Cowichan

(map)

The origin of this tale is identified only as a Salishan tribe from the Lower Fraser River. That and similarities with another Cowichan myth suggest the Cowichan Indians, but it may be from another tribe instead.

Once a flood covered the earth, and most people were drowned. As the waters rose, people fled to the mountains, but some were overtaken and drowned on the way, and others were drowned as the water overtopped the lower mountains. Only a few very high mountains remained exposed. Xäls and his wife and daughters escaped in a large canoe. They were chiefs. After paddling about for many days, they became very tired. Drifting to the top of Qotse'lis Mountain, they there made a hole through a stone and moored their canoe with a heavy cedar-bark rope passed through the hole. After flowing and receding several times, the water at last subsided rapidly. They cast off their canoe and found themselves in the Lower Fraser Valley. Some say they had drifted from the south. The waters, when they left, filled the depressions to form lakes and ponds. Xäls traveled over the world teaching the survivors how to act, how to pray, and how to do every kind of work.

Franz Boas (ed.) and James A. Teit, Folk-Tales of Salishan and Sahaptin Tribes, Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society vol. 11 (Lancaster, PA: G. E. Stechert & Co., 1917), 132.