"SQAKTKTQUACLT,"[1] OR THE BENIGN-FACED, THE OANNES OF THE NTLAKAPAMUQ, BRITISH COLUMBIA.
(Read at Meeting of 21st June, 1898)
The following story is one of several which the writer recently obtained from Chief Mischelle of Lytton. It is not complete as the old Indians used to relate it; he had forgotten the latter portions of it. It was originally so long that those listening to it invariably went to sleep before it was concluded. Few Indians, I was informed, know so much of it as Mischelle. It is important, therefore, to place on record what I was able to gather from him. To those familiar with Dr. G. M. Dawson's Notes on the Shuswap People of British Columbia[2] it will be seen at once that Sqaktktquaclt of the Ntlakapamuq and Skilap of the Shuswaps are one and the same person, only in the case of the former we have an abundance of detail which is wanting in Dr. Dawson's account of the latter. Mischelle was a good raconteur, and took the liveliest pleasure in relating to me his store of lore. My method of recording was as follows: I made copious notes at the time, and expanded them immediately after. When written out, I read them to him and corrected them where necessary according to his instructions. They are, therefore, in their present form substantially as he gave them.
In the remote past the red-headed woodpecker was a very handsome man who had two wives, a black bear and a grizzly bear. They were not animals[3] then, but women in bear-form. When the woodpecker was a youth he had gone away by himself into a solitary spot, as was the custom of young men, and fasted and practised himself in athletic exercises, asking each morning before sunrise that Kōkpĕ (the chief) would bless him. Kōkpĕ
- ↑ In the spelling of the native words I have followed the phonetics of Dr. Boas as used in his Reports on the N. W. Tribes of Canada.
- ↑ Trans. Roy. Sac. Canada, 1891, Section ii.
- ↑ In the mythological stories all animals were originally human. Their present bestial natures were imposed upon them by some hero or other of the old time, for some misdeed or by the enchantment of some wizard. Do we not see in this belief the explanation of their totemic systems and crests?
