Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

The Stretching Tree

[Chilcotin]

Once an old man and a young man and two women lived together. The two women were the young man's wives. Now, the young man needed some feathers for his arrows, and one day, seeing a hawk's nest in a high tree, he started to climb to it to get the hawk feathers. Now, the old man was jealous of the young man, and had followed him. And when he saw him climbing the tree, he used shis magic and made the tree grow higher and higher, adn at the same time peeled off all of the bark so that the trunk was slippery; and as the young man was naked, he could not come down, but had to remain in the top of the tree. When the young man failed to appear that night the old man said he wished to move campe and that the women were to come with him. And the next morning they started. Now, one of the women liked the old man, but the other one who had a baby, disliked him, and when they camped for the night, she would take her baby and make a fire for herself outside the camp adn away from the old man. So they went on for several days.

All this time the young man stayed up in the tree, and as it was cold and he had not clothes, he took his hair, which was very long, and wove feathers in it, and so made a blanket to protect himself. The little birds who built their nests in the sticks of the hawk's nest tried their best to carry him down to the ground but could not lift him, and so he stayed on. Finally, one day he saw coming, a long way off, an old woman bent over, and with a stick in each hand. She came to the bottom of the tree where the young man was, and began to climb, and climbed until she reached tye young man, and then she turned out to be a Spider. Then Spider spun a web for him, and of the web the young man made a rope and so reached the ground.

When he came back to his camp, he found it deserted, but discovered the trail of the fugitives, and started to follow. He trailed them a long time, and finally saw them in the distance. Now, the woman who did not like the old man was following behind with her little boy, and the child, looking back saw his father and cried out, "Why, there is my father!" But the mother replied, "What do you mean? You father has been dead a long time." But looking back herself, she saw her husband and waited for him to come up, and they stopped together.

Back to Native American Indian Stories Page
Back to Main Page

Email: countryquilts14@msn.com