30. The Creation of the Earth by Old-One.
(cont.)Earth and her sisters will assume their original forms, and all together will become changed and new.”1 In this manner will come the end of the world, and this is why both bad and good people are found in the world at the present day. The children of the two women were male and female. They married one another, and from them all people are descended. None of them could live without the earth, fire, and water; therefore these are part of us, and are related to people as if by blood.
(The narrator of this story was a shaman called Nkamtcine'lx, belonging to Sulu's, and probably somewhat over seventy years of age. He stated that he never heard this tale except from his grandfather,- the first time when he was about eight or ten years of age. Other old men who had particular tales were Tcuie'ska of Nicola, who had a story of a man who watched the women bathing from the top of a tree, and Ye'luska of Spences Bridge, who had a long tale of women who hung their babies up in trees or bushes. He did not remember the details of these stories, but had heard them narrated only by these men. Tcuie'ska died a few years ago in Nicola, aged over eighty; and Ye'luska was killed in the Spences Bridge landslide in August, 1905, when aged about eighty.)
31. Old-One and the Creation of the Nicola Country.
Old-One was travelling about, and came upon a woman sitting in an attitude of Grief. She was bent forward, and her hands covered her face. He asked her why she was sorrowful, and she answered, “Because I am alone and deserted.” He said to her, “Do not be sorry, for I will make you great and the mother of many. All things will grow from you.” He transformed her into the earth, which he made expand, and shape itself into valleys, mountains, and plains. Her bones became the rocks, the largest ones, the mountain ranges and ridges. Her blood dried up, and assumed the form of gold, copper, and other metals. Much of it ran to one place and congealed in the form of a large mass of gold among the mountains. (The whites know this, and therefore always search for gold in the mountains, and not on the plains. They value the woman's blood very much, and are anxious to find the large deposit. They will never be able to find it, however, for Old-One made the mountains all so much alike, that it will be impossible for them to find the spot.) Now, Old-One commenced to make the Nicola country. He flattened, lowered, and heightened it here and there, until it became similar to what it is at the present day.
1. My informant was vague when questioned as to the nature of this change. He thought people might be conducted to the upper world or placed on some new earth created for them. He was sure there would be a re-union of the dead and the living, who afterwards would all live together under the same conditions. Both would have human form; and there would be no more sickness, death, misery, and evil. All would be good and happy. Conditions would be an improvement over both the spirit world and this world.
