278 TRIBES AND DIALECTS OF CONNECTICUT [Era. ann. 43 



was a sign to Ashbow's wife, and from tliat time she never drank 



rum, neither did the other men who heard the thunder. Aslibow 



got well. 



The Watee-Tight Basket 



An old Indian man wanted some cider. He went to a neighbor's 

 house and was told that he could have as much as he could carry 

 in his basket. It was a very cold day. The old man took his 

 basket and went down to the brook and dipped the basket in the 

 water. Then he took it out and let the water freeze on it. This he 

 did many times until there was a thin coating of ice on the basket. 

 Then he went back to show it to the man. This time he filled the 

 basket with cider and the old man went home. (Collected by 

 Gladys Tantaquidgeon, 1925.) 



Petee Sky Changed to a Rock 



SCATTICOOK LEGENDS 



This is the story of Peter Sky. They said that he lived north of 

 here. He used to go by a swamp that lay near a road. One dark 

 night he and some one else went to town and got some whisky. 

 Then they came down that road until they reached the swamp. 

 They took their whisky down there and began to drink when they 

 had found a nice place to sit on. Soon they fell to quarreling over 

 their whisky, and in the fight that followed Pete was killed. The 

 other Indian got away and was never heard of again. But the next 

 day some people coming by found Pete's body there and a rock with 

 a hole in it close by. That rock was never noticed much by the 

 Indians thereafter until one dark and foggy night, when some of 

 them went down to the swamp on their way home to drink something 

 they had bought. They heard noises from the rock, and one of 

 them poured some of the goods into the hole. Immediately there was 

 a voice from the rock. It called for more, and they kept on piouring 

 whisky in until the voice was the voice of a drunken man. That 

 rock will "holler" now on foggy nights if you pour whisky into it. 



The Stoby of Old Chickens 



In the old days the Scatticooks were in the habit of going from 

 these mountains down to the salt water at the mouth of the Housa- 

 tonic for a few months every year to get their fish and oysters from 

 the sound. They had a trail that ran on the west bank of the 

 Housatonic until it reached the Cat's Paw falls near New Milford. 

 There it crossed to the east bank, and so on to Long Island Sound. 



The journey from here took two days and one night. There was a 

 farm about a third the way down, where the Indians used to camp 

 for the night when they came by. A white man had a barn there 

 and they would often sleep in that. 



