Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/256



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There is a story published that these Indians will not ascend Mount Shasta for fear of the Great Spirit there. This is only partly true. They will not ascend the mountain above the timber line under any circumstances ; but it is not fear of either good or evil spirit that restrains them. It is their profound veneration for the Good Spirit : the Great Spirit who dwells in this mountain with his people as in a tent.

This mountain, as I said before, they hold is his wigwam, and the opening at the top whence the smoke and steam escapes is the smoke-place of his lodge, and the entrance also from the earth. An other mistake, which I wish to correct, is the state ment of one writer, that they claim the grizzly bear as a fallen brother, and for this reason refuse to kill or molest him. This is far from the truth. Instead of the grizzly bear being a bad Indian undergoing a sort of purgatory for his sins, he is held to be a pro pagator of their race.

The Indian account of their creation is briefly this. They say that one late and severe spring-time many thousand snows ago, there was a great storm about the summit of Shasta, and that the Great Spirit sent his youngest and fairest daughter, of whom he was very fond, up to the hole in the top, bidding her speak to the storm that came up from the sea, and tell it to be more gentle or it would blow the moun tain over. He bade her do this hastily, and not put her head out, lest the wind would catch h