The Indians of California say that Mt. Shasta was the first part of the earth created. Surely it is grand enough and beautiful enough to lay claim to this pre-eminence. When the waters receded the earth became green with vegetation and joyous with the song of birds, the Great Manitou hollowed out Mt. Shasta for a wigwam. The smoke of his lodge fires (Shasta is an extinct volcano) was often seen pouring from the cone before the white man came.
Kmukamtchiksh is the evil spirit of the world. He punishes the wicked by turning them into rocks on the mountain side or putting them down into the fires of Shasta.
Many thousands of snows ago a terrible storm swept Mt. Shasta. Fearing that his wigwam would be turned over, the Great Spirit sent his youngest and fairest daughter to the crater at the top of the mountain to speak to the storm and command it to cease lest it blow the mountain away. She was told to make haste and not to put her head out lest the Wind catch her in his powerful arms and carry her away.
The beautiful daughter hastened to the summit of the peak, but never having seen the ocean when it was lashed into a fury by the storm wind, she thought to take just one peep, a fatal peep it proved. The Wind caught her by her long red hair and dragged her down the mountain side to the timber below.
At this time the grizzly bears held in fee all the surrounding country, even down to the sea. In those magic days of long ago they walked erect, talked like men and carried clubs with which to slay their enemies.
At the time of the great storm a family of grizzlies was living in the edge of the forest just below the snow line. When the father grizzly returned one day from hunting he saw a strange little creature sitting under a fir tree shivering with cold. The snow gleamed and glowed where her beautiful hair trailed over it. He took her to his wife who was very wise in the lore of the mountains. She knew who the strange child was but she said nothing about it to old father grizzly, but kept the little creature and reared her with her own children.
When the oldest grizzly son had quite grown up his mother proposed to him that he marry her foster daughter who had now grown to be a beautiful woman.
Many deer were slain by the old father grizzly and his sons for the marriage feast. All the grizzly families throughout the mountains were bidden to the feast.
When the guests had eaten of the deer and drank of the wine distilled from bear berries and elder berries in moonlight at the foot of Mt. Shasta, when the feast was over, they all united and built for their princess a magnificent wigwam near that of her father. This is “Little Mt. Shasta.”
The children of this strange pair were a new race,—the first Indians.