When they saw the Squirrel coming, all cried: “Room! Make room for him!”
Then the Squirrel stood up before the chief and asked: “What can I do for you, my friends?”
Eagle told him that they wanted him to make a picture of a canoe on birch bark with his teeth; to make many more pieces all alike; then to put them in his “miknakq,”[10] and let each bird take one. “Whoever gets the piece with the canoe on it, shall make our canoes.”
The Squirrel went at once and stripped the bark from a birch-tree, prepared the lots, and put them in his pouch.
“Who takes the first?” asked the Owl.
“Let ‘Mid-dessen’ [Black Duck] take the first,” said the chief.
Mid-dessen stepped forward, and came back with a piece of bark in his bill. So each one went in his turn, and the lot fell to the Partridge.
Now the Partridge is always low-spirited and hardly ever speaks a word; and this set all the other birds in an uproar, and they all sang songs, each after his own fashion, and they decided to have a great feast.
“Get the horn,” said the chief. When it was brought, he gave it to Sīps, the “mū-ta-quessit,” or dance-singer; then the big dance began, and it lasted for many days.
When the feast was over, the chief said: “Now, Partridge, you must make the canoes, sound and good, and all alike. Cheat no one, but do your work well.”