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    TRAILS THROUGH
    WESTERN WOODS


[Illustration: LAKE ANGUS McDONALD]




    TRAILS THROUGH
    WESTERN WOODS

    By

    HELEN FITZGERALD SANDERS

    _Illustrations from Photographs
    by the Author_

    NEW YORK & SEATTLE
    THE ALICE HARRIMAN COMPANY
    1910




    COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
    THE ALICE HARRIMAN COMPANY

    _Published, July 1, 1910_

    THE PREMIER PRESS
    NEW YORK




_DEDICATION_


    _To the West that is passing; to the days
    that are no more and to the brave,
    free life of the Wilderness that
    lives only in the memory of
    those who mourn its loss_




PREFACE


The writing of this book has been primarily a labour of love, undertaken
in the hope that through the harmonious mingling of Indian tradition and
descriptions of the region--too little known--where the lessening tribes
still dwell, there may be a fuller understanding both of the Indians and
of the poetical West.

A wealth of folk-lore will pass with the passing of the Flathead
Reservation, therefore it is well to stop and listen before the light
is quite vanished from the hill-tops, while still the streams sing the
songs of old and the trees murmur regretfully of things lost forever and
a time that will come no more. We of the workaday world are too prone
to believe that our own country is lacking in myth and tradition, in
hero-tale and romance; yet here in our midst is a legended region where
every landmark is a symbol in the great, natural record book of a folk
whose day is done and whose song is but an echo.

It would not be fitting to close these few introductory words without
grateful acknowledgment to those who have aided me toward the
accomplishment of my purpose. Indeed, every page brings a pleasant
recollection of a friendly spirit and a helping hand. Mr. Duncan
McDonald, son of Angus, and Mr. Henri Matt, my Indian friends, have
told me by word of mouth, many of the myths and chronicles set forth
in the following chapters. Mr. Edward Morgan, the faithful and just
agent at the Flathead Reservation, has given me priceless information
which I could never have obtained save through his kindly interest. He
secured for me the legend of the Flint, the last tale told by Charlot
and rendered into English by Michel Rivais, the blind interpreter who
has served in that capacity for thirty years. Chief Charlot died after
this book was finished and he lies in the land of his exile, out of the
home of his fathers where he had hoped to rest. From Mr. Morgan also I
received the account of Charlot's meeting with Joseph at the LoLo Pass,
the facts of which were given him by the little white boy since grown
to manhood, Mr. David Whaley, who rode with Charlot and his band to the
hostile camp.

The late Charles Aubrey, pioneer and plainsman, furnished me valuable
data concerning the buffalo.

Madame Leonie De Mers and her hospitable relatives, the De Mers of
Arlee, were instrumental in winning for me the confidence of the Selish
people.

Mrs. L. Mabel Hight, the artist, who has caught the spirit of the
mountains with her brush, has added to this book by making the peaks
live again in their colours.

In conclusion I would express my everlasting gratitude to Mr. Thomas
H. Scott, of Lake McDonald, soldier, mountain-lover and woodsman, who,
with unfailing courage and patience, has guided me safely over many and
difficult trails.

For the benefit of students I must add that the authorities I have
followed in my historical references are: Long's (James') "_Expedition
to the Rocky Mountains, 1819-20_," Maximilian's "_Travels in North
America_," Father De Smet's "_Oregon Missions_," Major Ronan's "_History
of the Flathead Indians_," Bradbury's "_Travels_," Father L. B.
Palladino's "_Indian and White in the Northwest_," and the _Reports_ of
the Bureau of Ethnology.

          HELEN FITZGERALD SANDERS.

  _Butte, Montana,
      April 5, 1910._




CONTENTS


       I. The Gentle Selish                                    15

      II. Enchanted Waters                                     77

     III. Lake Angus McDonald                                  89

      IV. Some Indian Missions of the Northwest                97

       V. The People of the Leaves                            155

      VI. The Passing Buffalo                                 169

     VII. Lake McDonald and Its Trails                        229

    VIII. Above the Clouds                                    245

      IX. The Little St. Mary's                               271

       X. The Track of the Avalanche                          281

      XI. Indian Summer                                       297




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


    Lake Angus McDonald                            _Frontispiece_

                                                      Facing Page
    Joe La Mousse                                              50

    Abraham Isaac and Michel Kaiser                            66

    Lake McDonald from McDonald Creek                          90

    Francois                                                  154

    Glacier Camp                                              234

    Gem Lake                                                  266

    On the Trail to Mt. Lincoln                               290




_THE GENTLE SELISH_




TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS




CHAPTER I

THE GENTLE SELISH


I

When Lewis and Clark took their way through the Western wilderness
in 1805, they came upon a fair valley, watered by pleasant streams,
bounded by snowy mountain crests, and starred, in the Springtime, by a
strangely beautiful flower with silvery-rose fringed petals called the
Bitter Root, whence the valley took its name. In the mild enclosure of
this land lived a gentle folk differing as much from the hostile people
around them as the place of their nativity differed from the stern,
mountainous country of long winters and lofty altitudes surrounding it.
These early adventurers, confusing this tribe with the nations dwelling
about the mouth of the Columbia River, spoke of them as the Flatheads.
It is one of those curious historical anomalies that the Chinooks who
flattened the heads of their children, should never have been designated
as Flatheads, while the Selish, among whom the practice was unknown,
have borne the undeserved title until their own proper and euphonious
name is unused and all but forgotten.

The Selish proper, living in the Bitter Root Valley, were one branch of
a group composed of several nations collectively known as the Selish
family. These kindred tribes were the Selish, or Flatheads, the Pend
d'Oreilles, the Coeur d'Alenes, the Colvilles, the Spokanes and the
Pisquouse. The Nez Perces of the Clearwater were also counted as tribal
kin through inter-marriage.

Lewis and Clark were received with great kindness and much wonder by
the Selish. There was current among them a story of a hunting party that
came back after a long absence East of the Rocky Mountains, bearing
strange tidings of a pale-faced race whom they had met,--probably the
adventurous Sieur de La Verendrye and his cavaliers who set out from
Montreal to find a highway to the Pacific Sea. But it was only a memory
with a few, a curious legend to the many, and these men of white skin
and blue eyes came to them as a revelation.

The traders who followed in the footsteps of the first trail-blazers
found the natives at their pursuits of hunting, roving over the
Bitter Root Valley and into the contested region east of the Main
Range of the Rocky Mountains, where both they, and their enemies, the
Blackfeet, claimed hereditary right to hunt the buffalo. They were at
all times friendly to the white men who came among them, and these
visitors described them as simple, straight-forward people, the women
distinguished for their virtue, and the men for their bravery in the
battle and the chase. They were cleanly in their habits and honorable
in their dealings with each other. If a man lost his horse, his bow or
other valuable, the one who found it delivered it to the Chief, or Great
Father, and he caused it to be hung in a place where it might be seen by
all. Then when the owner came seeking his goods, the Chief restored it
to him. They were also charitable. If a man were hungry no one said him
nay and he was welcome even at the board of the head men to share the
best of their fare. This spirit of kindliness they extended to all save
their foes and the prisoners taken in war whom they tortured after the
manner of more hostile tribes. In appearance they were "comparatively
very fair and their complexions a shade lighter than the palest new
copper after being freshly rubbed." They were well formed, lithe and
tall, a characteristic that still prevails with the pure bloods, as does
something of the detail of their ancient dress. They preserve the custom
of handing down by word of mouth, from generation to generation, their
myths, traditions and history. Some of these chronicles celebrate events
which are estimated to have happened two hundred years or more ago.

Of the origin of the Selish nothing is known save the legend of their
coming out of the mountains; and perhaps we are none the poorer, for no
bald historical record of dates and migrations could be as suggestively
charming as this story of the people, themselves,  by their own
fancy and reflecting their inner life. Indeed, a nation's history and
tradition bear much the same relation to each other as the conventional
public existence of a man compared with that intangible part of him
which we call imagination, but which is in reality the sum-total of his
mental inheritance: the hidden treasure of his spiritual wealth. Let us
look then, through the medium of the Indian's poetic imagery, into a
past rose-hued with the sunrise of the new day.

Coyote, the hero of this legend, figures in many of the myths of the
Selish; but they do not profess to know if he were a great brave bearing
that name or if he were the animal itself, living in the legendary age
when beasts and birds spoke the tongue of man. Likely he was a dual
personality such as the white buffalo of numerous fables, who was at
will a beautiful maiden or one among the vast herds of the plains.
Possibly there was, indeed, such a mighty warrior in ages gone by about
whose glorified memory has gathered the half-chimerical hero-tales which
are the first step toward the ancestor-worship of primitive peoples.
In all of the myths given here in which his name is mentioned, except
that one of Coyote and the Flint, we shall consider him as an Ideal
embodying the Indians' highest conception of valor and achievement.

Long, long ago the Jocko was inhabited by a man-eating monster who lured
the tribes from the hills into his domain and then sucked their blood.
Coyote determined to deliver the people, so he challenged the monster
to a mortal combat. The monster accepted the challenge, and Coyote went
into the mountains and got the poison spider from the rocks and bade him
sting his enemy, but even the venom of the spider could not penetrate
the monster's hide.

Coyote took counsel of the Fox, his friend, and prepared himself for the
fray. He got a stout leather thong and bound it around his body, then
tied it fast to a huge pine tree. The monster appeared with dripping
fangs and gaping jaws, approached Coyote, who retreated farther and
farther away, until the thong stretched taut and the pine curved like
a bow. Suddenly, the tree, strained to its utmost limit, sprang back,
felling the monster with a mortal stroke. Coyote was triumphant and the
Woodpecker of the forest cut the pine and sharpened its trunk to a point
which Coyote drove through the dead monster's breast, impaling it to the
earth. Thus, the Jocko was rid of the man-eater, and the Selish, fearing
him no more, came down from the hills into the valley where they lived
in plenty and content.

The following story of Coyote and the Flint is of exceptional interest
because it is from the lips of the dying Charlot--Charlot the unbending,
the silent Chieftain. No word of English ever profaned his tongue, so
this myth, told in the impressive Selish language, was translated word
for word by Michel Rivais, the blind interpreter at the Flathead Agency,
who has served faithfully and well for a period of thirty years.

"In the old times the animals had tribes just like the Indians. The
Coyote had his tipi. He was hungry and had nothing to eat. He had bark
to shoot his arrow with and the arrow did not go through the deer. He
was that way a long time when he heard there was Flint coming on the
road that gave a piece of flint to the Fox and he could shoot a deer and
kill it, but the Coyote did not know that and used the bark. They did
not give the Coyote anything. They only gave some to the Fox. Next day
the Fox put a piece of meat on the end of a stick and took it to the
fire. The Fox had the piece of meat cooking there and the Coyote was
looking at the meat and when it was cooked the Coyote jumped and got the
piece of meat and took a bite and in it was the flint, and he bit the
flint and asked why they did not tell him how to kill a deer with flint.

"'Why didn't you tell me?' the Coyote asked his friend, the Fox. 'When
did the Flint go by here?'

"The Fox said three days it went by here.

"The Coyote took his blanket and his things and started after the Flint
and kept on his track all day and evening and said, 'Here is where the
Flint camped,' and he stayed there all night himself, and next day he
travelled to where the Flint camped, and he said, 'Here is where the
Flint camped last night,' and he stayed there, and the next day he went
farther and found where the Flint camped and he said, 'The Flint started
from here this morning.' He followed the track next morning and went not
very far, and he saw the Flint going on the road, and he went 'way out
that way and went ahead of the Flint and stayed there for the Flint to
come. When the Flint met him there the Coyote told him:

"'Come here. Now, I want to have a fight with you to-day.'

"And the Flint said:

"'Come on. We will fight.'

"The Flint went to him and the Coyote took the thing he had in his hand
and struck him three or four times and the Flint broke all to pieces and
the Coyote had his blanket there and put the pieces in the blanket and
after they were through fighting and he had the pieces of flint in his
blanket he packed the flint on his back and went to all the tribes and
gave them some flint and said:

"'Here is some flint for you to kill deer and things with.'

"And he went to another tribe and did the same thing and to other tribes
and did the same until he came to Flint Creek and then from that time
they used the flint to put in their arrows and kill deer and elk.

"That is the story of the Flint."

       *       *       *       *       *

Coyote was the chosen one to whom the Great Spirit revealed the disaster
which reduced the Selish from goodly multitudes of warriors to a handful
of wretched, plague-stricken invalids. Old women are still fond of
relating the story which they received from their mothers and their
mothers' mothers even to the third and fourth generation.

Coyote laid down to rest and dreamed that the Voice of the Great Spirit
sounded in his ears, saying that unless the daughter of the Chief became
his bride a scourge would fall upon the people. When morning broke he
sought out the Chief and told him of the words of the Voice, but the
Chief, who was a haughty man, would not heed Coyote and coldly denied
him the hand of his daughter in marriage.

Coyote returned to his lodge and soon there resounded through the
forests the piercing cry of one in distress. Coyote rushed forth and
beheld a man covered with sores across the river. This man related to
Coyote how he was the last survivor of a war party that had come upon
a village once occupied by the enemy whom they sought, but as they
approached they saw no smoke arising from the tipis and no sign of life.
They came forward very cautiously, but all was silent and deserted. From
lodge to lodge they passed, and finally they came upon an old woman,
pitted and scabbed, lying alone and dying. With her last breath she told
them of a scourge which had fallen upon the village, consuming brave and
child alike, until she, of all the lodges, was left to mourn the rest.
Then one by one the war party which had ridden so gallantly to conquest
and glory, felt an awful heat as of fire run through their veins.
Burning and distraught they leaped into the cold waters of a river and
died.

Such was the story of the man whom Coyote met in the woods. He alone
remained, disfigured, diseased, doomed. So Coyote brought him into the
village and quenched his thirst that he might pass more easily to the
Happy Hunting Ground. But as the Great Spirit had revealed to Coyote
while he slept, the scourge fell upon the people and laid them low,
scarcely enough grief-stricken survivors remaining to weep for their
lost dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

Besides this legendary narrative of the visitation of smallpox there
are other authenticated instances of the plague wreaking its vengeance
upon the Selish and depleting their villages to desolation. In this wise
the tribe was thinned again and again and as early as 1813, Mr. Cox
of the Northwest Fur Company, told in his "Adventures" that once the
Selish were more powerful by far in number than in the day of his coming
amongst them.

There was also another cause for the nation's decline quite as
destructive as the plague;--the unequal hostility continuing generation
after generation, without capitulation or truce, with the Blackfeet.
The country of the Selish abounded in game but it was a part of the
tribal code of honour to hunt the buffalo in the fields where their
ancestors had hunted. All of the deadly animosity between the two
peoples, all of the bloodshed of their cruel wars, was for no other
purpose than to maintain the right to seek the beloved herds in the
favoured fields which they believed their forefathers had won. The
jealousy with which this privilege of the chase was guarded and
preserved even to the death explains many national peculiarities, forms,
indeed, the keynote to their life of freedom on the plains.

It is possible that the Selish would have been annihilated had not the
establishment of new trading-posts enabled them to get fire-arms which
the Blackfeet had long possessed. This means of defence gave them fresh
strength and thereafter the odds against them were not as great.

The annals of the tribe, so full of tragedy and joy, of fact and
fancy, of folk-lore and wood-lore, contain many stories of war glory
reminiscent of the days of struggle. Even now there stands, near
Ravalli in the Jocko, a rock resembling a man, called by the Indians
the Stone Sentinel, which touchingly attests the fidelity and bravery
of a nameless hero. The story is that one of the runners who had gone
in advance of a war-party after the Indian custom, was surprised while
keeping watch and killed by the Blackfeet. The body remained erect and
was turned to stone, a monument of devotion to duty so strong that not
even death could break his everlasting vigil.

Notwithstanding their love of glory on the war-path and hunting-field,
they were a peaceable people. The most beautiful of their traditions
are based upon religious themes out of which grew a poetical symbolism,
half devotional, half fantastic. And even to-day, in spite of their
profession of Christianity, there lives in the heart of the Indian the
old paganism, not unlike that of the Greeks, which spiritualizes every
object of the woods and waters.

They thought that in the Beginning the good Spirit came up out of the
East and the Evil Spirit out of the West, and then began the struggle,
typified by light and darkness, which has gone on ever since. From this
central idea they have drawn the rainbow Spirit-fancy which arches their
dream-sky from horizon to horizon. They consider some trees and rocks
sacred; again they hold a lake or stream in superstitious dread and shun
it as a habitation of the evil one.

Thus, a cave in the neighbouring hills where rattlesnakes sleep in
Winter, they avoided in the past, not on account of the common snakes,
but because within the damp, dark recesses of that subterranean den, the
King of Snakes, a huge, horned reptile dwelt, appearing occasionally in
all his venomous, scaled beauty, striking terror wherever he was seen.
A clear spring bubbled near the cave but not even the cold purity of
the water could tempt the Indians to that accursed vicinity until by
some revelation they learned that the King Snake had migrated to other
fastnesses. He is still seen, so they say, gliding stealthily amongst
deserted wastes, his crest reared evily, and death in his poison tail.

In contrast to this cave of darkness is the spiritual legend of the
Sacred Pine. Upon those same gentle hills of the Jocko it grows, lifting
its lessening cone of green toward heaven. It has been there past the
memory of the great-grand-fathers of the present generation and from
time immemorial it has been held sacred by the Selish tribe. High upon
its venerable branches hangs the horn of a Bighorn Sheep, fixed there so
firmly by an unknown hand, before even the tradition of the Selish had
shaped its ghostly form out of the mists of the past, that the blizzard
has not been strong enough to wrench it from its place, nor the frost
to gnaw it away. No one knows whence the ram's horn came nor what it
signifies, but the tree is considered holy and the Indians believe that
it possesses supernatural powers. Hence, offerings are made to it of
moccasins, beads, weasel skins, and such little treasures of wearing
apparel or handiwork as they most esteem, and at certain seasons,
beneath the cool, sweet shadow of its generous boughs the devoted
worshippers, going back through the little superficialities of recent
civilization to the magnetic pole of their own true blood and beliefs,
assemble to dance with religious fervor around its base upon the green.
The missionary fathers discourage such idolatrous practices; but the
poor children of the woods play truant, nevertheless, and wander back
through the cycle of the centuries to do honour to the old, sweet object
of their devotion in the primitive, pagan way. And surely the Great
Spirit who watches over white and red man impartially, can scarcely be
jealous of this tribute of love to a tree,--the instinctive, race-old
festival of a woodland tribe.

There is another pine near Ravalli revered because it recalls the days
of the chase. It stands upon the face of a mountain somewhat apart from
its brethren of the forest, and there the Bighorn Sheep used to take
refuge when pursued. If driven to bay, the leader, followed by his band,
leaped to death from this eminence. It is known as the Pine of the
Bighorn Sheep.

Thus, it will be seen there lives among the Selish a symbolism, making
objects which they love chapters in the great unwritten book, wherein
is celebrated the heroic past. He who has the key to that volume of
tribe-lore, may learn lessons of valour and achievement, of patience and
sacrifice. And colouring the whole story, making beautiful its least
phase, is the sentiment of the people, even as the haze is the poetry
of the hills.


II

As heroic or disastrous events are celebrated in verbal chronicles
it follows that the home of the Selish is storied ground. Before the
pressure of civilization, encroaching in ever-narrowing circles upon
the hunting-ground of the Indians, cramping and crowding them within
a smaller space, driving them inch by inch to the confinement which
is their death, the Selish wandered at will over a stretch of country
beautiful alike in the reality of its landscape and in the richness
of myth and legend which hang over every peak and transfigure every
lake and stream. To know this country and the people it has sheltered
through past centuries one must first glean something of that ephemeral
story-charm which records in crag, in mist, in singing stream and
spreading tree the dreams made almost real by the thousands of souls
who have treasured them, and given them, lip to lip, from old to young,
since the forests were first green upon the hills.

The land of the Selish extended eastward to that portion of the Main
Range of the Rocky Mountains known to them as _Sin-yal-min_, or the
"Mountains of the Surrounded," from the fact that once a hunting party
surrounded and killed a herd of elk by a stream upon those heights;
another time a war-party surrounded and slew a company of Blackfeet
within the woods upon the mountain side. Though this range marked the
eastern boundary of their territory, they hunted buffalo, as we have
seen, still east of its mighty peaks,--a region made bloody by battles
between the Selish and the Blackfeet tribes. Westward, they wandered
over the fertile valley of Sin-yal-min, where they, in common with the
Pend d'Oreilles, Kootanais and Nez Perces enjoyed its fruits and fields
of grain. This valley is bounded to the north by the great Flathead
Lake, a body of water vast in its sweep, winding through narrow channels
among wooded shores ever unfolding new and unexposed vistas as one
traverses it. On a calm summer day, when the sun's rays are softened
by gossamer veils of haze, the water, the mountain-peaks and sky are
faintly traced in shades of grey and faded rose as in mother-of-pearl.
And on such days as this, at rare intervals, a strange phenomenon
occurs,--_the reflection of a reflection_. Looking over the rail of a
steamer within the semi-circular curve of the swell at its stern, one
may see, first the reflection of the shore line, the mountains and trees
appearing upside down, then a second shore line perfectly wrought in
the mirroring waters right side up, pine-crest touching pine-crest,
peak poised against peak. This lake was the Selish's conception of
the greatest of waters, for their wandering never took them to the
Atlantic or Pacific Seas, and in such small craft as they used to
travel over the forty miles of water among serpentining shores, the
distance must have seemed immense. Many islands rise from the lake,
the largest of them, Wild Horse Island, is timbered and mountainous,
and so big as to appear like an arm of the main land. This Wild Horse
Island, where in olden days bands of wild horses were found, possesses
a peculiar interest. Upon its steep cliffs are hieroglyphics traced
in pigments unknown to-day, telling the forgotten story of a lost
race. The same strange figures appear upon the sheer escarpments of
the mainland shore. These rock-walls are moss-grown and  by the
lichen, chrome yellow, burnt orange, russet-brown and varying shades
of bronze-green like Autumn leaves, and upon them broods a shadow as
darkly impenetrable as the mystery which they hold. Still, it is easy to
distinguish upon the heroic tablets of stone, crude figures of horses
and some incomprehensible marks. These writings have been variously
interpreted or guessed at. Some declare them to be ancient war signals
of the Selish, others suggest that they were records of hunting parties
left behind for the guidance and information of the tribe; but they,
themselves, deny all knowledge of them, saying that to them as to us,
the pictured rocks are a wonder and a riddle, the silent evidence of
foot-falls so remote that not even an echo has come down to us through
the centuries.

Such are the valley of Sin-yal-min and the Lake of the Flathead where
the Selish hunted. But their real home, the seat of their fathers,
was the Bitter Root Valley, where one branch of the tribe, headed by
Charlot, the son of Victor, lived until the recent exodus. Therefore,
the Bitter Root Valley was particularly dear to the hearts of these
Indians. It was there the bond between the kindred tribes, the Nez
Perces and the Selish, was broken; there the pioneer Fathers came to
build the first Mission and plant the first Cross among these docile
children of the wood. It was there they clung together like frightened
sheep until they were driven forth to seek new homes in the Valley of
the Jocko, which was to be merely a station in their enforced retreat.

Eastward and southward from the Bitter Root, the Jocko and the range
of Sin-yal-min in the contested country, is a canyon called the Hell
Gate, because within its narrow limits, the Blackfeet wreaked vengeance
upon their less warlike foes. Flowing through the canyon is a river,
_In-mis-sou-let-ka_, corrupted into Missoula, which bears one of the
most beautiful of the Selish legends.

       *       *       *       *       *

Coyote was taking his way through a pass in the mountains during the
ancient days, when there came to him, out of the closed lip of silence,
the echo of a sound. He stopped to listen, in doubt if it were the
singing of waters or human voices that he heard, and as he listened the
echo grew into a reality and the strains of wondrous, weirdly sweet
music greeted his ear. He followed the illusive melody, attracted as by
magic, and at last he saw upon the flower-sown green a circle of young
women, dancing around and around, hand clasped in hand, forming a chain
and singing as they danced. They beckoned to Coyote and called unto him,
saying:

"Thou art beautiful, O Warrior! and strong as is the sun. Come dance
with us and we will sing to thee."

Coyote, like one who walks in his sleep, obeyed them and joined the
enchanted circle. Then he perceived that as they danced and sang they
drew him closer and closer to a great river that lashed itself into a
blind, white fury of foam upon the rocks. Coyote became afraid like a
woman. He noted with dread the water-weed in the maidens' hair and the
evil beauty of their eyes. He strove to break away but he was powerless
to resist them and he felt himself drawn nearer and nearer the roaring
torrent, until at last the waters closed over him in whirlpools and he
knew no more.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Fox, who was wise and crafty, passed along the shore and there he
found, among the water-weeds and grasses the lifeless body of Coyote
which had been cast up by the waters, even as they had engulfed him.
The Fox was grieved for he loved Coyote, so he bent over the corpse and
brought it back to life. Coyote opened his eyes and saw his friend, but
the chill of the water was in his blood and he was numb. Then above the
roar of the river, echoed the magical measure of a weird-sweet song
and through a green glade came the dancers who had lured Coyote to his
death. He rose at the sound of the bewitching melody and strained
forward to listen.

"It was they who led me to the river," he cried.

"Aye, truly. They are the water Sirens and thou must destroy them,"
replied the Fox.

At those words Coyote's heart became inflamed with ire; he grew strong
with purpose and crept forward, noiseless as a snake, unobserved by the
water-maidens.

They were dancing like a flock of white butterflies upon a stretch of
grass yellowed and seared by the heat of the sun. Swiftly and silently
Coyote set fire to the grass, imprisoning them in a ring of flame. They
saw the wall of fire leap up around them and their singing was changed
to cries. They turned hither and thither and sought to fly to the water
but the way was barred by the hot red-gold embrace of the fire.

When the flames had passed, Coyote went to the spot where the Sirens
had danced, and there upon the blackened ground he found a heap of
great, white shells. He took these, the remains of the water-maidens,
and cast them into the river, saying as he did so:

"I call thee _