myths

The Girl With A Long Tongue

As told by: Rody Peters
of Fort McPherson

Sometime during the month of September two boys went hunting up towards the mountain and were gone a good many days. In that camp was this one woman who nobody was supposed to see, unless they had permission from their Chief. This woman had a tongue which reached both of her shoulders. Some medicine man had done this to her, so she couldn't see past her tongue. That was the reason the Chief and the people in that village did not allow her to be seen by anybody except whoever was taking care of her.
Towards night, sometimes in September while the sun was just going down over the hill towards the north, this woman managed to sneak out of her tepee. It just so happened that everybody was in their tepees, settling down to get ready for bed.
The woman got out of her tepee, and let her tongue down and looked to the foothills. On this hill were the two boys who went hunting. As soon as they came on top of the hill and started walking towards the river, the girl took one look at them and the two boys turned into stone.
While the girl was wandering around, somebody spotted her and ran to the Chief shouting that the girl was seen outside her tepee without his permission. The Chief and all the people rushed out to see what the woman was up to. She said, "There was nobody around my tepee, and it was so quiet." Later on she said "I was looking towards the hill, when two people started coming down from the hills, and I don't want to say what happened next. It is up to you to find out." The Chief then sent some men up the hill a couple of miles to find out what had happened to those two boys.
When the men reached the bottom of the hill they found two boys who were turned into stone. The stones were 12 to 15 feet high. They were shaped as wearing two big packs on their backs.
Today it is said that this must have happened sometime in 1604. The stones are part of what can be seen from about nine miles from Fort McPherson on the right hand side of the Peel River toward the mountain. Nowadays, tourists come every summer to take pictures of it.