HUNTING IN THE SNOW MOUNTAINS
Chilcotin
Once there was a boy who was very bad. He had sung a shaman’s song, and the shaman had scolded him.
Now late in the autumn he went out hunting alone. He went up the Chilcotin River, to a place near Siwash Bridge. Here he found three beavers, so he killed them. He skinned them and hid the meat, and went on up into the snow mountains. He came to a great gulch in the mountains, and looking down he saw all kinds of animals—deer, caribou, mountain sheep, and mountain goats. And as he looked down upon them from the top, he wished his brother were there to help him, there were so many. Then he went to a small cañon at the head of the gulch and waited.
Soon the boy heard someone calling, away down the valley, and the caribou started to run up through the cañon. As they crowded in, the young man shot all the big ones, until they lay in heaps all around him. So he made his camp there and started to cut up the meat.
Then the boy saw three men coming up the valley. As they came near, they asked, “Did you kill all these caribou?” He answered, “Yes, I did.”
Now these three men were Nun, or wolves. The Nun told the boy they had found his beaver meat in the valley below, and had eaten it. So they had helped him in his hunt. They had called away down in the valley and frightened the caribou.
Now the young man stayed at that place and hunted caribou and dried the meat until it made a huge pile. Then he danced and sang around the pile of meat, until it shrank into two large packs. So he started home. He carried one pack one day, and then went back and brought up the other pack. But he became tired. That was slow work. Therefore he danced and sang around these two packs until they became one small pack. Then he continued home. At last he reached the place where he had killed the beaver. He took the skins.
Then he came to the top of a hill near his village. He dropped the small pack of meat and it became at once a huge pile, just as it was before he danced and sang around it. Now he came into the village and heard wailing. The people thought he was lost. They were wailing for him.
The next morning the boy told the men to go to the top of the hill and bring in the meat he had left there. Two men started, but he told more to go. Then he ordered others to go, until all the men in the village had gone. When they brought the meat in, the young man gave a great meat potlatch.
So the boy became a shaman. The wolves were his helpers.