[Footnote 9:  The version gives only the incidents as remembered, and can hardly be called a translation.]

Mrs. Brown tells me there is a story which accounts for the hump on the back of Pookjinsquess, as follows:  While leaning against a tree, some one cut off the tree above and below her shoulders, and she consequently carries the hump on her back.

Cooloo, the great bird that overspreads all with his wings, was a chief.  His wife was named Pookjinsquess.  The Sable and the Black Cat went in a stone canoe to a place where they make maple sugar.  In this journey they were lost, and separated from each other.  Sable in his wanderings came to a peculiarly shaped wigwam.  He went in and found within a large Snake.  The Snake said he was glad the Sable had come, as he was very hungry.  The Snake told him to go into the woods and get a straight stick, so that when he pierced him he would not tear open his entrails.  Sable then went out and sang in a loud voice a song which he hoped his brother the Black Cat would hear and come to his aid.[10] The Black Cat heard him and came to him.  Then the Sable told the Black Cat the trouble he was in, and how the Snake was going to kill him.  The Black Cat told Sable not to be afraid, but that he would kill the big Snake.  He told him that he would lie down behind the trunk of a hemlock tree which had fallen, and that Sable should search out a stick that was very crooked, obeying the commands of the big Snake.  When he had found a stick, he should carry it to the Snake, who would complain that the stick was not straight enough.  The Black Cat instructed Sable to reply that he would straighten it in the fire, holding it there until the steam came out of the end.[11] While the Snake was watching the process of straightening the stick and the exit of the steam, Black Cat told Sable that he should strike the Snake over the head.  The Sable sought out the most crooked stick he could find, and then returned to the wigwam where the Snake was.  The Snake said the stick was too crooked.  The Sable replied, “I can straighten it,” and held it in the fire.[12] When it was hot he struck the Snake on the head and blinded him.[13] The Snake then followed the Sable, and, as he passed over the hemlock trunk, Black Cat killed him, and they cut him in small fragments.  Black Cat and Sable called all the animals and birds to the feast; the caribous, wild horses, and swift animals and birds were first to arrive at the feast.  The Turtle was the last, and got only the blood.  Then the Black Cat and Sable returned home to Cooloo, whose wife was Pookjinsquess.  She thought she would like to have for her husband Black Cat if she could get rid of Cooloo.  But Black Cat offended Pookjinsquess and made her angry.  To make way with him she invited him to go with her for gulls’ eggs.  She took him across the water in a canoe to an island which was very distant.  There they filled baskets with eggs and started home in the canoe.  A large, very beautiful bird flew over them.  They both shot their arrows at it.  The bird fell, and Black Cat jumped into the water to get what they had shot.  When he got to where the bird fell he could not find it.  Pookjinsquess went off, singing as she went the following song, which has been written out from the phonographic record by Mr. Cheney, and left Black Cat on the island.