FABLE AND FOLKLORE 229 



it was to be done the Indians were unable to say. The 

 story proceeds: 



Immediately after this event the corbeau [raven] made his 

 appearance. "Come," says l'epervier to the corbeau, "would you 

 not wish to have a coat like mine?" "Hold your tongue!" re- 

 joined the corbeau. "With your crooked bill is not white hand- 

 somer than any other color?" The others argued with the 

 corbeau to consent, but he remained inflexible, which so 

 exasperated l'epervier and the others that they determined to 

 avenge this affront, and each taking a burnt coal in his bill 

 they blacked him all over. The corbeau, enraged at this treat- 

 ment, and determined not to be singular, espied a flock of 

 etourneaux [blackbirds] and, without shaking off the black dust 

 of his feathers, threw himself amongst them and bespattered 

 them all over with black, which is the reason for their still re- 

 taining this color. 



Further south, on Puget Sound, once lived the tribe of 

 Twanas, who held that in former times men painted 

 themselves in various hues, whereupon Dokblatt, their 

 culture-hero, who notoriously was fond of changing 

 things, turned these men into birds, which explains the 

 present diversity in avian plumage. 



The Arawaks of Venezuela, however, account for this 

 matter by saying that the birds obtained their gay feathers 

 by selecting parts of a huge, gaudily colored water-snake 

 that the cormorant killed for them by diving into the 

 water; yet the cormorant, with great modesty, kept for 

 himself only the snake's head, which was blackish. 



Most explanatory stories concern single kinds of birds, 

 and inform us how they got the peculiar features by which 

 we identify them with their names ; and here we get back 

 to the nearctic raven. A history of the exploits of this 

 personage — bird, bird-man or bird-god — who is the hero 

 of more tales than any other of the giants that flourished 



