Page:Myths and Legends of British North America.djvu/167

 HOW THE INDIANS FIRST OBTAINED BLANKETS

Chilcotin

NCE a Being with great power sat on a stone in the middle of a river, and as he sat there, he wailed. So people were afraid to pass up and down in their canoes. But one day a man came poling upstream, and when he heard the wailing, he got out of his canoe and wailed with the stranger. Yet he was a little afraid and kept one foot in the canoe, ready to shove off.

The stranger said his son had been hunting in the snow mountains and had been buried by a snowslide. As the man wailed with him, Esterreqot was pleased. He took a sheet of metal on which he had been sitting and gave it to his visitor. He told him to come to his house in the mountains, but to come at night so no one would know it. Thus he did.

When the man came to the house of Esterreqot, he was given two boxes, one full of food and one full of blankets. The man took them back to his tribe and invited the people to a feast. When they came, they