Note 75 — Raven Traveling

He began to offer his sister in marriage, and when any creature came in to him he looked at its buttocks. When they were lean he refused it. After he had done [lit., said] this for a while Sea-lion wanted to many his sister. Then he looked at his buttocks. They were fat, and he let him marry his sister. They had two children. G̣ē′noa75 was the elder. Iwā′ldjida was the younger. Once Raven went out fishing with his brother-in-law and thought: “I wish halibut would come to me only.” Then he only caught halibut. And his brother-in-law, Sea-lion, asked him: “Say, why do they come to you?” “That is something people are not brave enough to ask for.” Then he again asked him, and he said to him: “Well, they like me, because I use a piece of skin cut from my testes for bait.” And he told him to do the same to his. When he just touched them with a knife, “Wā-wa-wa-wā′, it hurts,” he said to him. “Don’t you see you are not brave enough for it?” Then he told him to do as before. Then he cut off the whole of his testes and ate the fat part of his brother-in-law. After he had consumed it he put stones in him in its place, and came to his sister singing a crying song: “Siwa′s’s husband, my sister’s husband. Siwa′s’s husband, my sister’s husband.” Then his sister asked him: “What has happened, brother?” He paid no attention to her. He sang the crying song. “What is it?” she kept saying. By and by she asked her brother: “What has happened, my brother Raven?” And he said to her: “Where they always do so, [the enemy] stood at House-point. With my great brother-in-law I met them. My great brother-in-law fell without speaking a word. I, however, went around and around them calling.” Then his sister, too, sang a crying song. She had G̣ē′noa on her back and held Iwā′ldjida in her hands. Then she sang the crying song: “G̣ē′noa’s father, Iwā′ldjida’s father. G̣ē′noa’s father, Iwā′ldjida’s father.” At once they carried him up in a mat. And Siwa′s said: “Say, chief, why is your brother-in-law so heavy?” Then Raven said: “You always talk nonsense. This is not the first time a chief who has been killed is heavy.” The rocks put into him made him heavy.