61. The Deluge

At the end of our ancestors’ time the people lived on Skeena River, as I have told in another story, in a place named Prairie Town; and most of the people were clever, good hunters, and brave warriors. One day some hunters left their home and went toward the east. They came to a great lake named Lake Of The Beginning. His was the lake of Skeena River. When the hunters reached there, the waters of the great lake began to rise, and the lake overflowed. The waters ran down the Skeena River, and almost all the villages on the river were swept by the currents. The hunters looked on, and, behold! a great whale[2] rose to the surface of the lake. The water of the Lake Of The Beginning rose because the great whale came up. It had gills like a fish, and four fins in a row along the back, like the fin of a killer whale which is near its spouting-hole. When the great whale went down, the waters subsided.

The next year two brothers of the same village started and went to the Lake Of The Beginning to get supernatural power. The elder

one went out into the water; and when the water reached above his knees, he went down to the bottom of the great lake. Then the water rose again as before, and the great whale came out. The younger brother remained on the shore. He saw the waters rising higher and higher; and the Skeena River was flooded again, for the water of the great lake rose higher than ever.

As soon as the man had gone down, he saw a large house at the bottom of the lake. He entered; and no one was in there, but a large fire was burning in the middle of the house, and he himself sat down on a mat which was spread by the side of the fire. After he had been sitting there for a while, the door opened suddenly, and, behold! a flash of lightning came in. His happened four times. Thunder was rolling four times. It was a terrible thunderclap. After it had thundered four times, it began to hail, and it was terrible hail. Soon after this a large Grizzly Bear came out from the carved screen in the middle of the rear of the house. The Grizzly Bear came toward the man who was seated on the mat by the large fire.

The Grizzly Bear stood in front of him, and said, “Open my back!” Thus spoke the Grizzly Bear to the man. The man did so, and the Bear had become a carved box. Then the Thunderbird came from behind the carved screen. The Thunderbird came up to the man, and said to him, “Take me and put me into the box!” The man took it and put it into the grizzly-bear box, and the Thunderbird became a drum, and the lightning was his red ocher. Then Living Eyes came forth from behind the carved screen; and after a while, behold! a very large animal came in at the door, which they call at this time Mouth At Each End. It came toward the man, stood in front of him, and said, “Take me and put me into the box!” A Cuttlefish also came, went toward the man, and said, “Take me and put me into the box!” The man took both of them and put them into the grizzly-bear box. At last the Living Eyes came in. It was the hail. It was a baton. It also went toward the man, and said, ‘Take me and put me into the box!” The man took it and put it into the carved box. Still no living person was to be seen in the house.

Then he started for home; and the live Grizzly Bear said to him, “Your name shall be Mouth At Each End.”

The man came ashore with the Grizzly Bear walking by his side. The man had been in the depths of the Lake Of The Beginning quite a long while.

His brother had been waiting for him since the water began to subside, after it had risen and overflowed the banks of Lake Of The Beginning. He had been waiting there for twenty days. He was hungry, and sat down at the foot of a large spruce tree and died of starvation. Then the martens came and ate him. They ate all the flesh of his body, and devoured it; and only his bare bones were left where he had been sitting. As soon as his brother, Mouth At Each End, came ashore from the lake, he looked, and, behold! his brother’s skeleton was lying there at the foot of a large spruce tree. Then the brother who had just come from out of the water cried because he saw his brother’s bare bones lying there. He went toward them and tried to restore him to life. He took up some earth and rubbed it with his hands over the bare bones of his brother, in order to restore the flesh. Soon the bare bones became covered with flesh again, but they had no skin. Therefore he took a small root to make sinews, and Mouth At Each End danced around the body with his supernatural powers. Then he took up moss and rubbed it over the flesh, and it became skin. Thus he made him alive again; and he made his brother a shaman, and gave him the name Devoured By The Martens.

Mouth At Each End caught the martens which had eaten his brother’s flesh, and put the live martens into his brother, and he gave him a vessel of blood to be his supernatural power. They went. home with the live Grizzly Bear, who walked down with them. As soon as they came to their house, Mouth At Each End was able to cure all kinds of diseases, and he was able to heal persons who had died suddenly.

Then all the supernatural beings in the mountains heard that Mouth At Each End had a really great supernatural helper, and tried to kill him. Mouth At Each End, however, knew about it, and was ready to fight with them. As soon as one of the supernatural powers or a shaman came secretly to kill him, the shaman Mouth At Each End sent his supernatural helpers Mouth At Each End and Cuttlefish, who killed those who tried to murder their master; or, if a shaman came through the water, Mouth At Each End and Cuttlefish would go into the water and destroy him; or, if a shaman with his supernatural helpers came overland, the Grizzly Bear would fight him and destroy him; or, if a supernatural power came up flying through the air, Thunderbird and Lightning with Hail would destroy him. Therefore the supernatural beings from all parts of the world could not kill this shaman, Mouth At Each End.

At last two great shamans came along in their canoe. We call these hermaphrodites. Two of them were in one canoe, Then Mouth At Each End sent down his supernatural helpers, Mouth At Each End and Cuttlefish, and the two shamans sent up their supernatural helper, which was Blood. Thus the supernatural helpers of Mouth At Each End were killed by the Blood; and both of them died, Mouth At Each End and Cuttlefish, and the shaman Mouth At Each End also died.

Only his brother, Devoured By Martens, remained. He sent forth his own supernatural helpers, Blood and Martens, who killed the two shamans in the canoe; and he took his brother’s grizzly-bear box and the Thunderbird drum, Lightning, and Hail.

His brother, Mouth At Each End, went home to the bottom of the lake, and Devoured By Martens was left alone. He conquered all the supernatural powers all around.

Many years had passed, and there was a great famine in the winter. Then the people of Devoured By Martens came up to him, and said, ‘You have really supernatural power. Try to get some provisions for us!” So this shaman lay down on one side of the fire, and asked his friends to cover him up with a cedar-bark mat, and he began his supernatural song:

On the following day all his relatives started. They went aboard their canoes and went down the river. They had long boards in their canoes, and tied four canoes together, putting the long boards across. The shaman lay down on these planks, which were painted red, and covered himself with a mat. These four canoes on which the shaman was lying went down first, and many canoes followed. All along the way he repeated the same words, “Every living fish, every living fish,” and they went down the river. The shaman said just this one phrase, “Every living fish, every living fish.” He was telling his people where every living fish was, pointing with his finger down river, until they came down to the mouth of Skeena River. Then the shaman said, “Way out at sea.” They paddled along, and soon they came near Stephens Island, where there is a good place for camping on a sandy shore. The shaman said, “His is the place that my supernatural helper has pointed out to me.” They all camped on the sandy shore: and the shaman said to his people, “Go and bring down crooked branches of red and yellow cedar.” His people went and fetched crooked branches. Moreover, the shaman said, “Make hooks out of them.” and they did so. They obeyed the shaman. “Let the women make fishing-lines out of red-cedar bark,” and the women made fishing-lines. They measured off sixty fathoms for each fishing-line. Moreover, he said to them, “Go, ye women, and bring down thin spruce roots and split them!” They did as the shaman had said. Then the shaman also said to the men, “Go down when the tide is very low. Then you will find a kind of fish under the rocks. with eight legs and a round head, with

eyes on the neck. Bring it up and tie it to your wooden hooks for

bait.” The men did as the shaman had told them. After they had

done so, the shaman told them to launch their canoes to go out

fishing, so they went. The shaman was standing on the beach, and

directed them. The shaman wore all the clothes of his supernatural

helper. Devoured By Martens put on a bear skin for a garment.

He had on his dancing-apron and his crown of bear claws. lie

painted his face red mixed with charcoal. lie had a rattle in each

hand, and eagle down scattered all over his body. Then the shaman

said again, “Every living fish, every living fish;” and his people

had to repeat what he said, “Every living fish, every living fish!”

The shaman repeated this three or four times. Then they (the

people) went, and the shaman remained standing there on the beach,

pointing in the direction toward which they were to go. He said,

“Go a little farther to the open sea, and you will find them.” They went on, and the shaman was still standing on the beach. Then he said, “Pull up your fishing-lines!” They hauled up their lines, and all the hooks were full of halibut. The people were afraid of them because they were new to them. Finally a shaman told the people to take the halibut into their canoes. They took them ashore and cooked them, and Devoured By Martens was the first to eat of them. His supernatural helper told him that halibut is good food. So the starving people obtained the halibut. Now, they were all satisfied, for they had every living fish, as the supernatural power had told Devoured By Martens. His is the first time that the people of Skeena River reached the sea, and the first time that they learned how to catch halibut at the bottom of the sea. They built a new village there, and did not return up Skeena River. His is Devoured By Martens’ dancing-song: