"'Here is some flint for you to kill deer and things with.'
"And he went to another tribe and did the same thing and to other tribes and did the same until he came to Flint Creek and then from that time they used the flint to put in their arrows and kill deer and elk.
"That is the story of the Flint."
*****
Coyote was the chosen one to whom the Great Spirit revealed the disaster which reduced the Selish from goodly multitudes of warriors to a handful of wretched, plague-stricken invalids. Old women are still fond of relating the story which they received from their mothers and their mothers' mothers even to the third and fourth generation.
Coyote laid down to rest and dreamed that the Voice of the Great Spirit sounded in his ears, saying that unless the daughter of the Chief became his bride a scourge would fall upon the people. When morning broke he sought out the Chief and told him of the words of the Voice, but the Chief, who was a haughty man, would not heed Coyote and coldly denied him the hand of his daughter in marriage.
Coyote returned to his lodge and soon there resounded through the forests the piercing cry of one in distress. Coyote rushed forth and beheld a man covered with sores across the river. This man related to Coyote how he was the last survivor of a war party that had come upon a village once occupied by the enemy whom they sought, but as they approached they saw no smoke arising from the tipis and no sign of life. They came forward very cautiously, but all was silent and deserted. From lodge to lodge they passed, and finally they came upon an old woman, pitted and scabbed, lying alone and dying. With her last breath she told them of a scourge which had fallen upon the village, consuming brave and child alike, until she, of all the lodges, was left to mourn the rest. Then one by one the war party which had ridden so gallantly to conquest and glory, felt an awful heat as of fire run through their veins. Burning and distraught they leaped into the cold waters of a river and died.
Such was the story of the man whom Coyote met in the woods. He alone remained, disfigured, diseased, doomed. So Coyote brought him into the village and quenched his thirst that he might pass more easily to the Happy Hunting Ground. But as the Great Spirit had revealed to Coyote while he slept, the scourge fell upon the people and laid them low, scarcely enough grief-stricken survivors remaining to weep for their lost dead.
*****
Besides this legendary narrative of the visitation of smallpox there are other authenticated instances of the plague wreaking its vengeance upon the Selish and depleting their villages to desolation. In this wise the tribe was thinned again and again and as early as 1813, Mr. Cox of the Northwest Fur Company, told in his "Adventures" that once the Selish were more powerful by far in number than in the day of his coming amongst them.