The culture-hero of the Twana Indians of the Puget Sound region was Dokibat, as has been mentioned, who had a habit of changing things, turning men into stones or birds, and so forth. A boy hearing that he was coming, and fearing some unpleasant transformation, ran away, carrying with him a water-box (used in canoe-journeys by sea) with water in it. The water shaking about sounded somewhat like pu-pu-pu when repeated rapidly; but as the boy ran wings came to him and he began to fly, and the noise in the box sounded like the cooing of the wood-dove, which the Twans called “hum-o.” A man was pounding against a cedar-tree. Dokibat came along and asked him what he was doing. “Trying to break or split this tree,” was the answer. Dokibat said: “You may stop and go away, and I will help you.” As the woodman went wings came to him, also a long bill and a strong head, and he became a woodpecker.
How the woodpecker got the red mark on the back of its head, which is a characteristic of most species, is explained by the Algonkins thus, according to Schoolcraft:[[102]] Manabozho, the renowned culture-hero of the Ojibways and their relatives, made a campaign against the Shining Manito, and at last, finding him in his lair, a mortal combat began. At length Manabozho had left only three arrows, and the fight was going against him. Ma-ma, the woodpecker, cried out: “Shoot him at the base of the scalp-lock; it is his only vulnerable spot!” (The Indians have many stories turning on this point, and reminding us of that of Achilles.) Then with the third and last arrow Manabozho hit the fatal spot, and taking the scalp of the Shining Manito as a trophy he rubbed blood from it on the woodpecker’s head, which remains red in his descendants. That the redheaded species (Melanerpes torquatus), abundant in summer in the Ojibway country, is meant here is evident from the further statement that its red feathers were thereafter regarded as symbols of valor, and were chosen to ornament the warriors’ pipes, for no other woodpecker of the region could furnish enough such feathers to answer the purpose.
The Menominees, of southern Wisconsin, had a different story relating to the scarlet crest of another kind of woodpecker. They say that Ball-carrier, who was a bad-tempered sort of fellow among their demigods, promised the logcock, or big black woodpecker of the forest, that if he would kill a certain Cannibal-Woman he should have a piece of her scalp with its lock of red hair. So the bird rushed at her and drove his chisel-like beak into her heart. Then Ball-carrier gave her red scalp-lock to the logcock, which placed it on his own head, as one may see now. In Indo-European mythology woodpeckers figure among lightning-birds, and the red mark on their heads is deemed the badge of their office.
The need of accounting for notable features like this in animals seems to have appealed to all sorts of people, all around the world, in each case according to local ideas. Thus an Arabic tradition current in Palestine accounts for the fork in the tail of swallows by the fact that a bird of this species baffled a scheme of the Old Serpent (Eblis) in Paradise, whereupon the serpent struck at it, but succeeded only in biting out a notch in the middle of its tail. Another example: Nigerian negros say that the vulture got its bald head by malicious transference of a disease with which a green pigeon had been suffering—a native guess at the filth-bacteria to which modern zoologists attribute the nakedness! Oddly enough, a folk-tale in Louisiana, related by Fortier,[[106]] similarly explains the baldness of our turkey-buzzard by saying it came from a pan of hot ashes thrown at the vulture’s head in revenge for an injury it had committed on a rabbit—and “buzzards never eat bones of rabbits.”
The Iowas account for the peculiar baldness of this bird by a long story recounted by Spence[[12]] in which their mythical hero Ictinike figures. Ictinike asked a buzzard to carry him toward a certain place. The crafty bird consented, but presently dropped him in a tall hollow tree. Ictinike was wearing ’coonskins, and when presently some persons came along he thrust their tails through cracks in the trunk. Three women, thinking that raccoons had become imprisoned in the tree, cut a hole to capture them, whereupon Ictinike came out and the women ran away. Then Ictinike lay down wrapped in his furs as if asleep, and an eagle, a crow, and a magpie came and began pecking at him. The buzzard, thinking this meant a feast, rushed down from the sky, and Ictinike jumped up and tore off its scalp, since which the buzzard has been bald.
But many explanations of why birds are now so or so make no mention of Ravens or Ictinikes, but just tell you the fact. Thus the Eskimos of northwestern Alaska relate that one autumn day very long ago the cranes prepared to go southward. As they were gathered in a great flock they saw a beautiful girl standing alone near a village. Admiring her greatly, the cranes gathered about her, and lifting her on their wide-spread wings bore her far up and away. While the cranes were taking her aloft their brethren circled about below her so closely that she could not fall, and with hoarse cries drowned her screams for help. So she was swept away into the sky, and never seen again. Always since that time the cranes have circled about in autumn, uttering loud cries.
The Hudson Bay Eskimos tell their boys and girls when they see the funny little guillemots by the sea-cliffs and ask about them, that once a lot of children were playing near the brink of such a precipice. Their noisy shouts disturbed a band of seal-hunters on the strand below; and one of the men exclaimed, “I wish the cliff would topple over and bury those noisy children!” In a moment the height did so, and the poor infants fell among the rocks below. There they were changed into guillemots and dwell to this day on the crags at the edge of the sea.
Another juvenile story explains that the swallows became what they are by a change from Eskimo children who were making “play-house” igloos of mud on the top of a cliff. To this day the swallows come every summer and fix their mud nests to the rocks, recalling their childish joy in the previous state of their existence. Hence the Eskimo children particularly love to watch these birds in their “igluiaks,” which are said not to be molested by the predatory ravens.
Once a long war was fought between the brants and the herons, according to a Tlingit legend, but at last the swans intervened and a peace was arranged. To celebrate it the herons indulged in much dancing, and have been dancers ever since. I am inclined to think this another crane legend, because the few herons known in the Tlingit country do not indulge in such antics, whereas the cranes do “dance” a great deal in the mating-season. These Indians, by the way, say that they learned the use of pickaxes by watching a heron strike the ground with its beak; and the suggestion of snowshoes was caught from the ptarmigan, on whose feet grow in winter expansions of the toes that serve to make it easier for the bird to walk on snow.
The ruffed grouse, the Ojibways declare, was marked with eleven spots on its tail to remind him of the time when he wouldn’t do as he was told, and had to fast eleven days as a punishment. On the other hand Manabozho rewarded the kingfisher for some useful information by hanging a medal (in color) about its neck; but in bestowing the medal Manabozho snatched at the kingfisher’s head, intending to twist it off—a very characteristic dodge of these treacherous old culture-heroes—but only rumpled the bird’s crest, so that it has been a ragged sort of headdress ever since.