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The Flood in World Myth and Folklore
Northwest Coast |
| © 2021 Mark Isaak |
Telling this story will reputedly bring rain.
Spetsx was building a boat. His face and hands were very dirty and he did not wash. The relatives of the wife said to her, "Tell your husband to wash once in a while, anyhow." But the wife was afraid to tell him. Finally, the father-in-law and the mother-in-law told him. Five times they told him. Then he began to wash at the water's edge and as he washed he sang:
As the water rose he moved back, cleaning his nails.
His father-in-law said, "Tell your man to cease washing!" The daughter said, "This is what you wished for, to see him clean."
He kept washing till the rising river drowned every one. Then he took his little canoe and went down river to the country of the sunset, the home of his ancestor, Rain-wind.
Quoted from Arthur C. Ballard, "Mythology of the Southern Puget Sound," University of Washington Publications in Anthropology 3(2) (1929), 50.
