70. War of the Nicola Animals and Fraser River Fish.
(cont.)One night he and Badger’s son went to the large underground house where the people were holding a medicine-dance. Each animal danced in turn, and sang his manitou-song. When Coyote danced, the weather became cold. At last the strange lad danced, and immediately it became dark, and a storm broke with thunder and lightning. The house was struck by a bolt and caught fire. Humpback's son ran up the ladder, and pulled Badger's son after him through the flames, which soon stopped all egress. Grisly Bear tried to get out, but the flames beat him back. He then hugged and bit the posts of the house to break them; but Humpback had made them turn like stone, and so Grisly Bear only broke his teeth. Coyote, Beaver, and others sang their songs to make ice, snow, rain, and water to come; but they and all the other animals were soon burned to death.
Now, only the Badger and his family, of all the people, were left at Zuxt. Humpback said to him, “I have had my revenge, and now return to my country; but I will come to visit you every second year, because you have been kind to me.” Since then the humpback salmon have run up the Nicola every second year. On parting, Badger gave Humpback a present of the aspen poplar, saying, “These will be your dentalia.” Therefore people say, that, just before the humpback salmon run, their chief says to the other salmon, “We go to the interior to see our dentalia.”
71. The Okanagon Fish People.1
The Fish people of the interior lived on the banks of a river in the Okanagon country at a place called Nkomsi'tuk. From this place the plateau runs back from the river valley perfectly flat, but is cut in two by a long and deep dry canyon, with steep rocky sides, which is quite invisible until its brink is reached. A large party of warriors from the southeastern extremity of the Okanagon country, on their way to attack the Shuswap, came to this plateau in the daytime, and, as their scouts reported having seen the village of the Fish people down in the valley, they made up their minds to await darkness and then attack them. They knew nothing of the deep, narrow cut in the plateau, and, when dusk came, they marched out toward the Okanagon village. It soon became dark, and, never suspecting any danger, they all walked over the edge of the chasm and were dashed to pieces. An old man, Bald-headed Eagle, was unable to keep up with the rest, and walked with the aid of a staff. Suddenly the point of his staff missed the ground, and, thinking there must be a hole ahead, he sat down and waited until daybreak, when he saw the remains of his friends lying mangled on the rocks below. In the morning some women went to gather service-berries at the base of the cliff's in the canyon, and one of them found fat blood, and pieces of flesh on the boulders of the rock-slide.
1. See Footnote 1, p. 350; I have also heard a Shuswap tale of a war-party meeting a similar fate. A similar story is told about a bluff in the Chilcotin valley near Crowhurst's place.
