TRAITS OF NORTHWESTERN INDIANS. 827 



enabled to ascend into all the rivers of the Shnswap country. 

 Skil-ap is expected to return at some distant period when " the 

 world turns " and the good old days come back. 



There were in the early times of Skil-ap other supernatural 

 beings who roamed the world, the most important of whom was 

 named Knil-i-elt ; and it may be, Prof. Dawson suggests as a 

 point worthy of inquiry, that in the stories related of Knil-i-elt and 

 Skil-ap we find the mingling of mythological ideas derived from 

 two different sources. Knil-i-elt had no recognized father or any 

 relative but his mother, and was the offspring of the union of the 

 woman with a root which is eaten by the Indians. Learning the 

 mystery of his birth after he had become a great hunter, he re- 

 proached his mother concerning it, and said he would go away 

 and never return to her. She then told him of all the evil and 

 malignant monsters living in the country farther down the river, 

 and he resolved to extirpate them. Among his exploits was a trial 

 of strength with two friends, in which each should push his head 

 against a rock and see which could make the deepest impression. 

 Each of the friends made a shallow indentation, but Knil-i-elt 

 pressed his head in to the shoulders. Impressions in the rock are 

 still shown by the Indians, and Hat Creek, near the mouth of 

 which they were made, was named from the incident. A 

 conflict with the eagle monster resulted in the death of the eagle 

 and the capture of its eaglets, pulling out the tail feathers 

 from which, Knil-i-elt reduced them to common eagles, able to 

 harm no man. At the outlet of Kamloops Lake was an elk 

 monster that lived in the middle of the river and killed and ate 

 men. Knil-i-elt, having made a raft, embarked and floated down 

 the stream, when, before long, the elk seized and swallowed him. 

 His friends, who were looking on, thought they had seen the last 

 of him, but Knil-i-elt stabbed the elk to the heart with the weap- 

 on he carried, and then cut his way out of its belly and came to 

 shore, bringing the elk with him, and invited his friends to eat 

 some of the meat. He then reduced the elk to its present posi- 

 tion, saying to it: "You will no longer kill men ; they will in 

 future always kill you." The badger was also in this early time 

 a formidable monster, and had its lodge stored with dead men, 

 collected for food. Knil-i-elt caught the badger, and striking him 

 on the head said, " Hereafter you will be nothing but a common 

 badger, able only to fight with dogs when they attack you." He 

 further brought to life again all the people whom he found dead. 

 Knil-i-elt met his fate from four witches, whose supernatural 

 power was superior to his, and who turned him and the two 

 friends who had accompanied him in all his adventures into stone. 



On the trail leading from Kamloops toward Trout Lake the 

 scanty remnant of an old stump protrudes from among a few 



