28 GEOEGE M. DAWSON ON THE 



He had besides a horse which had been given to him by traders who had established 

 themselves at "Walla-Walla. Thus provided, he met the Shuswap, Thompson and Simil- 

 kameen tribes in council, and invited them to join him in an attack on the Stlat-lim-uh 

 (Lillooets) in revenge for his father's death. These tribes consenting to join him, they 

 together, about the middle of the salmon season, and while the Stlat-lim-uh were occupied 

 in fishing, fell upon them suddenly. Taken unawares, the Stlat-lim-uh were disconcerted by 

 the noise and deadly effect of the guns and the appearance of N-kua-la on horseback riding 

 from place to place and directing the attack. They fled, with little resistance, and over 

 three hundred of them were killed, while many women and children were taken prisoners. 



On his return from this raid N-kua-la gave a great feast to his allies in the Nicola, 

 above the lake. To procure sufficient meat for this purpose, he drove a large herd of 

 wapiti (which were then abundant) into an enclosure or pound, where they were killed 

 with spears. The antlers of the animals killed at this time could, Mr. Mackay states, be 

 seen in two large, well-built heaps as late as the year 1863. He is also said to have driven 

 a herd of big-horn over a precipice near Stump Lake. 



The assassination of Samuel Black, in charge of the Hu.dson's Bay Company's post at 

 Kamloops, by an Indian of that vicinity, was a much later event in the history of the 

 Shuswaps. This happened, according to Bancroft,' in the winter of 1841-42. It is referred 

 to here in order to point to the circumstance that the occurrence has already become the 

 centre of mythical stories among the Shuswaps, a fact which throws some light on the 

 probable mode of origin of the various mythological and folk-lore stories of the people. 

 The Indian who killed Black is said to have been named Kwâ'-mis-kum, and he is reported 

 to have escaped capture in various supernatural ways, till at length, being closely pur- 

 sued, he drowned himself. Thus it is said that when he was camped near Tranquille 

 (Til-kwo-kwë'-ki-la) he was completely surrounded, bnt coming out from his tent, jumped 

 a prodigious distance over the heads of his pursuers, whose guns were unable to kill him. 

 The impression made by his feet where he alighted may still be seen, and so on. 



MyTHOLOCtY. 



The following myths are all those which I have been able to obtain in proximately 

 complete form. Several of them are already almost forgotten by the younger Indians, or, 

 if not forgotten, they cannot be induced to speak of them. The fundamental story of the 

 creation-hero in which the coyote figures is, of course, merely a variant of that common 

 among the Indians to the south of British Columbia, with some versions of which we are 

 already familiar. The most obvious points brought out in these stories of the Shuswaps 

 is the prominence of the number four and the constant recurrence of the idea of a meta- 

 morphosis of men and animals to rocks. 



Like most or all of the Indian people, the Shuswaps have a culture or creation-hero 

 with supernatural attributes, but unlike Us-tas of the Tinneh tribes, who had the likeness 

 of a man, the corresponding figure among the Shuswaps is a coyote or small wolf, named 

 Skil-âp'. This is a proper name and not the ordinary designation of the coyote, which in 

 this sense is called sin-a-hoo'-ha-loop.' 



1 Bancroft's Works, vol. xxxii, p. 135. ^ Both in the Shoo-wha'-pa-mooh dialect. 



