ON THE ETHNOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA, 581 
Sturgeon is often hard pressed, and obliged to use strategy to get away 
from his pursuers. It is to his efforts to thus escape that the winds and 
turns and angles in the Fraser are due. He caused them to appear when 
his pursuers were getting too near and embarrassing him. 
When the Sturgeon chief gets back to the coast, the son of the 
captured woman is much grieved to hear of the disaster which has befallen his 
tribe, and he determines to avenge the slaughter of his friends when older. 
He thereupon undergoes a course of discipline and exercise to fit himself 
to become a powerful medicine man. In course of time he acquires great 
power. He now determined to take his revenge upon the Nicola men. 
He goes up the river, and in time gets to Nicola. When he arrives he 
goes to where his mother is. She does not recognise him in the tall and 
handsome man before her. The people are much surprised at the visit of 
the stranger, but treat him hospitably. They inquire from what direction 
he comes. He answers: ‘From below.’ The Grizzly, the Black-bear, 
the Badger, the Wolverine, the Weasel, the Wolf, and the Coyote suggest 
that they shall hold a great dance and test their medicine powers against 
that of the stranger. He agrees, and that same night a great medicine 
dance is held. They first let the fire out, and then they began the 
contest, one by one. The Black-bear opens the dance, but he is a failure. 
The others follow in due order, but none of them is able to do anything 
very wonderful till Snikia’p the Coyote comes forward. Snikia’p has 
power over the north wind, and can summon it at his will. When he 
begins to dance the wind begins to rise. As he proceeds and his dancing 
quickens, the wind increases in force and volume, till presently the very 
ladder is shaking and the snow is falling fast. This dance is considered 
a great success by his companions. When he stops, the wind and snows 
stop too. It is now the stranger’s turn. Before he begins he goes to his 
mother and tells her she must go outside. She leaves the keekwilee-house. 
As soon as she is gone he begins his dance, singing as he dances a fire 
song : ‘0/1, 6/1, 6/1, 61,’ &e. (stem of term ‘fire,’ as seen in the word d'iyip= 
to burn). Sparks now began to fly about, and presently sheets of flame 
appear, and in a short time the house is on fire, and every one is much 
frightened. The stranger stops and utters the word Aho’sa, and the fire 
disappears. Snikia’p now dances a second time, and again the cold north 
wind and the snow appear. Ha’nni’s son exhibits his power again in like 
manner, and is followed a third time by Snikia’p. The young man now 
finds that he has the strongest medicine, and prepares to carry out his 
scheme of revenge. He commences to dance a third time. This time he 
sings his fire song louder, and dances more rapidly. Soon the flames 
spread everywhere. They burn the house and the people, and when 
everything is well on fire he gives a great jump, and leaps out through 
the smoke-hole. Everybody is destroyed by the fire, and the slaughter 
of his tribe is thus avenged. He now returns to the coast, taking his 
mother back with him. 
The N’tlaka’pamug Indians account for the presence of the fish in the 
rivers up country by saying that when the Nicola Animals killed the 
Coast Fish the spawn of many of the latter was left in the streams, which 
later developed into fish. One of the effects, though, of the great licking 
the Fish got is seen, they believe, in the form of the descendants of some 
of them. For instance, the flat-headed river-cod is said to have inherited 
his flat head from his ancestor, who was killed by a great blow, which 
knocked his head flat. 
