A quaint little legend comes from the Tillamooks, whose home was formerly on the Oregon coast, where the tides do not rise very much. In the beginning of the world, it teaches, the crow had a voice like that of the thunder-bird, and the thunder-bird the voice of a crow. The latter proposed to exchange voices. The crow agreed to this, but demanded that in return the thunder-bird give her low water along the seashore, so that she might more easily gather the clams and other mussels, which was a part of a Tillamook woman’s daily task. The thunder-bird therefore made the water draw back a very long distance. But when the crow went out on the waste of sea-bottom she saw so many marine monsters that she was frightened, and begged the thunder-bird not to make the waters recede so far; and that is the reason that now but little ocean-bottom is exposed at ebb tide on the Oregon coast.
The Gualala Indians were a tribe of the great Pomo family that half a century ago dwelt happily in the northwestern corner of Sonoma County, California, and their staple food was the flour of crushed and filtered acorns of several kinds of oaks. In their country, as elsewhere in that State, the California woodpecker (Melanerpes) is a very common bird, which has the habit of drilling numerous small holes in pines and other soft-wooded trees, and fixing in each an acorn—a method of storing its favorite food against a time of famine. The Indians understood this very well, and in times of scarcity of food in camp they would cut down the small trees and climb the big ones, and rob the cupboards of the far more provident birds. “And here,” says Powers,[[19]] “I will make mention of a kind of sylvan barometer.... These acorns are stored away before the rainy season sets in, sometimes to the amount of a half-bushel, and when they are wetted they presently swell and start out a little. So always, when a rainstorm is brewing, the woodpeckers fall to work with great industry a day or two in advance and hammer them in all tight. During the winter, therefore, whenever the woods are heard rattling with the pecking of these busy little commissary-clerks heading up their barrels of worms, the Indian knows a rainstorm is certain to follow.”
The Chippeway Indians, as Schoolcraft noted, account for the friendly spirit of the robin by relating that he was once a young brave whose father set him a task too cruel for his strength, and made him starve too long when he had reached man’s estate and had to go through the customary initiation-ceremonies. He turned into a robin, and said to his father: “I shall always be the friend of man and keep near their dwellings. I could not gratify your pride as a warrior, but I will cheer you by songs.”
This pretty fiction is noteworthy, when one recalls the many instances in Greek and European myths and poetry of men and women transforming themselves into birds.
The Cherokees had an interesting story about the wren, always a busybody. She gets up early in the morning, they say, pries into everything, and goes around to every lodge in the settlement to get news for the birds’ council. When a new baby is born she finds out whether it is a boy or a girl, and reports to the council. If it is a boy the birds sing in mournful chorus: “Alas! The whistle of the arrow! My shins will burn,” for the birds know that when the boy grows older he will hunt them with his blowgun and arrows, and roast them on a stick. But if the baby is a girl they are glad, and sing: “Thanks! The sound of the pestle! At her home I shall surely be able to scratch where she sweeps,” because they know that after a while they will be able to pick up stray grains where she beats the corn into meal.[[104]]
In the myths or folklore of the Pawnees a character in several tales, as related by Grinnell,[[105]] is a little bird, smaller than a pigeon. “Its back is blue, but its breast white, and its head is spotted. It flies swiftly over the water, and when it sees a fish it dives down into the water to catch it. This bird is a servant or a messenger for the Nahurac.” The Nahurac are an assemblage of imaginary animals by whom many wonderful things are done; and it communicates to living men their wishes or orders, and acts as a guide when men are summoned to come or go somewhere. But this is perilously near the purely mythical, and it is mentioned only as an example of the widespread conception of birds as messengers and interpreters.
I hope I may be pardoned if I add to this group of Indian bird-stories one or two told in the Negro cabins of North Carolina, and probably elsewhere, and written down in Volume XI of the American Folk-Lore Journal, among many other tales of the out-door creatures to which the rural darkies like to attribute human attributes, and to use as puppets in their little comedies of animal life, which are likely to be keen satires on humanity. The one to be quoted is a parable of how Ann Nancy (a spider) got caught in a tight place by Mr. Turkey Buzzard, and how she escaped, for Mr. Buzzard was going to eat her.
“But,” says the narrator, “she beg so hard, and compliment his fine presence, and compare how he sail in the clouds while she ’bliged to crawl in the dirt, till he that proudful and set up he feel mighty pardonin’ spirit, and he let her go.”
Ann Nancy, however, did not enjoy the incident, and “jess study constant how she gwine get the best of every creeter,” and particularly of the tormenting bird.
“She knew Mr. Buzzard’s weak point am he stomach, and one day she make it out dat she make a dining, and ’vite Mr. Buzzard an’ Miss Buzzard an’ de chillens. Ann Nancy she know how to set out a dinin’ fo’ sure, and when dey all got sot down to the table, an’ she mighty busy passin’ the hot coffee to Mr. Buzzard an’ the little Buzzards, she have a powerful big pot o’ scalding water ready, and she lip it all over poor ol’ Mr. Buzzard’s haid, and the po’ ol’ man done been baldhaided from that day.