CHAPTER XXII

LEGEND OF FLATHEAD ORIGIN

James Henry, a well known Indian of Port Gamble, who follows the sealing business is responsible for the story of the sky falling down.

A long time ago all the Indians with flattened heads lived away up north in the region of perpetual ice and snow. The parents of the race were ten brothers and all of them were very big men. They lived on deer and bear meat and the flesh of tarmigan or white grouse. They were all excellent archers and they killed so many white grouse with their bows and arrows that the Sagh-a-lie Tyee began to think that they would exterminate the species and he told them to kill no more white grouse for one “snow,” or winter season. They heeded him not, for they kept on slaughtering the grouse and eating them. In those days the sun passed over the earth from east to west and retraced its steps while they slept, and the sky was above the sun. One day the Sagh-a-lie Tyee became much angered at them for killing so many grouse, so he let the sky fall on them.

Then there followed a long hard winter and many people perished of hunger and cold for they had not killed bear and deer and prepared for the winter and it was so dark and there was so much ice and snow that they could not see to hunt and fish. These ten brothers awaited the return of day for a long time and at last the youngest of them in utter despair set about it and tried to lift up the sky with poles, and all his brothers helped him. They worked in this way for many months. They would raise one corner of the sky up so they could just see the day light and it would fall back on them, and again all would be total darkness, and all the land would be covered with ice and snow. At length, however, they got one big tall pole and all the Indians went to work with it and tried to prop the sky up, but for a long time they met with failure. At last, however, they succeed in getting the sky to start up long enough so that the sun could get under the great hollow hemisphere which they believe the sky to be, then the sun followed around the longest way in the day time of summer going back on the upper, or outside of the sky in the shortest route by night. In the winter months it passes across the under side of the sky by the shortest route, and back on the outside by the longest route so that ever since that time the Indians have had the longest days and shortest nights in the dry months of summer when they wanted to fish and hunt. It has always been light in the day time so that people could see to work, and dark at night so that they could sleep better, and the Indians have had the longest nights and shortest days in the wet months of winter when they could do but little and wanted to sleep most of the time.