Note 7 — Chapter I · MYTHS AND FOLK-LORE OF THE TIMISKAMING ALGONQUIN.

So poor Wiske·djak tumbled down the cliff, banging and sliding on his hind-quarters, and scraped all the scabs off his burns. When he fell to the bottom of the rocky cliff, he lay stunned for some time, but after a while he arose. He started to crawl away on his hands and knees. Soon he saw a lake at the bottom of the cliff. His sores pained him very badly. Thought he to himself, “There’s a nice lake; now I’ll go down there and cool myself in the water.” He started crawling toward the shore. Before he came to the edge of the water there were a lot of low willows he had to crawl through. As he went over them, he looked back where he had come and saw all his blood from the sores stuck on to the willow twigs. Then said he, “Now you young willows will be called ‘red willows’ from this time on. And when the Indians get short of tobacco they will cut you and scrape the bark off you and dry you and use you to smoke for their tobacco.” He looked up higher toward the rocks where he fell down. There he saw his scabs sticking to the rocks where he had stuck, some large, some small. Said he to the rocks, “You will hold on to these scabs. Don’t ever let go. And when the Indians are hard put to it for something to eat, you will give them some of my scabs and tell them to wash them in cold water and boil them with rabbit meat or any kind of meat or fish. It will furnish them with fine soup, those small ones. And now the biggest scabs—you can tell them that if they have any kind of oil they can oil them a little and roast them before the fire and that it will give them good nourishment when they are hard put to it for something to eat.” So from that time the Indians have used red willow bark to smoke and the “rock weed” to eat when they have needed them.7 By this time anus Wiske·djaki magnopere doluit and he thought he would go into the water for a while and cool his burns.