Yellowstone region

(map)

"I never knew what tribe he was from," Gilliland says of the narrator of this story. However, he says elsewhere that he heard a flood legend told on a Cheyenne Reservation, and this is the only legend in his collection which that one could be. On the other hand, Yellowstone Valley is more the territory of Crow and Shoshone Indians. The story itself differs so much from other native folklore I have seen from the region that I doubt whether it is a traditional tale.

The Great Spirit, pleased with the land and the beings he had made, told the people, "The animals are your brothers. Live with them and protect them, and they will provide for you. Protect the buffalo especially, for its meat will give you food, and its hide will give you shelter." For many years people lived in harmony with the animals.

The Great Spirit sent rains to extinguish the fires and destroy the people. As the waters rose, the people moved to the hills.

Spotted Bear, the medicine man, spoke to the people. "The Great Spirit said we would be safe as long as we have buffalo, but there are no buffalo. Unless we can find a buffalo and live at peace with nature, we will die."

The young men went hunting for buffalo. As they went, they cleaned out streams and made friends with the animals once again. Still, the rains fell and the waters rose. The people retreated to the mountains.

Finally, two men came back and told of seeing a buffalo cow, calf, and white bull. The men brought back the hide of the large bull, which had drowned in the floodwaters.

Spotted Bear took the hide. "Our people are no longer destroying the world," he said. "This hide of the white buffalo will save those who are left." With help from other medicine men, he scraped and stretched the hide. Like all rawhide, it stretched easily when wet, and he spread it over the whole village. Each day the wet hide stretched farther until it covered all of Yellowstone Valley. Rain no longer fell in the valley, and the waters sank. People and animals moved back.

The hide began to sag under the rain, so Spotted Bear stood on the Bridger Mountains and raised the end of the skin to catch the West Wind. The wind raised the hide to form a dome over the valley.

The Great Spirit, seeing that people were living at peace with the earth, stopped the rain. The sun shone on the hide, shrinking it until all that was left was a rainbow arch across the valley.

Hap Gilliland, The Flood, 2nd ed. (Billings, MT: Montana Indian Publications, 1972), 1, 38-44.