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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The Milky Way is the dog's trail. The thunder is caused by a 

 great bird that lives far up in the sky. The lightning is made by 

 the shooting of its arrows. At first there were no clouds. The 

 daughter of the coyote married the thunder, and her father gave 

 the clouds for a blanket. The Kootenays believe that they came 

 from the East ; and one of their myths ascribes to them an origin 

 from a hole in the ground east of the Rocky Mountains. Another 

 account says they sprang from the hairs of the black bear, which 

 fell on the ground after he came out of the belly of the great fish 

 that had swallowed him. There were no women at first. By 

 and by an Indian went up into the mountains, and from a spirit 

 who lived there received the first Kootenay woman. The origin 

 of horses is ascribed to a medicine man who made a stick into the 

 shape of the animal and then threw it away, whereupon it became 

 a horse. The belief prevails that the white men get their cattle 

 from the sea. It is said that they go every year to the Pacific 

 Ocean to receive the cattle which come out of the waters. Many 

 of the animal myths remind one of Uncle Remus. 



Some very interesting legends are related by Prof. George W. 

 Dawson as communicated to him by Mr. J. W. Mackay, Indian 

 agent at Kamloops, from the stock of the Shuswap Indians. Like 

 most of the Indian people they have a culture or creation hero 

 with supernatural attributes, who with them figures as a coyote or 

 small wolf, and is named Skil-ap. In the old times the salmon 

 could not ascend the Fraser River on account of a dam which 

 two old witches had made at Hell-gate Canon. He told the peo- 

 ple he would go down the river and break the dam, so that 

 the salmon could come up, and instructed them that he would 

 make his approach known by a great smoke. He transformed 

 himself into a smooth, flat piece of board, floated down to the 

 dam, was picked up by the women, who undertook to use the 

 board as a plate, emerged from it as a child, and was cared for by 

 them, till one day when they were absent he put something on 

 his head that made him invulnerable, and destroyed the dam, 

 after which the salmon began to go up in great numbers. Then 

 he followed the bank of the river, keeping abreast of the van- 

 guard of the salmon, and making a great smoke by setting fire to 

 the woods as he proceeded, so that the people knew that he was 

 coming. Near the outlet of the Kamloops Lake he stopped to eat, 

 and made a fish weir at a spot where some high rocks may still 

 be seen. At the mouth of the Clearwater he completed a salmon 

 dam he found the people making ; and there are to the present 

 day steep rocks on either side of the river, and above them a large 

 pool or basin where he fished with his scoop-net and which is still 

 a noted salmon-fishing place. On the rocks may be seen the 

 prints of his feet where he stood to fish. Thus the salmon were 



