_Chilcotin_
Once a Being with great power sat on a stone in the middle of a
river, and as he sat there, he wailed. So people were afraid to pass
up and down in their canoes. But one day a man came poling upstream,
and when he heard the wailing, he got out of his canoe and wailed
with the stranger. Yet he was a little afraid and kept one foot in
the canoe, ready to shove off.
The stranger said his son had been hunting in the snow mountains and
had been buried by a snowslide. As the man wailed with him,
Esterreqot was pleased. He took a sheet of metal on which he had
been sitting and gave it to his visitor. He told him to come to his
house in the mountains, but to come at night so no one would know
it. Thus he did.
When the man came to the house of Esterreqot, he was given two
boxes, one full of food and one full of blankets. The man took them
back to his tribe and invited the people to a feast. When they came,
they saw nothing for a feast. Then the man opened the boxes and took
out food enough and blankets enough to fill the whole house, and
there was a great potlatch.
That is how the Indians first secured blankets.