A long time ago, there were no loons. The story of how these loons came to this world is sad but true. One day a young Indian girl and her twin brother were playing in the shallow water of Hood Canal while their mother was digging for clams on the shore. The children were only seven years old and had been told many time to stay close to the shore. But they were very fond of swimming and diving and soon moved to deeper and deeper water. The mother saw the children straying and called for them to return to the shore. The young boy and girl laughed at her and swam to still deeper water. The mother became frightened and began to cry. The children laughed even harder and began to mimic her calls for them to return to shore.
As their mother sat crying because the children would not return to shallow water, the Great Spirit appeared at the beach. He saw the children swimming in the deep water and heard them mock their mother. To punish the children, the Great Spirit used his great powers to turn them into loons. To this day, you can hear the long, lonesome cries this bird makes as it remembers the day the indian children disobeyed their mother. |
