Now Great Eagle also thought he was dead, so he laid him on a ledge of rocks near the nest. At once Tlecsa killed Great Eagle and pulled out his tail feathers. Then he tied an eaglet to each wrist and commanded them to fly down with him. When they reached the valley far below, Tlecsa pulled the large feathers out of the eaglets’ wings and tails, and gave them to his brothers. He said to the eaglets, “Hereafter you shall be ordinary eagles. You shall have no power to kill people, and Indians shall ornament their heads and weapons with your feathers;” and it was so.
FOOTNOTES
[1]The scenic pictures in this volume were selected to show the magnificence and beauty of the home of many of these myths.
[2]These Indian houses were made with rough, loose boards on the sides and top, which were shifted to let the smoke out, and in summer to let the breeze in. The fire was always in the center of such one-room houses, and the usual smoke hole was immediately above it.
[3]The warm wind of the North Pacific Coast is called a chinook.
[4]Devilfish was the usual bait in halibut fishing.
[5]This myth is said to give an excellent idea of climatic conditions along part of the Northwest Coast—largely a struggle between the rainy southeast wind and the cold north wind.
[6]Told by all Cree Indians, but of course influenced by contact with the white race.
[7]Popularly called Whiskey Jack, though the word is Indian. It means “meat bird,” as this Canadian jay is fond of meat and therefore is a great torment around camps.
[8]The name appears under various spellings—Manibozho, Nanebojo, etc. Nenebuc appears among many tribes centering around the Great Lakes, though the myth is essentially Ojibwa. Other versions of it, received from the American Ojibwas, will be found in the author’s Myths and Legends of the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes.