“He can change into any desired form, and many are the legends about him. One which was related to me was that ages ago the Indians were out seal-hunting. The weather was calm and the sea smooth. One of these killers, or blackfish, a species of porpoise, kept alongside of a canoe, and the young men amused themselves by throwing stones from the canoe ballast and hitting the fin of the killer. After some pretty hard blows from these rocks the creature made for the shore, where it grounded on the beach. Soon a smoke was seen, and their curiosity prompted them to ascertain the cause, but when they reached the shore they discovered, to their surprise, that it was a large canoe, and not the Skana that was in the beach, and that a man was on shore cooking some food. He asked them why they threw stones at his canoe. ‘You have broken it,’ he said, ‘and now go into the woods and get some cedar withes and mend it.’ They did so, and when they had finished the man said, ‘Turn your backs to the water and cover your heads with your skin blankets and don’t look till I call you.’ They did so, and heard the canoe grate on the beach as it was hauled down to the surf. Then the man said, ‘Look, now.’ They looked, but when it came to the second breaker it went under and presently came up outside of the breaker a killer and not a canoe, and the man or demon was in its belly. This allegory is common among all the tribes on the Northwest Coast, and even with the interior tribes with whom the salmon takes the place of the orca, which never ascends the fresh-water rivers. The Chilcat and other tribes of Alaska carve figures of salmon, inside of which is the full length figure of a nude Indian. * * * Casual observers without inquiry will at once pronounce it to be Jonah in the fish’s belly, but the allegory is of ancient origin, far antedating the advent of the white man or the teachings of the missionary.”
The same author, Pl. XLIX, gives an explanation of Fig. 665, which is a copy of a Haida slate carving, representing the “Bear-Mother.”
Fig. 665.—Bear-Mother. Haida.
The Haida version of the myth is as follows:
A number of Indian squaws were in the woods gathering berries when one of them, the daughter of a chief, spoke in terms of ridicule of the whole bear species. The bears descended on them and killed all but the chief’s daughter, whom the king of the bears took to wife. She bore him a child half human and half bear. The carving represents the agony of the mother in suckling this rough and uncouth offspring. One day a party of Indian bear hunters discovered her up a tree and were about to kill her, thinking her a bear, but she made them understand that she was human. They took her home and she afterwards became the progenitor of all Indians belonging to the bear totem. They believe that the bear are men transformed for the time being. This carving was made by Skaows-ke'ay, a Haida. Cat. No. 73117, U. S. Nat. Museum. Skidegate village, Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia. Collected by James G. Swan.
Dr. F. Boas (d) gives the following account of a myth of the Kwakiut Indians illustrated on a house front at Alert Bay, copied here as Fig. 666.
Fig. 666.—Thunder-bird grasping whale.