_Cree_
One winter day Wisagatcak was chiseling the ice, trying to catch Big
Beaver. At last he caught him by shutting up the creek with stakes,
leaving only an opening in the center of the stream. Then Wisagatcak
stood there, waiting for Big Beaver to attempt an escape in that
way. He stood there a long while. Just as evening came, Wisagatcak
saw a beaver coming along, but just as he was about to kill him,
Muskrat came up quietly behind him and scratched him. Wisagatcak was
so startled he did not catch the beaver.
At last it became dark, so he went ashore and built a fire, but he
had nothing to eat. He said to himself, “Tomorrow I will try to
break the dam down and dry up the creek.”
[Illustration: Carved Stone Dishes
Showing the Indian love of the grotesque
_From “Memoirs, American Museum of Natural History”_]
Early next morning Wisagatcak made a pointed stick from juniper
wood. Then he broke the dam down, but yet the creek did not dry up.
The water rose, and rose, and rose, until Wisagatcak no longer stood
on dry ground. So he at once made a raft and got on that. He took on
the raft with him two of every kind of animal, and stayed there with
them for two weeks. So they drifted about because there was no
chance to land anywhere. And while he drifted, Big Beaver was making
medicine against him for breaking the dam.
Now after two weeks, Wisagatcak wished to know the depth of water
under the raft. He tied a long string to the feet of Muskrat and
asked him to dive down and bring up some mud.
Muskrat went down, down, down! He could not even reach the bottom,
and drowned before Wisagatcak could bring him up. Then he waited
three days and told Crow to go and see if he could find any moss.
Crow came back without anything in his bill. When Crow came back
without any moss, Wisagatcak was frightened. He had a little moss on
his raft, so he took that and began to make medicine. The next day
he asked Wolf to take the moss in his mouth and run around the raft
with it. Wolf did so, and as he ran around, earth began to appear
and grow on the raft.
Wolf ran around the raft for a week, and the land grew larger and
larger. It continued to grow for two weeks. By that time the earth
had grown so large that Wolf never came back.
This is how the earth came to be built over water. And this is why
there are springs in the earth.
When Wolf had been gone for a week, Wisagatcak said to the other
animals, “I guess now the land must be large enough for us all to
live on.”
Beaver asked, “How are we going to live? We are eating willows and
poplars here, but there are no trees on earth yet.”
Wisagatcak said, “Um-m-m-m! Yes, you will need a little creek to
live in also.”
Beaver said, “Why, yes, of course.”
Wisagatcak said, “I’ll do something tonight.”
That night Wisagatcak made magic again. He tried to dig down through
the earth to his raft, to get a log from it; but the earth was so
thick, and the pressure of it so great, he could not even find a
trace of a log. When he failed to get even a stick, he said to
Beaver, “I’ll make a creek for you, and you will have to live on
grass roots until trees grow up.”
That is why, even today, Beaver eats certain white roots as well as
bark.
When Wisagatcak came back, he found that Beaver had dug ditches in
every direction in his search for roots.