or of the Turtle clan. (E.A. Smith, "Myths
of the Iroquois", "Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology"
(Washington, 1883), page 77.) The Crawfish band of the Choctaws are
in like manner descended from real crawfish, which used to live under
ground, only coming up occasionally through the mud to the surface. Once
a party of Choctaws smoked them out, taught them the Choctaw language,
taught them to walk on two legs, made them cut off their toe nails and
pluck the hair from their bodies, after which they adopted them into the
tribe. But the rest of their kindred, the crawfish, are crawfish under
ground to this day. (Geo. Catlin, "North American Indians" 4 (London,
1844), II. page 128.) The Osage Indians universally believed that they
were descended from a male snail and a female beaver. A flood swept the
snail down to the Missouri and left him high and dry on the bank, where
the sun ripened him into a man. He met and married a beaver maid, and
from the pair the tribe of the Osages is descended. For a long time
these Indians retained a pious reverence for their animal ancestors and
refrained from hunting beavers, because in killing a beaver they killed
a brother of the Osages. But when white men came among them and offered
high prices for beaver skins, the Osages yielded to the temptation and
took the lives of their furry brethren. (Lewis and Clarke, "Travels to
the Source of the Missouri River" (London, 1815), I. 12 (Vol. I. pages
44 sq. of the London reprint, 1905).) The Carp clan of the Ootawak
Indians are descended from the eggs of a carp which had been deposited
by the fish on the banks of a stream and warmed by the sun. ("Lettres
Edifiantes et Curieuses", Nouvelle Edition, VI. (Paris, 1781), page
171.) The Crane clan of the Ojibways are sprung originally from a pair
of cranes, which after long wanderings settled on the rapids at the
outlet of Lake Superior, where they were changed by the Great Spirit
into a man and woman. (L.H. Morgan, "Ancient Society" (London, 1877),
page 180.) The members of two Omaha clans were originally buffaloes and
lived, oddly enough, under water, which they splashed about, making it
muddy. And at death all the members of these clans went back to their
ancestors the buffaloes. So when one of them lay adying, his friends
used to wrap him up in a buffalo skin with the hair outside and say to
him, "You came hither from the animals and you are going back thither.
Do not face this way again.