The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories

The stories in this book deal with peoples of widely different surroundings and habit—some with dwellers on the sea-shore, whose skies are often obscured by rain and fog, who draw their living from the sea, and are at home on the water; and others with inhabitants of the high plains, where the air is pure and dry, and the summer sun is rarely hidden by clouds.

As the Indians have no written characters, memorable events are retained only in the minds of the people, and are handed down by the elders to their children, and by these again transmitted to their children, so passing from generation to generation. Until recent years, one of the sacred duties of certain elders of the tribes was the handing down of these histories to their successors. As they repeated them, they [viii]impressed upon the hearer the importance of remembering the stories precisely as told, and of telling them again exactly as he had received them, neither adding nor taking away anything. Thus early taught his duty, each listener strove to perform it, and to impress on those whom he in turn instructed a similar obligation.

In transcribing stories such as these, care must be used to take down just what the narrator says. The stories must be reproduced as they are told; otherwise they lose that primitive flavor which is often one of their chief charms. In their true form they are full of human nature, full of unconscious suggestion as to how the primitive mind worked, and full also of hints as to the customs and life of the people in the old days.

Seated by the flickering fire in Blackfoot skin-lodge, or in Pawnee dirt-house, or in sea-shore dwelling on the northwest coast, I have received these stories from the lips of aged historians, and have set them down here as I have heard them. [ix]

On the shores of the ocean which washes our northwest coast live many tribes of a hardy, seafaring people. Their houses stand along the beach just above high-water mark, and behind them the wooded mountains rise sharply. The waters at their feet yield them the chief share of their living. The salmon that each year come to the rivers to spawn, the great shoals of little herrings that visit the beach, the halibut that lie at the bottom far at sea, the seals, the sea-lions, the porpoises, and the whales, all provide something towards the tribe’s support. Or, if for a while all these fail, there are flat-fish on the shoals, clams in the mud flats, and mussels clinging to the rocks. In the stories told by this race of seafarers, the incidents have to do with the common events of their lives, and the scenes are commonly laid [x]on the water or at the water’s edge. Thus they treat of the hunting of the sea-lion, of the catching of the salmon, most often of the search for food.

Most of the stories to be related here are very old, and date from a period when men and animals were far more closely related than they seem to be to-day; when, as the tales clearly show, each could understand the other’s language, and when friendly intercourse between them was common. Although in recent years all the conditions of the lives of these people have changed, stories such as these may still be heard, if one can gain the confidence of the aged men and women who yet retain this legendary lore. In somewhat different form, the Bluejay Stories, in the original tongue, may be found in the Chinook Texts, collected by that eminent ethnologist, Dr. Franz Boas, whose studies of American tribes have yielded such important and valuable results.

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