Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/848

828 stones which are piled about it, in passing which the Indians always throw some little offering upon it—such as matches, a fragment of tobacco, or a shred of clothing, which were seen by the author. The story attached to it relates that a lonely woman called Grizzly Bear made of pitch the figure of a girl to be a companion to her, who became her daughter. She warned the girl that when she bathed she must not afterward sit or lie in the sun to get warm. The girl tried the forbidden experiment after her fourth bath, and was melted away. Grizzly made another daughter of clay, and told her that she must not rub herself when in the water. This girl disobeyed likewise and was washed away. The old woman than made another daughter of wood, on whom it was not necessary to impose restrictions. This girl, after a fourth bath, was accosted by a trout, which she said she would like for a husband. On repeating her wish the fourth time the trout appeared as a young man, became her husband, and took her with four efforts, the first three of which were balked, to his lower country. A boy and a girl were born to this couple. They were taunted about having no grandmother, and, questioning their mother on the subject, were told that. they had a grandmother living in the upper country. They might go up there and would find her as an old woman digging roots on the hillside, but must not speak to her, though they might go to her house and eat whatever food they might find there. The children acting upon these instructions, the woman missed the food, and, observing the footprints of the children, concluded that none but her daughter's children would visit her house in that way. She therefore prepared some potent medicine, and, going to a stump in the hillside where she was accustomed to work, told it that when the children appeared it must move and seem to be a woman digging. The woman then concealed herself in the house, while the stump acted as it had been bidden. The children, after regarding the stump for a time with some doubt, ventured into the house, when the woman threw her medicine upon them. The medicine fell all over the boy, who was changed to an ordinary human being, but only partly over the girl, and she became a little dog. The boy and the dog, in whom he failed to recognize his sister, had some curious adventures, in the course of which he learned the truth. He went to his grandmother and questioned her on the subject. She told him that if, when shooting, his arrow should lodge in a tree, or anywhere above his reach, however little, he must not climb up to get it. Soon afterward he lost three arrows in this way, but a fourth time his arrow stuck in a tree not far up, and he climbed on a branch to get it; but the arrow continued to move further up and he had to climb after it, and though ho thought that he had not gone very far, he looked