great flood, in which one man and his wife were saved on a raft. Each of these three tribes, together with the Flathead tribes, had its own separate Ararat on which the survivors found refuge.
The story of a great flood is also told by the Indians of Washington State who used to inhabit the lower course of the Columbia River and speak the Kathlamet dialect of Chinook. In one respect their tale resembles the Algonquin legend. They say that a certain maiden was advised by the blue-jay to marry the panther, who was an elk-hunter and the chief of his town to boot. So away she hied to the panther's town, but when she came there she married the beaver by mistake instead of the panther. When her husband the beaver came back from the fishing, she went down to the beach to meet him, and he told her to take up the trout he had caught But she found that they were not really trout at all, but only willow branches. Disgusted at the discovery, she ran away from him, and finally married the panther, whom she ought to have married at first. Thus deserted by the wife of his bosom, the beaver wept for five days, till all the land was flooded with his tears. The houses were overwhelmed, and the animals took to their canoes. When the flood reached nearly to the sky, they bethought them of fetching up earth from the depths, so they said to the blue-jay, " Now dive, blue-jay !" So the blue-jay dived, but he did not go very deep, for his tail remained sticking out of the water.
After that, all the animals tried to dive. First the mink and next the otter plunged into the vasty deep, but came up again without having found the bottom. Then it came to the turn of the musk-rat He said, " Tie the canoes together." So they tied the canoes together and laid planks across them.
Thereupon the musk-rat threw off his blanket, sang his song five times over, and without more ado dived into the water, and disappeared He was down a long while At last flags came up to the surface of the water Then it became summer, the flood sank, and the canoes with it, till they landed on dry ground. All the animals jumped out of the canoes, but as they did so, they knocked their tails against the gunwale and broke them off short That is why the grizzly bears and the black bears have stumpy tails down to this day But the otter, the mink, the musk-rat, and the panther returned to the canoe, picked up their missing tails, and fastened them on the stumps That is why these animals have still tails of a decent length, though they were broken off short at the flood In this story little is said of the human race, and how it escaped from the deluge. But the tale clearly belongs to that primitive type of story in which no clear distinction is drawn between man and beast, the lower creatures being supposed to think, speak, and act like human beings, and to live on terms of practical equality with them.
This community of nature is implicitly indicated in the Kathlamet story by the marriage of a girl, first to a beaver, and then to a panther ; and it appears also in the incidental description of the beaver as a man with a big belly Thus in describing how the animals survived the deluge, the narrator may have assumed that he had suffi-ciently explained the survival of mankind also.
In North America legends of a great flood are not confined to the Indian tribes ; they are found also among the Eskimo and their kinsfolk the Greenlanders. At Oro-wignarak, in Alaska, Captain Jacobsen was told that the Eskimo have a tradition of a mighty inundation which, simultaneously with an earthquake, swept over the land so rapidly that only a few persons were able to escape in their skin canoes to the tops of the highest mountains Again, the Eskimo of Norton Sound, in Alaska, say that in the first days the earth was flooded, all but a very high mountain in the middle. The water came up from the sea and covered the whole land except the top of this mountain. Only a few animals escaped to the mountain and were saved ; and a few people made a shift to survive by floating about in a boat and subsisting on the fish they caught till the water subsided. As the flood sank and the mountains emerged from the water, the people landed from the canoe on these heights, and gradually followed the retreating flood to the coast. The animals which had escaped to the mountains also descended and replenished the earth after their kinds.
Again, the Tchiglit Eskimo, who inhabit the coast of the Arctic Ocean from Point Barrow on the west to Cape Bathurst on the east, tell of a great flood which broke over the face of the earth and, driven by the wind, submerged the dwellings of men. The Eskimo tied several boats together so as to form a great raft, and on it they floated about on the face of the great waters, huddling together for warmth under a tent which they had pitched, but shivering in the icy blast and watching the uprooted trees drifting past on the waves. At last a magician named An-odjium, that is, Son of the Owl, threw his bow into the sea, saying, " Enough, wind, be calm !" After that he threw in his earrings ; and that sufficed to cause the flood to subside.
The Central Eskimo say that long ago the ocean suddenly began to rise and continued rising until it had inundated the whole land. The water even covered the tops of the mountains, and the ice drifted over them. When the flood had subsided, the ice stranded and ever since forms an ice-cap on the top of the mountains. Many shell-fish, fish, seals, and whales were left high and dry, and their shells and bones may be seen there to this day. Many Eskimo were then drowned, but many others, who had taken to their boats when the flood began to rise, were saved.
With regard to the Greenlanders their historian Crantz tells us that " almost all heathen nations know something of Noah's Flood, and the first missionaries found also some pretty plain traditions among the Greenlanders; namely, that the world once overset, and all mankind, except one, were drowned ; but some were turned into fiery spirits The only man that escaped alive, afterwards smote the ground with his stick, and out sprang a woman, and these two repeopled the world As a proof that the deluge once overflowed the whole earth, they say that many shells, and relics of fishes, have been found far within the land where men could never have lived, yea that bones of whales have been found upon a high mountain." Similar evidence in support of the legend was adduced to the traveller C. F. Hall by the Innuits or Eskimo with whom he lived He tells us that " they have a tradition of a deluge which they attribute to an unusually high tide On one occasion when I was speaking with Tookoolito concerning her people, she said, Innuits all think this earth once covered with water.' I asked her why they thought so She answered, ' Did you never see little stones, like clams and such things as live in the sea, away up on mountains ?' "
An Eskimo man once informed a traveller, that he had often wondered why all the mammoths are extinct. He added that he had learned the cause from Mr. Whittaker, the missionary at Herschel Island. The truth is, he explained, that when Noah entered into the ark and invited all the animals to save themselves from the flood by following his example, the sceptical mammoths declined to accept the kind invitation, on the ground that they did not believe there would be much of a flood, and that even if there were, they thought their legs long enough to keep their heads above water. So they stayed outside and perished in their blind unbelief, but the caribou and the foxes and the wolves are alive to this day, because they believed and were saved.