The Little Dwarves and the Creation of Nak'azdli

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Long ago, the ancestors of the Carrier First Nation lived in an area
known as Nak’azdli, which in those days was a large lake. The people
lived at the south end of the lake, which was blocked off by a massive
natural dam. At the north end lived a race of dwarves who were extremely
quarrelsome. One day, without warning, the dwarves paddled down the lake
in their birchbark canoes and attacked the Carrier village. During the
ensuing battle, they fired so many arrows at the Carrier warriors that
the dam broke open, filling the waterway. The remnant of the dam floated
off and became an island known as Noo Yiz. From then on, the Carrier
people named it Utnaneyaz k’a bulh tizdli, which means “the place
where the Little Dwarves’ arrows floated off.” Today it’s called
Fort St. James.

This authentic Carrier legend is presented both in Nak’azdli dialect
and in English translation. The original words came from Louis Billy
Prince, a band chief who died in 1962. Roman Muntener’s large,
full-color illustrations powerfully capture the conflict between the
races. The tale, though sparse in the telling, opens a window on the
rich folk tradition of the Carrier Nation that parallels creation myths
of cultures around the world. Recommended.