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came to him and helped him down, while the porcupine was off in a hole in the rocks with a number of other porcupines.
By and by the porcupine went back and saw his friend swimming in the lake. The bearer asked him down to the lake and then said, " Partner, let us go out to the middle of the lake. Just put your head on the back of my head and you will not get wet at all." Be cause these two friends fell out, people now become friends, and, after they have loved each other for a while, fall out. Then the porcupine did as he was directed, the beaver told him to hold on tight, and they started. The beaver would flap his tail on the water and dive down for some distance, come to the surface, flap his tail, and go down again; and he repeated the performance until he came to an island in the center of the lake. Then he put the porcupine ashore and went flapping away from him in the same manner.
Now the little porcupine wandered around the whole island, not knowing how to get off. He climbed a tree, came down again, and climbed another, and so on. But the wolverine lived on the main land near by, so after a while he began to sing for the wolverine (nusk) Nu-u-sgu e-e , Nu-u-sgu e-e , Nu-u-sgu e-e . ; He called all the animals on the mainland, but he called the wolverine especially, because he wanted the north wind to blow so that it would freeze.[1]
Then the wolverine called out, "What is the matter with you?" So he at last sang a song about himself, saying that he wanted to go home badly. After he had sung this the whole sea froze over, and the porcupine ran across it to his home. This is why they were going to be friends no longer.
Then the porcupine made friends with the ground hog and they stayed up between the mountains where they could see people when ever they started up hunting. One day a man started out, and when they saw him, the porcupine began singing, "Up to the land of ground hog. Up to the land of ground hog." The man heard him. That is why people know that the porcupine sings about the ground hog.
After this the man began trapping ground hogs for food and caught a small ground hog. He took it home and skinned it. Then he took off the head and heated some stones in order to cook it. When he was just about to put it into the steaming box the head sang plainly, "Poor little head, my poor little head, how am I going to fill him?" The man was frightened, and, instead of eating, he went to his traps in the morning, took them up (lit. "threw them off") and came home.
Next morning he reported everything to his friends, saying, "I killed a ground hog, skinned it and started to cook the head. Then it said to me, Poor little head. After that he went out to see his
- ↑ See Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 453.