424 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

“Cut him in pieces,” she said, ‘“‘as you would with salmon preparatory to smoking.”

Mink was in the canoe and heard her injunction. He willed that the captain should steer a course near the shore, and when the canoe was rounding a point he jumped overboard and succeeded in reaching the land, where he sought refuge. The raiders chased him on shore so hotly that Mink was finally forced to hide in a small hole under the rocks, but on entering it he took with him some shell-fish. One of the pursuers, seeing the hole, thrust his spear down into it, but Mink smeared on this the entrails of the shell-fish. When the raiders saw the gore on the spear they concluded they. had killed him and went off.

As soon as his enemies had gone away, Mink sneaked out and grabbed the old woman by the back of the neck, yelling in her ear:

“What did you call out to the raiders?”

“IT told them to take good care of you,” she replied, “‘that you were like a son to me.”

“Did you indeed?” said Mink, who had heard perfectly what she said.

First he bit off her legs, then chewed to pieces the rest of her body, shredding it into scraps which he threw into the water, telling them to become crabs.

This is the origin of crabs.

THE FEIRE

About three generations after the first people had come to this earth, Mink went up to Nusmdt-a and asked A?guntdm to lend him his robe, so that he might take his place as sun. The request was granted, but, once given control of the sun, Mink guided the canoe-like luminary so close to earth that the rivers and oceans boiled, and it was only in the glaciers that the people were able to exist. At Kimsquit a man and his dog were turned to stone; it is said that they can still be seen in this form.*

Animals as well as men suffered from Mink’s wickedness. Grizzly Bear’s coat was singed to its present rusty colour; Weasel tried to hide himself but failed to draw in the end of his tail which was burnt black, a mark still carried by all his descendants; Clam closed his shell for pro- tection and so was blackened only at its orifice; all the other creatures suffered in various ways.

A similar belief is said to be shared by the Cowichan people of Vancouver Island. About 1900, a considerable amount of charred wood was found four feet beneath the surface of the ground, on the mountain west of the Necleetsconnay River. The Bella Coola consider this to be proof of the disaster.