WANTON] INDfAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 323

 Of the creation and flood myths very little is preserved. The
beginning of things is said to have been by a flood. Certain persons
foretold this, and some believed what they said while others did not
believe it. Those that believed built a big boat and were saved; the
others were lost. At that time the woodpecker and the dove flew
up into the sky and remained there until the flood was over. That is
why the woodpecker has such a funny tail. It is a sign of the flood.
Nothing is known about the bringing of the first soil by a bird, but
what Du Pratz says of the flood legend of the Natchez renders it
probable that it had originally formed part of the Tunica story also.
After the flood came hal-nisapi'tati, tie new completion of the
earth." Animals, birds, and, in short, everybody and everything
could change into human beings at night and talk, but not in the day-
time. As an illustration of this belief the following story was told,
one of a type found all over North America:
 A very handsome youth once canle to court a certain girl every evening,
leaving before daybreak. By and by lie asked her father and mother if he
might nmrry her, but they refused because they did not know who lie was.
But the girl was foolishly in love with him, and one night, after her parents
had again refused him, the youth asked her to run away. She consented and.
after the old people were in bed she went off with hil to his house. The
house .was a very nice one and the people there were the best-looking persons
she had ever seen. After talking a long time she and her husband left the
others sitting there and went to bed. She awoke at daybreak and, moving
quickly, saw instead of a house the ugliest kind of a briar bush, in the midst
of which she was lying. This was a rattlesnake nest, and tlhe young llan she
had married was a rattlesnake. She tried to move, but every time she did so
all the snakes rattled their tails, and slie was obliged to lie where she was
all day. She held her hands tightly clasped over her eyes so as not to see them.
Whel night came again it was as it had been before, and everything looked
pretty. Then she walked out and returned to her parents, glad to escape from
that place. When she told what had happened all of her relatives gathered
together t o go out and kill the bad snakes.a
 A mLuch more detailed story of a local flood is preserved, which
contains very interesting features. It is as follows:
 There was a certain village ruled by a chief. In the middle of his house
they used to pound corn in a wooden mortar, and had wo'rn two holes into the
ground, into which the wooden mortar stl, being changed every now and then
front oiie to the other. One morning when lhe people got up and prepared to use
the mortar they saw a little water in the deeper of the two holes. Looking up at
the roof above they saw ice hanging there, from which the water, as it melted,
fell into the hole. In the little pool thus formed they saw some fish. Then
they began to ask one another what was the natter. They wanted to know
what hlie sign indicated, but no otin could tell. Sone said, Mlaybe it is a sign
that we shall have plenty to eat," and others gave other explanations. But
when the chief siaw that no one could tell wha t the sign really meant he sent
for an old woman, the oldest in that village, to see if she could interpret it.
She caeie and examined it thoroughly. Then they asked her if she could tell
 a The storyteller added that there were other parts to the myth, which he had forgotten.