446 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

countryside; the vegetation looked as if salt had been placed on the soil,
while bones lay about as if the place were an old battlefield, not of the
sninig alone but’also of those of many other animals killed by eating the
poisonous flesh.

The neighbourhood is still considered barren and, as recently as
about 1870, no one would settle there.

THE LITTLE GIRL WHO WAS KIDNAPPED?*?

Long, long ago there was a little girl who used to cry a great deal. One
night her weeping disturbed the whole household and her father sent her
to bed.

“You had better keep quiet or a smug will get you,” he said angrily.

After a time all the people in the house went to bed, leaving the girl
still crying in the main room of the house. Soon she heard a voice she
thought was her grandmother’s.

“Come out to your grandmother, my dear,” it said, “and have a feast
of goat’s grease.”

The girl slipped outside and the voice told her to come a little farther
on. When she did so she was seized by a female smug, for it was one of
those creatures that had imitated her grandmother’s voice. As the animal
thrust her into her basket, the girl cried out that she was being carried off
by a smumg, and the people in the house heard her. They called to her to
clutch a passing tree, which she did, but the smumg cut it through with a
single blow of her knife-edged leg. The girl was carried a long distance
up the mountain and across a chasm bridged by a fallen log, at the other
end of which was the smumg’s cave. The girl saw that it was full of coppers
taken from coffins, as well as other kinds of goods and food that had been
placed beside the dead. In one corner sat an old woman from whose body
grew roots extending far down into the ground, effectively anchoring her
to the spot. This woman told the girl not to eat anything the smug
might give her, as roots would grow from her too if she did; instead she
gave her a small bagin which to conceal food she must only pretend to eat.

“I am going out to get a sister for you,” said the sninug.

As soon as she had gone the old woman told the girl to put on her
fingers a pair of mountain goat horns which were in the house; and when
the sung came back to stand, opening and closing the fingers at her, as
she tried to cross the bridge, saying at the same time, “‘saogdtsgdma.”™
Soon they heard the smug returning. The animal gained the bridge, but
was unable to advance or retire in the face of the girl, who opened and
Eee

*°For another version of this story see Boas, p. 88.
*'The meaning of this phrase is: “Open your eyes, mother.”