Myths And Legends of British North America
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HOW THE EARTH WAS FORMED Cree ONE winter day Wisagatcak was chiseling the ice, trying to catch Big Beaver. At last he caught him by shutting up the creek with stakes, leaving only an opening in the center of the stream. Then Wisagatcak stood there, waiting for Big Beaver to attempt an escape in that way. He stood there a long while. Just as evening came, Wisagatcak saw a beaver coming along, but just as he was about to kill him, Muskrat came up quietly behind him and scratched him. Wisagatcak was so startled he did not catch the beaver. At last it became dark, so he went ashore and built a fire, but he had nothing to eat. He said to himself, "Tomorrow I will try to break the dam down and dry up the creek." Early next morning Wisagatcak made a pointed stick from juniper wood. Then he broke the dam down, but
...yet the creek did not dry up. The water rose, and rose, and rose, until Wisagatcak no longer stood on dry ground. So he at once made a raft and got on that. From " Memoirs, American Museum of Natural History '' Carved Stone Dishes Showing the Indian love of the grotesque He took on the raft with him two of every kind of animal, and stayed there with them for two weeks. So they drifted about because there was no chance to land anywhere. And while he drifted, Big Beaver was making medicine against him for breaking the dam. Now after two weeks, Wisagatcak wished to know trie depth of water under the raft. He tied a long string to the feet of Muskrat and asked him to dive down and bring up some mud. Muskrat went down, down, down! He could not even reach the bottom, and drowned before Wisagatcak could bring him up. Then he waited three days and told Crow to go and see if he could find any moss. Crow came back without anything in his bill. When Crow came ba... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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