MYTHS RECORDED IN ENGLISH AT SITKA (continued 2)

Now when his brother-in-law brought the sheep down, the man asked him, “Where is the little dog?” And he said, “It ran away from me.” That was the report he brought down. Then the owner of the dog called his sister to him and said, “Tell me truly what he did with the little dog. I did not want to let it go at first because I knew people would do that thing to it.” His sister said, “He threw the entrails to it to eat. That is why it ran off.”

Then the youth felt very sad on account of his little animal and prepared to follow it. His brother-in-law showed him the place between the mountains where the dog had gone up, and he went up in that direction until he came to its footprints and saw the red paint he had put upon it. This animal was really the wolf-chief’s son who had been sent to help him, and, because the man put red upon its head and feet, a wolf can now be told by the red on its feet and around its mouth.

After he had followed the trail for a long distance he came to a lake with a long town on the opposite side. There he heard a great noise made by people playing. It was a very large lake, so he thought, “I wonder how I can get over there.” Just then he saw smoke coming out from under his feet. Then a door swung open, and he was told to enter. An old woman lived there called Woman-always-wondering (Łūwat-uwadjīˊgî-cānᴀˊkǃᵘ), who said to him, “Grandchild, why are you here?” He answered “I came across a young dog which helped me, but it is lost, and I come to find where it went.” Then the woman answered, “Its people live right across there. It is a wolf-chief’s son. That is its father’s town over there where they are making a noise.” So the old woman instructed him.

Then he wondered and said to himself, “How can I get across?” But the old woman spoke out, saying, “My little canoe is just below here.” He said to himself, “It might turn over with me.” Then the old woman answered, “Take it down. Before you get in shake it and it will become large.” Then she continued: “Get inside of the boat and stretch yourself on the bottom, but do not paddle it. Instead wish continually to come in front of that place.”

He did as she directed and landed upon the other side. Then he got out, made the canoe small and put it into his pocket, after which he went up among the boys who were playing about, and watched them. They were playing with a round, twisted thing called gîtcxᴀnag̣āˊt (rainbow). Then some one directed him to the wolf-chief’s house at the farther end of the village. An evening fire, such as people used to make in olden times, was burning there, and, creeping in behind the other people, the man saw his little wolf playing about near it in front of his father.

Then the wolf chief said, “There is some human being looking in here. Clear away from before his face.” Upon this the little wolf ran right up to him, smelt of him, and knew him at once. The wolf chief said, “I feel well disposed toward you. I let my son live among you because your uncles and friends were starving, and now I am very much pleased that you have come here after him.” By and by he said, “I think I will not let him go back with you, but I will do something else to help you.” He was happy at the way the man had painted up his son. Now he did not appear like a wolf but like a human being. The chief said, “Take out the fish-hawk’s quill that is hanging on the wall and give it to him in place of my son.” Then he was instructed how to use it. “Whenever a bear meets you,” he said, “hold the quill straight toward it and it will fly out of your hand.” He also took out a thing that was tied up like a blanket and gave it to him, at the same time giving him instructions. “One side,” he said, “is for sickness. If you put this on a sick person it will make him well. If anyone hates you, put the other side on him and it will kill him. After they have agreed to pay you for treating him put the other side on to cure him.”

Then the chief said, “You see that thing that the boys are playing with? That belongs to me. Whenever one sees it in the evening it means bad weather; whenever one sees it in the morning it means good weather.” So he spoke to him.

Then they put something else into his mouth and said to him, “Take this, for you have a long journey to make.” He was gone up there probably two years, but he thought it was only two nights.

At the time when he came within sight of his town he met a bear. He held the quill out toward it as he had been instructed and suddenly let it go. It hit the bear in the heart. Still closer to his town he came upon a flock of sheep on the mountain, and sent his quill at them. When he reached them, he found all dead, and, after he had cut them all open, he found the quill stuck into the heart of the last. He took a little meat for his own use and covered up the rest.

Coming to the town, he found no one in it. All had been destroyed. Then he felt very sad, and, taking his blanket out, laid the side of it that would save people, upon their bodies, and they all came to life. After that he asked all of them to go hunting with him, but he kept the quill hidden away so that they would not bother him as they had before. When they came to a big flock of mountain sheep, he let his quill go at them so quickly that they could not see it. Then he went up, looked the dead sheep over, and immediately cut out the quill. All his friends were surprised at what had happened. After they had gotten down, those who were not his close friends came to him and gave payment for the meat.

The people he restored to life after they had been dead for very many years had very deep set eyes and did not get well at once.

After that he went to a town where the people were all well and killed some of them with his blanket. Then he went to the other people in that place and said, “How are your friends? Are they dead?” “Yes.” “Well I know a way of making them well.” He went up to them again with his blanket and brought them back to life. They were perfectly well.

This man went around everywhere doing the same thing and became very famous. Whenever one was sick in any place they came after him and offered him a certain amount for his services, so that he became the richest man of his time.

9. WOLVERINE-MAN

There were people living in a certain town on the mainland. You know that in olden times the people did not use guns. They hunted with bows and arrows, and horn spears, and it was very hard work to use them. So, when they were going hunting, they had to fast and wash their heads in urine. That is why in all of these stories—which I am telling you just as they were told in the olden times—food was very scarce and hard to get. Success depended on what things were used and how people prepared themselves.

One day a certain man at this place began preparing himself by washing his head in urine, and the following morning he dressed and started up the valley carrying his horn spear. At the head of this valley he saw a flock of mountain sheep, but he could not get at them, so he camped over night. In the morning he saw that a wolverine (nūsk) was among these sheep killing them off.

Next evening he reached the top of the mountain and started into the brush to camp, but came to a house with the door wide open for him. On the inside hung pieces of fat from all kinds of animals the wolverine had killed. He wanted to go in very much, but instead he sat down in the brush near by and waited.

Presently a man came along carrying a pack. This was Wolverine-man (Nūˊsgu-qa). He said, “My trader, you are here. Why don’t you step inside?” Then they entered, and Wolverine-man took off his clothes and began wringing them out just like a human being. Then he heated some hot rocks, took his half-basket, chopped up the bones of a ground hog and put these into it along with the cooking stones. Then he said to the man, “Give me that kᴀndᴀʟāˊx. Give me that kǃᴀx̣ᴀˊkaok.” These were his own words which he was teaching to this man, and they mean, “Give me my dish. Give me my little spoon.” So, when one went up to the top of this mountain in olden times he called his dishes and spoons by those names.

Then Wolverine-man placed the food before his guest, but, when the latter was about to take some, Wolverine-man said something that sounded strange to him. He said, “There he is picking it up. There he is going to eat it.” It sounded strange. Then he kept on talking: “He is getting closer to the small bones. He is getting closer to the small bones. He is getting closer to the small brother of the big bone. He is getting closer to the small brother of the big bone.” He did not want the man to eat the small bones at the joint,⁠[22] and it was from Wolverine-man that people learned not to eat these. He said, “I am not saying this to you because I hate you. If anybody swallows these, the weather is not clear on top of the mountain. It is always foggy, and one can kill nothing. This is why I am telling you.” Meanwhile the people in the camps hunted every day for this man but in vain.

By and by Wolverine-man said to him, “Go around to the other side of the mountain and sit down where the ground-hogs’ places are.” He went there every day, but always came home without anything. Wolverine-man, however, brought him a great load every time. Finally Wolverine-man told him to go and cut off two small limbs with his ax. People generally carried a stone ax when off hunting. With these he made a trap for him and named it Never-lasting-over-night (Łankāˊkǃîxē). It was so named because it was certain to catch.

When they went up next day, Wolverine-man said, “I am going this way. Do not set your trap until you see a large ground hog going into a hole. Set it there.” Soon after he left Wolverine-man he saw a big ground hog going into its hole. He set up his trap there, stood near, and watched. Soon he heard the crack of his trap falling. He set it up many times, and each time he caught one. He killed four that day. That is why the trap is called Never-lasting-over-night. From that time on he increased the size of his catch every day, while Wolverine-man did not catch much. When he got home with all his ground hogs Wolverine-man lay down by the fire and began singing, “What I would have killed has all gone over to a lazy man’s side.”

Next morning, when they again started off to hunt, Wolverine-man, instead of continuing on his usual route, came back to see what his companion was doing. Then he climbed into a tree to watch him, began to play around in the tree, and afterwards suddenly fell down. He wanted to deceive the trapper. This tree is a small bushy one called sǃᴀx, and it is Wolverine-man’s wife with which he had really been cohabiting. The man, however, observed what he was doing, and returned home at once, upon which Wolverine-man became so ashamed that he lay down and covered himself with ashes.

After that Wolverine-man told his guest to lie down and cover himself up. Then he took his urinal full of urine, with two white rocks in it, to another place. He was going to bathe to purify himself from his wife. After he had purified himself, he came home, put grease into the fire and began to motion toward his face and to blow with his mouth. Then he took a wooden comb and began to comb his hair. The man had covered his head with the blanket but was watching through a hole.

Now the man arose and said to Wolverine-man, “I am going home to my children.” Then Wolverine-man told him not to say where he had been but to keep him in remembrance by means of the trap. He had stayed with Wolverine-man more than a month, and, when he went down, he had a big pack of skins.

Then he began to distribute these to all his friends, telling them that he had discovered a place where there were lots of things, and that he had a trap which never failed to kill ground hogs and other animals if set on the mountain over night. When he explained to the people how to set up this trap, a man named Coward (Qǃᴀtxāˊn) said, “I will go along with you.” This time they did not go way up to the place where Wolverine-man had helped him but into one of the lower valleys where there were many ground hogs. There they constructed a house out of dry sticks and began trapping. Coward had understood him to say that he caught ground hogs by whittling up sticks near the hole. That was what he was doing every day, until finally his companion said, “What do you do by the holes that you do not catch anything?” He said, “Why, I have already cut up two big sticks by the holes.” Then the other answered, “That is not right. You have to cut and make a trap with which to trap the ground hog.”

After that this man thought he would do the same thing to the tree he had seen Wolverine-man do, but he fell to the ground and was barely able to crawl home. When he thought he had enough skins, he started to pack up and return. The trap was very valuable at that time because it was new, and anyone borrowing it paid a great deal. So he became wealthy by means of it. He went to every other town to let people know about it. They would invite him to a place, feast him, and ask him for it. He became very wealthy.

10. THE HALIBUT PEOPLE

There was a very long town where people were fishing for halibut. One evening the daughter of the chief, whose house was in the middle of the place, went down on the beach to cut up halibut, and slipped on some halibut slime. She used bad words to it.

A few days afterward many canoe loads of people came to get this girl in marriage, and she started off with them. But, although they appeared to her like human beings, they were really the halibut people. As soon as they had left the village they went around a point, landed, and went up into the woods after spruce gum and pitch. They brought down a great quantity of this, heated a rock in the fire and spread pitch all over it. When it was melted they seated the woman upon it. The two brothers of this girl searched along shore for her continually, and finally they discovered where she was; but she was dead.

Then they felt very sad on her account and asked each other, “What shall we do about her?” They thought of all kinds of schemes, and at last hit upon a plan. Then they went home, filled a bladder full of blood, and went out to the halibut fishing ground. The elder brother let his younger brother down on a line, but before he got far he lost his breath and had to be pulled up. So the elder brother prepared himself. He put on his sister’s dress, took his knife and the bladder full of blood, and got safely to the bottom. When he arrived there he found himself in front of a house. Some one came out to look and then said to the chief inside, “Has your wife come out to see you?” They thought it was the dead woman. So the halibut chief said, “Tell her to come in,” and he married her.

At this time the friends of the young man were vainly endeavoring to catch halibut, and he could see their hooks. Instead of coming into the houses these would fall around on the outside. They tried all kinds of hooks of native manufacture, but the only one that succeeded was Raven-backbone-hook (Yēł-tūˊdᴀqǃê), which came right in through the smoke hole.

After a while the halibut chief said, “Let us go and take a sweat bath.” [Frater autem puellae mortuae semper secum portabat vesicam cruore plenam, quo ungebat extrema vestem qua indutus erat, ut rhombum deciperet, dicens, “Mensibus affectus sum; noli mihi appropinquare.”]

That night, as soon as the halibut chief was asleep, the man took his knife, cut the chief’s head off and ran outside with it. Everybody in the town was asleep. Then he jerked on his brother’s line, and his brother pulled him up along with the head.

After that they paddled along shore for some time, and on the way the elder brother kept shooting at ducks with his arrows. Finally he hit one and took it into the canoe. It was shivering, and his brother said, “Look at this little duck. It is dying of cold. I wish you were by my father’s camp fire.” On account of these bad words the canoe went straight down into the ocean.

Arrived at the bottom, they saw a long town, and some one said, “Get out of the canoe and come up.” Then the duck led them up into the house of his grandfather, the killer whale—for the killer whale is grandfather to the duck—and a big fire was built for them. Then they seated the brothers close to this and said, “Do you think it is only your father who has a big fire?” After they were so badly burned that their heads were made to turn backward with the heat, they were thrown outside. There they became the ducks called Always-crying-around-[the-bay] (Ỵīkᴀg̣āˊxe). You can hear them crying almost any time when you are in camp. They never got back to their friends.

11. STORIES OF THE MONSTER DEVILFISH⁠[23] AND THE CRY-BABY⁠[24]

Many people once went to a certain camp to dry salmon. They did not know that a big devilfish lived under a steep cliff not very far from this place. In olden times, besides using hooks, they caught salmon by means of traps (cᴀł), and when the trap was full, they would take out the fish and hang them on drying frames. When these people had many fish on the frames, they took off their covers so that the red color shone out on the ocean very distinctly.

A man and his two brothers living at this camp were fond of hunting, and one day, when very many salmon were on the frames, they started out. While they were gone the devilfish saw the glow on the water from the red salmon, threw his tentacles around the camp and swept every vestige of it into the sea. In those times a hunter washed in urine before going out hunting and was then sure to kill something, but on that day everything the hunters speared got away. When they returned to the camp, they saw many pieces of canoes drifting about the bay. Then they were very sad on account of the loss of their friends, but they did not know what had destroyed them.

After they had remained there for four days, they told the youngest to climb to the top of a high hill and watch them. Then the eldest told his other brother to cut four young spruce trees, and he sharpened these, making two for himself and two for his brother. Early in the morning they loaded their canoe with rocks and prepared to meet the dangerous animal. They went out in front of the high cliff and began throwing rocks down there, the elder saying to his youngest brother, “Look down.”

After a while they saw the large devilfish coming up right under them. Then they took the sharpened sticks and began to pierce its flesh. The youngest watched all that happened. When their canoe was broken up, they climbed on top of the devilfish and continued running the sticks into it until it died. When that happened it carried them down along with it.

Then the youngest brother started off to find some settlement, and when he came to one, the people set out at once to look for his brothers. Finally they discovered the place to which the devilfish had floated, along with the hunters and their canoe. But it did not get the salmon it had destroyed so many people for. Then the people gave a death feast and all cut their hair off short.

In the town to which these people belonged once lived a little boy who was always crying. His parents tried to rear him properly, yet he cried, cried, cried all the time. Finally his father shouted out, “Come this way Djînᴀkᴀx̣wᴀˊtsǃa.⁠[25] Pull this boy away, for he cries too much.” Toward evening he repeated the same words, and this time a land-otter-man behind the house shouted out stutteringly, “Bring my grandchild here and let him eat gᴀłkᴀdax̣ᴀˊkǃᵘ to keep him quiet.” So the little boy was taken away and given what appeared to him to be blackberries.

Two days afterward they began searching for him, and they finally found him far up in the woods. When they brought him down he had a big belly and did not cry as loudly as he had before, so they thought that something was wrong. Then they boiled some dried salmon and gave him broth made from it. The heat of this broth expelled all of the small creatures that had been given him to eat under the appearance of blackberries. Spiders began running out of his mouth, ears, nose, eyes, and buttocks. His insides were filled with them, and they had eaten out all of his flesh. When these were expelled, nothing was left but the skin which they threw away.

12. THE WOMAN WHO WAS KILLED BY A CLAM

There was a famine at a certain town and many people had to depend on shellfish, so the women went down to the beach at low tide every day to gather them. One time a chief’s daughter went down and reached far under a rock to find some clams. Then a large bivalve called xīt closed upon her hand, holding her prisoner. Presently the tide began to rise, and, when it had almost reached her, she began singing a song about herself. She kept on singing until the tide passed right over her. Then all felt sad and held a feast for her at which they put food, blankets, and other things into the water.

13. ROOT-STUMP⁠[26]

There was a certain town in which many people were dying of sickness, but those who felt well used to play shinney on the beach every day. Then something came down through the air and one of them seized it and was dragged up from the ground. Another person grasped his feet, endeavoring to pull him back, but he, too, was carried up and another and another until there were ten. All of these were taken up out of sight.

The next day the same thing came down a second time, and ten more were carried off. This happened every day until all the men in the town were gone. Next it came to a woman, and all the women were carried away in the same manner except two.

These two women now walked along the beach calling for help. They did not know whither their friends had gone. And every day they went up into the forest after roots.

One day, after they had gone up into the woods, one of these women began swallowing root-juice, and it formed a child in her. This was born and proved to be a boy. After he had grown a little larger, his mother named him Root-stump (Xᴀt-cūgūˊʟkǃî). This is what helped her. All the men who used to chop canoes away from town had also disappeared.

The child grew very rapidly and repeatedly asked his mother, “Where have all my friends gone?” She said to him, “We do not know. They kept going up into the air.” When he was a little larger he began to test himself. He would go up to a tree, seize a limb, and try to stretch himself. Then roots would run out from him in every direction because his mother had named him to have that sort of strength.⁠[27]

His mother said to him, “Look out when you go down on the beach to play, because those who do so go up into the air and you will also go up. So look out.” Then he ran down to the beach and began playing. All at once the thing came down. He seized it, and immediately roots grew out from him into the ground in every direction. So he pulled down the thing that was killing his people, and it broke into small pieces.

There was another being in the woods who always chopped and made noises to entice people to him in order to kill them. He was in the habit of killing people by asking them to get into his canoe, when he knocked out a thwart so that it closed in upon them. He was the one who had killed the canoe makers. Root-stump once found this man engaged in making a canoe, and the man asked him to jump inside. Root-stump knew what he was about, however, and jumped out too quickly. Then Root-stump was so angry that he seized the canoe-maker and beat his brains out. He broke up the canoe and piled it on top of him.

This boy grew up into a very fine man. He brought in all kinds of things for his mother. If he were hunting mountain sheep and came to a chasm or other similar place, he would cross it by sticking his roots into the ground on the other side.

This is why they say even at the present time to a woman who works with roots, “Do not swallow the sap. You might have a baby from it.”

14. THE PROTRACTED WINTER

One time some boys pulled a piece of drifting seaweed out of the water on one side of their canoe and put it in again on the other. It was almost summer then, but, for having done this, winter came on again and snow was piled high in front of the houses so that people began to be in want of food. One day, however, a blue jay perched on the edge of a smoke hole, with elderberries in its mouth, and cried, “Kîłnᴀˊxe.” This was the name of a neighboring town. So the people took all the cedar bark they had prepared to make houses out of and went to Kîłnᴀˊxe where they found that it was already summer and the berries were ripe. Only about their own town was it still winter. This happened just beyond the town of Wrangell.

I tell you this story to show how particular people used to be in olden times about things, for it was only a piece of seaweed that brought winter on.

15. BEAVER AND PORCUPINE⁠[28]

A porcupine and a beaver were once very close friends.⁠[29] They traveled about everywhere and reported to each other all that happened. The bear is very much afraid of the porcupine, but he hates the beaver. Wherever the beaver has a dam the bear breaks it up so as to let the water down, catches the beaver and eats him. But he is afraid of the porcupine’s sharp quills, so the porcupine sometimes stayed in the beaver’s house, which is always dry inside.

When the lake began falling, they knew it was caused by the bear, and the porcupine would go out to reconnoiter. Then he would come back and say to his friend, “Do not go out. I will go out first.” Then the bear would be afraid of the porcupine’s sharp quills and go away, after which all the beavers began repairing their dam while the porcupine acted as guard.

By and by the porcupine said to the beaver, “I am hungry. I want to go to my own place.” Porcupine got his food from the bark and sap of trees, so he told the beaver to go up a tree with him, but the beaver could not climb. Then the porcupine told him to stay below while he went up to eat. Soon they saw the bear coming, and the beaver said, “Partner (xōˊne), what shall I do? The bear is getting near.” Then the porcupine slid down quickly and said, “Lay your head close to my back.” In that way he got the beaver to the top of the tree. But, after a while, the porcupine left him, and the beaver did not know how to climb down. He began to beg the porcupine in every way to let him down, but in vain. After quite a while, however, the squirrel, another friend of the beaver, came to him and helped him down, while the porcupine was off in a hole in the rocks with a number of other porcupines.

By and by the porcupine went back and saw his friend swimming in the lake. The beaver asked him down to the lake and then said, “Partner, let us go out to the middle of the lake. Just put your head on the back of my head and you will not get wet at all.” Because these two friends fell out, people now become friends, and, after they have loved each other for a while, fall out. Then the porcupine did as he was directed, the beaver told him to hold on tight, and they started. The beaver would flap his tail on the water and dive down for some distance, come to the surface, flap his tail, and go down again; and he repeated the performance until he came to an island in the center of the lake. Then he put the porcupine ashore and went flapping away from him in the same manner.

Now the little porcupine wandered around the whole island, not knowing how to get off. He climbed a tree, came down again, and climbed another, and so on. But the wolverine lived on the mainland near by, so after a while he began to sing for the wolverine (nūsk) “Nū-u-sguē-eˊ, Nū-u-sguē-eˊ, Nū-u-sguē-eˊ.” He called all the animals on the mainland, but he called the wolverine especially, because he wanted the north wind to blow so that it would freeze.⁠[30]

Then the wolverine called out, “What is the matter with you?” So he at last sang a song about himself, saying that he wanted to go home badly. After he had sung this the whole sea froze over, and the porcupine ran across it to his home. This is why they were going to be friends no longer.

Then the porcupine made friends with the ground hog and they stayed up between the mountains where they could see people whenever they started up hunting. One day a man started out, and when they saw him, the porcupine began singing, “Up to the land of ground hog. Up to the land of ground hog.” The man heard him. That is why people know that the porcupine sings about the ground hog.

After this the man began trapping ground hogs for food and caught a small ground hog. He took it home and skinned it. Then he took off the head and heated some stones in order to cook it. When he was just about to put it into the steaming box the head sang plainly, “Poor little head, my poor little head, how am I going to fill him?” The man was frightened, and, instead of eating, he went to his traps in the morning, took them up (lit. “threw them off”) and came home.

Next morning he reported everything to his friends, saying, “I killed a ground hog, skinned it and started to cook the head. Then it said to me, ‘Poor little head.’” After that he went out to see his bear traps. While he was endeavoring to tighten the release of one of these, the dead fall came down and struck him in the neck, making his head fly off. When he had been absent for two days they searched for him and found him in his own trap. This was what the ground hog had predicted when it said, “My poor little head.” They took his body down to the beach, beat the drums for him, and had a feast on the ground hogs and other animals he had trapped.

16. THE POOR MAN WHO CAUGHT WONDERFUL THINGS

There was a long town from which all the people used to go out fishing for halibut and other large fish every day. In those times, before bone was used, they made hooks of two pieces of spruce from young trees, sharpened the point and hardened it in the fire. For lines they dried slender kelp stems.

A very poor man living at one end of the town fished among the others, but did not catch anything. While they were having a good time fishing he remained perfectly quiet, and they kept laughing at him. One day, when he pulled at his line, it acted as if it were fast to something. He thought it had caught upon a rock and pulled it about in the endeavor to free it. All at once it began to come slowly up, and, although every one laughed at him, he held on.

After he had brought it close to the canoe, he looked down and saw that it was a great live abalone caught in the flesh. Its color shone out of the water. As it ascended it was so big that all the canoes seemed to come inside of it, and it shone in every one’s face. Then some people who wanted to take this valuable thing away from him, said, “Cut the line. It is a great thing that you have caught. You better let it go.” After a while he became tired of the people’s talk, so he cut his line. Then it began to go down very slowly, shining all over.

Then others came to him and said, “You did not do the right thing. It is a very valuable thing you let go.” He said, “Has it sunk?” So nowadays, when a person has lost a valuable thing, they say to him, “Is it an abalone that has sunk?” (Dêˊca guˊnxa ak we wutǃaˊqǃ) Whenever he thought about this he cried at the riches he had let go.

Another time they went out fishing, and he was with them. He had a sponge in his hand, and taking a piece of flesh out of his nose inside so as to make it bleed, he filled the sponge with blood and let it down into the ocean. When he began to pull up his hook, it was again fast. He pulled it up slowly, for it was very heavy. It was another valuable thing, the nest of a fish called îcqēˊn. Then he filled his canoe with these fishes, called the other canoes to him and filled them. After that he stood up in his canoe and said, “The abalone has not been drowned from me yet. I still have it.” He distributed these fishes all over the town and began to get rich from the property he received. People gave him all kinds of skins—moose, caribou, fox, etc. He had great stores of riches from having caught the abalone and the nest of fishes.

17. THE FINDING OF THE BLUE PAINT, AND HOW A CERTAIN CREEK RECEIVED ITS NAME

At Sitka lived four brothers who were very fond of hunting. In those days people liked to hunt about the straits north of Sitka for fur seals, sea otters, etc. One day, while they were out, they were forced to take refuge from a storm at a place near Mount Edgecumbe, called Town-on-the-inside-of-blue-paint-point (Nex̣îˊntaiataqǃ-ān), and while hunting about this place during their long stay they discovered a rocky cave or overhanging cliff from which soft blue stuff continually dropped. The youngest said, “I have discovered a valuable thing which will be used for painting and for everything carved.”

After they had been there for a long time the weather became fine and the sea smooth. Now in olden times people knew that everything was dangerous. When the brothers were about to start, they said, “We will take some off now to carry home.” So they knocked off a big piece, rolled it up among their clothes and hid it away. But the canoe had scarcely started before the sea began to get rough. When they were some way out they headed for an island outside of Edgecumbe which they had to pass. Then the eldest, who was steering, began to compose a song about the course he was taking: “Which way shall I steer the canoe, straight out into the ocean or straight on to the shore?” The youngest said, “There is no way of getting home. Would it not be better to throw this blue paint into the water? Then we can get ashore.” So the eldest brother put in the next verse as follows: “Which way shall we steer, straight in or not? Shall we not throw this blue paint into the water? If not how shall we be saved?” Then he exclaimed, “Bring the blue stuff here and tie it to my head, and I will be drowned with it so that things shall eat me up with it.”

They were not drowned, however, and reached shore in safety, so people still speak of their bravery in not throwing the blue paint overboard. To this day they say that, if you take anything from there, the weather will be stormy, and people are still afraid to do it, but take the risk because the thing obtained is valuable.

For a long time after the brothers reached shore with this blue paint the weather was bad and great rollers came sweeping in out of the ocean. No one could go to sea after halibut.

At that time some people were camping a short distance north of Sitka, and one day two women went from there with their children to dig clams. They came into a small inlet and made their camp. Then the women began bringing up shellfish, which they afterwards boiled to get the insides out, ran small sticks through them, and hung them up to dry for their children. One day they went down on the beach as usual, leaving their babies in camp, and the smallest began crying. Then a child somewhat larger shouted, “The baby is crying. The baby is crying.” Its mother said, “Bury one of those cockles in the fire and cook it for her,” but the little boy understood his mother to say, “Dig a hole for your little sister in the fire and put her into it.” So the little boy began to pull the fire apart and to make a hole in the middle of it. He tried to knock his little sister into this hole but she kept getting up again, so he shouted, “She keeps trying to get away from me.” After a while he became too strong for his little sister, put her in, and covered her over.

When his mother came up, she said, “Little son, where is your little sister?” “I have buried her in the fire. She is there.” So after that they named the stream Creek-where-a-person-was-burned (Kᴀˊxsîgᴀnîhīn).

18. VARIOUS ADVENTURES NEAR CROSS SOUND

There is a place in the neighborhood of Cross sound called Kǃudēˊs-qǃaỵîk, which people used to frequent in olden times to hunt, catch halibut, and so on. People were then in the habit of traveling from camp to camp a great deal. One time a man and his wife went out to get cedar bark off from some trees, and the man went quite a distance up into the woods from his wife with his stone ax and tree climber. This tree-climber was an apparatus composed of ropes, with a board for the climber to stand on. But, while he was high up in a tree, the board slipped from under the man’s feet, and the rope held him tight to the tree by his neck so that he died. Since he did not come back, his wife went home and reported that he was missing. Then they hunted for him everywhere, and finally a man found him hanging from the tree dead. The dead man was brother of a chief. So they took the board that had fallen from under his feet home, laid it across the neck of a slave and killed him to be revenged on the board. They kept the board and exhibited it at feasts. Afterward people were called for the death feast.

People continued going to the different bays hunting, and one day a canoe with two men in it anchored close by a cliff. While they were there one of them saw two huge devilfish arms moving across the bay. They ran ashore and hid under a rock, letting the arms pass over them, while the devilfish took the canoe into its hole under water.

Then the men started up the hill. On their way home they saw in a small creek what appeared to be a little halibut, but on coming closer they found that it was only a white rock which had that appearance.

After they had reached home and had reported what had happened, all the people began to chop at a log. Then they started a big fire and began to burn it. But, when it was half burned, they put out the fire by throwing hot water upon it. They were going to take it to the devilfish hole and drown it there. So they took it over to that place and let it down, but never saw it again.

Later four other men went hunting by canoe one autumn to a place called Wᴀtᴀsǃāˊx, where they encamped. By and by one of the party, on going to his traps, found a big land otter in one of them. He took the bough of a tree, twisted it around the land otter’s neck, and carried it home. He did not know what it was. As he dragged it home it went bouncing along behind him and at every bounce something whistled behind him. Arrived at camp he began to skin it. Then he said to his brothers, “Go and get your pot ready to cook it,” but, when they began to cut it up to put it in, something whistled. “That is just what I heard on the way,” he said.

After the pot had boiled and they had begun eating, something began to whistle in a tree near by and threw a rock down. They threw one back and soon rocks were flying back and forth. It was a great thing to fool with. By and by the men said, “You might cut our faces,” so, instead of throwing rocks, they seized long cones and threw these back and forth all night. Toward morning the being in the tree, which was a land-otter-man, began to hit people, and they on their part had become very tired. Finally they tried to get him down by lighting a fire under the tree where he was sitting. When it was burning well, all suddenly shouted, and he fell into it. Then they threw the fire over him, and he burned up. But when they started for the beach to go home, all wriggled from side to side and acted as if they were crazy; and when anyone went to that place afterward he would act in the same manner.

These men lived at a place called Person-petrified (Cᴀkdahᴀnaˊ), and when they came home, it was told them, “A woman and her child have been lost from this place.” This woman had been attacked by some strange man, whom she also killed with the pole which was used to take off cedar bark. At that time many persons had disappeared, and the people were wearied out looking for them. Now, however, they were determined to find the murderers, so all got into one canoe and started along the coast. After a time the high waves compelled them to encamp, and all went up into the woods to hunt through them for a beach. Then they came to a house made of driftwood, where the murderers lived. They went to each end where the main stringer protruded, lifted it off of its supporting posts and let it fall on the occupants. Those who tried to get out between the logs they killed. Then they set the ruined house on fire and burned it with all it contained; and they broke up the canoe belonging to those people.

Close by lived a shaman related to the same people. His spirits told him that there was a mountain near by where flint could be obtained. His spirits had so much strength that he went right to that place and broke it off. In those days every time a shaman cut an animal’s tongue he had more strength, so, when his strength was all combined, it amounted to considerable.

At that time the people did not have any flint, but, after the spirit discovered it, all knew where it was to be found, and they have since brought it from there.

19. KĀTSǃ⁠[31]

Kātsǃ belonged to the Kāˊgwᴀntān and lived at Sitka. One day he went hunting with dogs, and, while his dogs ran on after a male bear, this bear’s wife took him into her den, concealed him from her husband, and married him. He had several children by her. Indoors the bears take off their skin coats and are just like human beings.

By and by he wanted to go back to his people, but before he started she told him not to smile at or touch his Indian wife or take up either of his children. After his return, he would go out for seal, sea lions, and other animals which he carried up into an inlet where his bear wife was awaiting him. Then the cubs would come down, pull the canoe ashore violently, take out the game and throw it from one to another up to their mother. On account of the roughness of these cubs it came to be a saying in Sitka, “If you think you are brave, be steersman for Kātsǃ.”

One day Kātsǃ pitied one of his children and took it up. The next time he went up the inlet, however, the cubs seized him and threw him from one to another up to their mother, and so killed him. Then they scattered all over the world and are said to have been killed in various places.

What is thought to have been the last of these was killed at White Stone Narrows. When some people were encamped there a girl spoke angrily about Kātsǃ’s child, and it came upon them, killing all except a few who escaped in their canoes, and this woman, whom it carried off alive, making her groan with pain. One man tried to kill it but did not cut farther than its hair. Finally all the Indians together killed it with their spears and knives.⁠[32]

20. THE UNSUCCESSFUL HUNTERS

Two persons very fond of hunting were in the habit of washing in urine, as was usual in old times when one wanted something very much. Then they went to a sea-lion rock, and one of them threw his spear at a sea lion but the point broke off the handle. The animal was the sea-lion-chief’s son. Afterwards the man who had done it was drowned, but his companion reached the sea-lion rock in safety. He looked about for his friend, but could not see him, so he went up on top of the rock, lay down, and, pulling the grass over himself, fell asleep. While he was asleep and dreaming, some one came to him and said, “I come to help you.” He awoke, but there was nothing visible except nesting birds flying about the island. Then he again fell asleep, and again he heard some one come to him and say, “I come to help you. The place you have drifted upon is a house. When you hear the noise of a shaman’s beating sticks, go straight to the door of the place from which it comes.”

Soon he heard the noise of the sticks, as the man had forewarned him, just a little below the place where he was lying. He stepped forward quietly, and lo! he came to the door of a fine, large house. Inside of this he saw those who were beating the sticks and a man lying sick “with pneumonia,” out of whom the string of the spear hung. Then he crept in quietly, hiding behind the people, and said within himself, “If it were I, I would push that spear in a little farther, twist it to one side and pull it out.” Upon this everybody said, “Make way for him. This shaman says he can take the spear out by twisting it and then pulling out.” He said to himself, “I guess I can do it,” so he let them have their way. Then he came out in the middle of the house, pulled his blanket about himself, used his hand like a rattle and ran around the fire just like a shaman. When he went to the spear and moved it a little, the sick man cried out. After that he let it alone for a while. He wished very much that they would give him in payment a large animal stomach which was hanging on a post. So the man’s father said, “Pay it to him.”

Now he tied his blanket tightly about himself and said, “Bring in some water.” Then he ran around the sick man again, and, when he came to where the spear was, he summoned all his strength, pushed it in a little, turned it round slightly and pulled it out. At once he pushed it into the water in the customary manner and blew eagle down upon it, when all of the white matter came out of the wound and the sick man got his breath. After that he hid the spear quickly from the eyes of the people.

When he went out, the man who had first come to his assistance came again. This was the puffin (xîk). It said, “Take that big stomach, get inside, and go home in it. After you get inside do not think of this place again.” He did as the puffin had directed, but, when he was within a short distance of the shore, he thought of the place where he had been and immediately floated back to the island. The second time the skin carried him right ashore. Then he got out, went home to his friends and reported everything that had happened.

Another canoe also set out to hunt in much the same way. After the people had gone on for a very long time unsuccessfully, they came upon a great seal standing out of the water, and one of the hunters speared it. It was nothing but an old log drifting about which had appeared to him like a seal. That night they anchored their canoe in front of a steep cliff not far from this place and prepared to spend the night there. By and by they heard a skate flopping along on the water near by, whereupon the steersman took his spear and struck it on one side of the belly. Then the skate swam right down into the ocean.

This skate was a slave of the G̣onaqᴀdēˊt who lived under that same cliff, and when the G̣onaqᴀdēˊt heard him groaning under the house steps where he always stayed, he said to one of his other slaves, “Get up and find what he is groaning about.” Then the skate said, “There is a canoe outside here. The people in that canoe have done something to me.”

Then the G̣onaqᴀdēˊt awoke all his slaves’ nephews and said, “Bring that canoe in here.”

Presently the man in the bow of the canoe awoke and looked about. Their canoe was on top of the inside partitions of a house. He took something and poked his steersman quietly to awaken him, for he saw that something was wrong.

Early in the morning the G̣onaqᴀdēˊt awoke and said to his nephews, “Make a big fire.” Then he exclaimed angrily, “It is of no use to bother poor slaves. Why did they want to kill that slave?”

Meanwhile the friends of these people were searching for them everywhere.

Then the chief told them to come forward, saying to them, “You will now be judged.” One could not see the part of the house near the door, it was so crowded with the nephews and friends of the G̣onaqᴀdēˊt (i. e., all kinds of fishes and marine animals) dressed in every style. They said to them, “To what tribe do you belong?” and the bow man replied, “We are of the Kᴀtagwᴀˊdî family.” Then the chief said, “If one is going to visit a person, he should enter his house in a polite manner and not destroy anybody. Let them wash their hands. Give them food and dress them up well. I am a Kᴀtagwᴀˊdî myself, so you are my friends.” Then they fixed them up well, dressing them and combing their hair. But at home the people were beating drums, because they thought these men were dead.

Then the chief said to them, “When you build a house, name it Rock House (Tᴀ hît). It is a good thing that we use each other’s emblems.” Afterward the G̣onaqᴀdēˊt’s people loaded their canoe, combed their hair with cottonwood boughs so that it smelt good, and let them go home.

And when they first reached home they were dressed so finely that the people did not know them. The chief said to his friends, “A great living thing saved us. He gave us a thing to go by which shall be our emblem, namely, that whenever we build a house we shall call it Rock House.”

21. ORIGIN OF ICEBERG HOUSE⁠[33]

A man and his wife were living at a certain fort. At that time some disease came into the world and destroyed all of their uncles, fathers, and friends. Then the man thought within himself, “I ought to give some sort of feast to my dead friends,” and he began to gather berries.

One day a quantity of ice floated up on the beach below him. He took this up piece by piece and put it into the house, treating the pieces as his guests. He poured a great deal of oil into the fire to make it blaze. Then he took dishes, put berries into them, and placed these in front of the pieces of ice to show that he was sorry for the dead people, and desired to give some one a feast. After he had given to them, the ice gave forth a kind of squeak as if the pieces were talking to him, though he could not make out what was said. It is from this squeak that the people now know that he invited them, and it is from this circumstance also that, when ice drifts down upon a person in a canoe, he talks to it and gives it tobacco, calling it “My son’s daughter” or “My son’s wife.” This is ahead of the Tcūkᴀneˊdî (i. e., the beginning of the Tcūkᴀneˊdî clan). Therefore they own Iceberg House.⁠[34]

Afterwards this man went out again. He said to himself, “I will invite anyone out on the sea that hears me.” After he had gotten well out in his canoe he shouted, “Everybody this way. Everybody this way,” just as though he were calling guests, and immediately crowds of the bear tribe, thinking they were the ones invited, began coming down between the mountains.

When he saw these animals coming, the man told his wife to be courageous, but for himself he said he did not care whether he lived or died, because all of his friends were dead. When the bear people began to come in, he told them to go up to the rear end of the house, saying, “It is your brother-in-law’s seat you are going to sit down in” (i. e., that was where he formerly sat). His wife was somewhat frightened, but he talked to them as if they were his own people. As he called out the names of the dead men who had held those seats they would say in turn, “Hadeˊ (present),” and he would pass a dish up to the speaker.

After they were through eating the chief of the bear tribe said to his friends very plainly, “Do not leave this man friendless, but go to him every one of you and show your respect.” So they told the man to lie down in front of them, and before they left they licked him, meaning that thereby they licked his sorrow away. They said, “This is because you feel lonely.” Then the bears started off.

At that time men from some other town came near, watched the big animals come out and heard the man speak to them as if they were his own friends, but they were afraid to go near.

22. THE WOMAN TAKEN AWAY BY THE FROG PEOPLE⁠[35]

There was a large town in the Yakutat country not very far back of which lay a big lake very full of frogs. In the middle of the lake was a swampy patch on which many frogs used to sit.

One day the town chief’s daughter talked badly to the frogs. She took one up and made fun of it, saying, “There are so many of these creatures, I wonder if they do things like human beings. I wonder if men and women cohabit among them.”

When she went out of doors that night, a young man came to her and said, “May I marry you?” She had rejected very many men, but she wanted to marry this one right away. Pointing toward the lake he said, “My father’s house is right up here,” and the girl replied, “How fine it looks!” When they went up to it, it seemed as though a door was opened for them, but in reality the edge of the lake had been raised. They walked under. So many young people were there that she did not think of home again.

Meanwhile her friends missed her and hunted for her everywhere. Finally they gave her up, and her father had the drums beaten for a death feast. They cut their hair and blackened their faces.

Next spring a man who was about to go hunting came to the lake to bathe himself with urine. When he was done, he threw the urine among a number of frogs sitting there and they jumped into the water. When he was bathing next day he saw all the frogs sitting together in the middle of the lake with the missing woman among them. He dressed as quickly as possible, ran home to the girl’s father, and said, “I saw your daughter sitting in the middle of the pond in company with a lot of frogs.” So her father and mother went up that evening with a number of other people, saw, and recognized her.

After that they took all kinds of things to make the frog tribe feel good so that they would let the woman return to her parents, but in vain. By and by her father determined upon a plan and called all of his friends together. Then he told them to dig trenches out from the lake in order to drain it. From the lake the frog chief could see how the people had determined, and he told his tribe all about it. The frog people call the mud around a lake their laid-up food.

After the people had worked away for some time, the trench was completed and the lake began draining away fast. The frogs asked the woman to tell her people to have pity on them and not destroy all, but the people killed none because they wanted only the girl. Then the water flowed out, carrying numbers of frogs which scattered in every direction. All the frog tribe then talked poorly about themselves, and the frog chief, who had talked of letting her go before, now had her dressed up and their own odor, which they called “sweet perfumery,” was put upon her. After a while she came down the trench half out of water with her frog husband beside her. They pulled her out and let the frog go.

When anyone spoke to this woman, she made a popping noise “Hu,” such as a frog makes, but after some time she came to her senses. She explained, “It was the Kîkcaˊ (i. e., Kîksᴀˊdî women) that floated down with me,” meaning that all the frog women and men had drifted away. The woman could not eat at all, though they tried everything. After a while they hung her over a pole, and the black mud she had eaten when she was among the frogs came out of her, but, as soon as it was all out, she died. Because this woman was taken away by the frog tribe at that place, the frogs there can understand human beings very well when they talk to them. It was a Kîksᴀˊdî woman who was taken off by the frogs, and so those people can almost understand them. They also have songs from the frogs, frog personal names, and the frog emblem. All the people know about them.

23. HOW THE FROGS HONORED THE DEAD

One time, when they were afraid of being attacked, all of the Kîksᴀˊdî and Kāˊgwᴀntān encamped on Kᴀnᴀsqǃēˊ (St. Lazaria island). There are two parts to this island separated at high tide, and the Kîksᴀˊdî encamped upon one, while the Kāgwᴀntān lived upon the other. On the same island there is also a small salt-water pond at the bottom of which was a creature called ʟǃīn, and, being pressed for food on account of their fear of the enemy, the allies often tried to bail out this pond when the tide left it, to get at the sea animal.

While the people were there, a chief of the Kāˊgwᴀntān died, and, after he had been in the house among his friends for eight days, one of his friends said to the Kîksᴀˊdî, “Take care of his dead body.” All the Kāˊgwᴀntān chiefs marry Kîkcaˊ (Kîksᴀˊdî women). But the real frog tribe thought they were the ones who were summoned, because they are also Kîkcaˊ.

Then all the Kîksᴀˊdî made ready to go ashore to burn his dead body. They chopped much wood and made a fire, while all of the Kîksᴀˊdî and Kāˊgwᴀntān stood around it, and everyone felt badly. All at once a big frog, as long as the hand and wrist, jumped out from the place where the fire was and began making a noise. All looked at it. It had come out because the frogs were the ones to whom the Kāˊgwᴀntān had spoken. After that it jumped into the fire and burned up.

Then all the people tied themselves up (gᴀˊxᴀnî) (i. e., tied their blankets around their waists, as they did when they were engaged in lifting the sun⁠[36]) out of respect to the chief. All felt very badly about the dead man, and one person said, “It will not be like draining out the ʟǃīn lake (ʟǃīn āˊya). Let us go to war.” So they captured slaves and killed them for the dead man, and, when they put food into the fire for him, they also named the frog that it might receive some as well.

24. THE BRANT WIVES⁠[37]

A Kîksᴀˊdî youth lived with his father in a long town. When he was well grown, he went about in the woods hunting with bow and arrows. One time he came close to a lake and heard the voices of girls. When he got nearer he saw two girls bathing there. Then he skirted the shore toward them, and, when he was very close, discovered two coats just back of the place where they were. These were really the girls’ skins. He took them up, and they began talking to him, saying, “Give us those skins.” But he said, “I want to marry both of you.” So he married both of them and took them to his father’s house.

Both of this man’s wives used to look over his hair to pick out the lice. When spring was coming on and the brants were coming from the south, the girls sat on top of the house with him and kept saying, “There comes my uncle’s canoe. There comes my father’s canoe.” They were beginning to get homesick, and they asked their husband if he would let them go home. When the brants began coming, one would say, “Those are my friends coming up. I am going to ask them to give me something to eat.” So, when they were above the house, she said, “Give me something to eat,” and down came green herbs one after another.

When it was time for the brants to start back south, both of the girls had become tired. They wanted to go home. They knew when it was time for their father’s canoe to pass over, and just before it was due they told their husband to go up into the woods after something. When he came down, his wives were gone. He said to his father, “Do you know where they went?” but he answered, “No.”

Then the young man said, “I will start down on foot to the place whither I think they have gone.” So he set out, and after he had gone on for some time, he heard people making a noise. It was the brant tribe in camp. On this journey he took a bag full of arrows with mussel-shell points, and bows. For this reason, when he came back of the place where they were, and they caught sight of him, they were afraid and flew away. Then he went down to the place where they had been sitting and found all kinds of green herbs such as brants live on.

After this the girls said to their father, “Let us camp a little way off. He has been with us for some time, and we have gotten his heat. Therefore let us camp near by so that he can come to us and be taken along.” But their father answered, “When he comes behind us again and camps, say to him, ‘Our fathers⁠[38] do not like to see your bows and arrows. Get rid of them.’” They came to him and repeated these words, but he said, “I do not take them in order to do harm to your fathers but to get game for myself. I wish you would tell them that I want to go along, too.” So they told him to come down, and, when he did so, his father-in-law said, “Bring out the best coat. I want to put it on my son-in-law.”

After that his wives said to him, “We are going to start along with you. When we set out do not think about going back and do not look down.” Then they put a woven mat over him and started. After they had gone on for some distance the man wanted to urinate and dropped down from among them on the smooth grass. The brants did not want to leave him, and they followed. It was quite close to their real camping place. The brant tribe was so large that he felt as if he were in his own father’s house. They would play all the evening, and he felt very happy among them.

When they arrived at their real home, this man took off his bag of bows and arrows and hid it back in the woods so that they could not see it. In the same town were fowls of all kinds—brants, swans, herons, etc.—and by and by war arose over a woman, between the brant tribe and the heron tribe. They went outside and started to fight. The swan tribe was between, trying to make peace. When they came out to fight for the second time, the brant tribe was pretty well destroyed by the heron people’s long, pick-like bills. It was from the herons that the Indians learned how to make picks. This is also the reason why the ʟǃūkǃnᴀxᴀˊdî use the swan as their crest, for they are very slow, and the Kîksᴀˊdî use the brant as their emblem because they are very lively.

Then the brant chief said to his son-in-law, “Your wives’ friends are almost destroyed. Could you do anything with your bows and arrows to help them?” You could not see whether these were brants or people. They looked just like people to him. When he ran among them to help his wives’ friends, he killed numbers at each shot and made them flee away from him. The heron tribe was so scared that they sent out word they would make peace. So messengers were sent back and forth, and the heron chief was taken up among the brants while the brant chief was taken up among the herons.⁠[39] They renamed the heron with his own name and the brant with his own name. In making peace they had a great deal of sport and all sorts of dances. From that time on the heron has known how to dance, and one always sees him dancing by the creeks. Then the birds began to lay up herbs and all kinds of things that grow along the beach, for their journey north.

Meanwhile the man’s people had already given a feast for him, and he never returned to his father. He became as one of the brants. That is why in olden times, when brants were flying along, the people would ask them for food.

25. STORY OF THE PUFFIN

There is a place called G̣ānᴀxaˊ and a creek close by called G̣ānᴀxaˊ-hīn whither many people used to go to dry salmon and do other work. One day some women went out from there at low tide to a neighboring island to dig shellfish. They brought their canoe to a place where there was a hole in the side of the island, but, when they endeavored to land, a breaker came in, upset the canoe, and drowned all of them except one. In former times, when this woman went by in her father’s canoe, she used to think the birds here looked pretty and was in the habit of saying, “I wish I could sit among those birds.” These birds were the ones that saved her. They felt so happy at having gotten her that they flew about all the time.

Meanwhile drums were beaten at the town to call people to the death feast, for they thought that she was drowned.

One time a canoe from the village containing her father happened to pass this place, and they said to him, “Look among those birds. Your daughter is sitting there.”

The puffin chief had ordered the łᴀgwâˊtcǃ, a bird which lives on the outer islands and is the puffin’s slave, to braid the woman’s hair, and she always sat on the edge of the cliff.

Her father was very rich, so he filled many canoes with sea-otter, beaver, and marten skins for the birds to settle on when they flew out. When they reached the place, however, he could not see his daughter, for they had taken her inside. Then he became angry. They carried all sorts of things out there but in vain.

At last, about four days afterward, the girl’s mother thought of the white hair that had belonged to her grandfather. In the morning she said to her husband, “We have that old hair in a box. What can we do with it? We ought to try a stratagem with it. Suppose we put boards on the canoes, spread the hair all over them, and take it out.” They did this, and, when they got to the cliff where their daughter used to be, they saw her sitting on the edge with her hair hanging over. They went close in. Then all the birds flew out to them, and each stuck a white hair in its head where you may see it at this day. The girl, however, remained where she was.

Then these birds flew in to the puffin chief and told him about the hair. They thought a great deal of it. Therefore the chief told them to carry the girl back to her father. But before she went he said to her, “If you are ever tired of staying with your father, come back to us.” At that time she had a nose just like one of these birds, because she had wanted to be one of them.

The sea gull is also the slave of the puffin. Therefore the Huna people say that when anyone goes to that place it calls his name, because it was the slave of the puffin at the time when this woman was there.

Because some of their people were drowned at that island, all of the Tǃᴀˊqǃdentān claim it. Later they built a house which they named after it.

26. STORY OF THE WAIN-HOUSE PEOPLE

People came to a fort to live and began to kill bears, ground hogs, porcupines, mountain sheep, etc., with spears, and bows and arrows, laying the meat up in the fort. After they had killed some of these animals they would cut off their heads, set them up on sticks, and begin to sing for them.

There was a young man among them who had been put into a mountain-sheep’s skin instead of a cradle as soon as he was born. When he grew older he was able to follow the mountain sheep to places where no one else could get, so he killed more than the others. He would also play and dance around the heads after they had been cut off and say, “I wish my head were cut off, too.” Then people sang about it. Meanwhile the sheep were getting tired of losing so many of their number.

One day all the people went up to a mountain to hunt, and, finding a flock of sheep, began to chase them to a certain place where they could bunch all together. Suddenly this youth became separated from the other people, and on the very top of the mountain was met by a fine-looking man who shone all over and had a long white beard. This man led him through a door into what he at first thought was a house, but it was really the inside of the mountain. All at once it looked very strange to him. Piles of horns lay about everywhere.

Meanwhile all of his friends had missed him and were hunting about, but had to go home without him. They thought he was gone forever. They hunted for him every day and found his horn spear stuck into the ground at a certain place near the top of the mountain, but nothing more. After searching everywhere in vain they became discouraged and beat the drums for him.

Meanwhile the mountain sheep tried to fit a pair of horns on the young man’s head. They heated these first in the fire, and tried to put them on, when it seemed to him as if the insides of his head were all coming out.

The people kept up their search for him, however, and about a year afterward a man climbed up on the same mountain to hunt sheep. Above him he saw a big flock, and he heard a noise as though some one were shouting or talking there. Then he went straight down, for he knew that it was the person who had been lost, and he knew that the mountain sheep had captured him. Pointing this mountain out to the people, he said to them, “It is he, for I know his voice.” So all the people started up.

Now the sheep could see whenever the Indians set out to hunt for the person they had taken, and they said to him, “There come your friends. If you will tell them to throw away their weapons, we will let you go to them.” So he said to his friends, “If you will lay down your hunting weapons, I will tell you what these mountain sheep say to me.” Afterward he said, “They say that I am being punished because you are destroying them too much, and, when you have killed them, you take the heads and put them on sticks.” Although he was among the mountain sheep he retained his own language. He said besides, “The mountain-sheep chief tells me to say to you that you must hang up the sheep skins with their heads toward the mountain and the rising sun and put eagle feathers upon them. They tell me to say, ‘Do not put our heads on sticks. Grizzly-bears’ heads are the only ones you should treat that way—not ours.’” One could not see or hear this man unless he were specially purified by bathing in urine. Afterward the sheep went right into the mountain with him to the place where they have their homes.

Now they tried in every way to recover him, and finally came out with dogs. Then the mountain sheep said to him, “You can go among your friends after a while, but now you may talk to them from the top of a little cliff.” So his friends came up underneath this, and he talked down to them. By and by the sheep again changed their minds regarding him, and one day he said to his friends, “This is the last time I shall come to see you. If you are going to begin a war on my account, try it in the fall. Then they always come down into the thick timber below the glacier, and you can come up there with dogs.”

In the autumn, therefore, they prepared to kill the sheep. The people were told to put the sheep heads toward the rising sun and throw their skins about anywhere without drying, for they thought that this would make the mountain sheep let their friend go.

Then the mountain-sheep chief said to the man, “They are going to let you go now, because all of your fathers are suffering very much from not having their skins well dried.”

The mountain sheep could easily see when all of his friends started out to fight for him, and they got him ready to send down to them. Then they said, “Now you will be allowed to start down to them.” When they got down far enough the dogs which were coming up in front met the flock he was standing among. Then they took off his mountain-sheep skin and put it aside, leaving him in human form, and he chased all the dogs away from them.

He stood in the midst of the flock of sheep, and all the people stood below. Then he said to his friends, “Do not kill any more mountain sheep, for they will now let me go among you.” So they broke all of the shafts of the spears they had used in fighting the mountain sheep and threw them away.

When he came down he smelt like the things that grow on the tops of cottonwood trees (dōxkwāˊnkǃ). They brought him into the house and he saw the mountain-sheep skins lying about there at random. Then he said, “They let me come among you again that I might have you dampen these, hang them up, and dry them thoroughly.” After they had worked upon the skins for some time they put red paint upon them and eagle down. The man who had come down from among the sheep told his people to say this to the skins while they were doing so: “We will put your skins in just the position in which they came off from the flesh.”

In the morning all of the houses shook. Every piece of flesh that had come off of the mountain sheep was in its place in the skins, and, when the man who had come back to them opened the door, they came down from the drying racks and marched off. But they had been so long among the Indians that just before they reached the highest mountain where they belonged they lost their way and became scattered over all the mountains. Because the mountain sheep once saved (or captured) a man, they have beards and look in other respects like human beings.

After this the mountain sheep sent a spirit called Ỵīx̣âˊ (A-very-young-man (or -yēk)) to the man who had been rescued, to be his strength (yēk). There was great rejoicing among his friends when this spirit began to manifest itself in him, and all commenced to sing for him. At the command of this spirit he had them make him a pair of snowshoes with which his spirit could take him around the fire, a shaman’s mask, and bows and arrows.

Then they came with him to Fort-by-small-lake (Ākǃᵘ Nū), just west of Juneau,⁠[40] and built a big house for him with inside rooms (tǃāqǃ), corner and middle posts, the last mentioned being carved to represent the Great Dipper (Yᴀxtêˊ). At that time the shaman fasted for four days and Yᴀxtêˊ (the constellation) appeared to him. So from that house the people were called Yᴀxtêˊ-hît-tan (Wain-House people).

The mountain-sheep tribe gave this man the name of Skōwadᴀˊł, and he was also called Cᴀxtcāˊtc (Long-toothed-humpback). When his spirit was about to work in him, two porcupine bladders were blown up and hung in the house, and, when the spirit arrived, all stood up in the customary way. Then he put on his mask and his snowshoes, which were thrown down on the floor for him, and carried his bow and arrows in his hand. Although he could not see through this mask, he climbed up on the walls of the inside rooms and ran around there backward. While there he shot at a bladder and the arrow passed straight through it.

When the shaman’s spirits left him he said, “You people are going to see a wonderful gift. It is coming to such and such a place.” In the morning they went out with a dog and armed with spears, and before they got far away the dog began to bark at a bear. Then the animal ran under a log, and all climbed on top of the log prepared to spear it. The shaman had said, “Something is going to happen to one of you,” and sure enough the first man that speared this bear fell down before it and was caught and killed. Then the others quickly speared the bear through and through and killed it.

Meanwhile a spirit came to the shaman, who had remained at home, saying, “Your friend has been killed by a bear.” They brought the bear and the dead man’s body down at once and laid the body before him in the middle of the house. Then the shaman took some of the red paint with which they had brought the mountain sheep to life and put it on the body after which he began running around it. The third time he did this the dead man sat up. The shaman always had such strength.

Some time afterward he again began testing his spirits, because they were going south to war, and, when they left him, he told his people that they would destroy an entire town.

When he was walking around in the woods a raven fell in front of him, and on getting back to the house he said to his clothes man, “I am in luck.” He told some one to return with him, and they found the raven still with life in it. Then he said to his friends, “I will set up all these things.” So he took sticks and set them all round the raven. “Before I cut it,” he said, “I will let the wings flap over it. This will be (i. e., represent) your enemies. Before I cut it I will cause it to kill all of your enemies. The raven will have so much strength.” When they tested him⁠[41] the spirit said, “All people on sticks,” meaning that it wanted all of their foes to fall on sticks and be destroyed when they fought. Then they prepared, saying, “We will start.” The shaman said, “At the moment when we arrive a man is going to chop down a tree in front of us.”

Toward morning they came close to the fort, all prepared for fighting. After they had surrounded it a man came out with a stone ax and climbed up a tree to chop off limbs. Then they shot him with arrows, unnoticed by the fort people, so that he fell down dead. But a little while afterward the fort people said, “Where is that man who climbed the tree a short time ago. He is not there now.” At once they rushed together on both sides, and all those in the fort were destroyed just as the shaman had predicted. Then they returned to their own fort, which was also known as Eulachon-trap fort (Cāł nū).

Another time five women went around the island where they had their fort, after mussels, and came to a reef on the outer side. They left their canoe untied and it floated away. Then the tide began to come up. They stood up on the reef with their hands in the air, singing death songs for themselves, for they knew they were about to die. After that the reef was called Woman reef (Cā qǃāˊtǃagu), on account of the women who were destroyed there.

A year after this some people went across from the fort to a lake into which salmon run, and were surprised on encountering people. They thought it was some war party from very far south and beat a precipitate retreat to the fort. Then the people in the fort saw a big canoe all covered with abalone shell come out from this place and make straight toward them. When it had come close in, the chief questioned these strangers and learned that they were on a friendly visit from Yakutat. It took the strength of all the people to bring up this canoe. Then they made the fort chief a present of land-otter skins, marten skins, skins of all kinds. This was the custom in olden times, a slave being generally given back.

The chief at this place had a nephew named Yêtx̣âˊ who was very fond of gambling. The fourth day that the visitors were in town the chief’s nephew was away from home, and the fire went out. Then he acted as though he were crazy. He went down to the valuable canoe of the visitors, broke off the stern piece for firewood, and threw it indoors so that the abalone shells fell off of it.

Next morning, when the man that owned the canoe got up, he saw that his stern piece was missing, and that burnt abalone shells were lying by the fire. He called to his companions, “Get up and let us be gone. Push the canoe down and load it quickly.” He had a number of copper plates and other property which he had not yet unpacked, and, after he had gotten a little distance from the fort, he landed and took these out. Then he went right back in front of the fort to destroy them on account of the injury he had received. When these people came opposite they took out a copper plate, struck it on the edge of the canoe so as to make it sound and threw it into the sea. They threw away four. Then the fort chief also took four coppers, flung them on the wall of the fort and threw them into the ocean.

[I have explained to you before where this copper came from. It came from the Copper river. Probably this rich man came several times before the fort. Coppers were valued according to their height when they were first made, some at four slaves and some at six.]⁠[42]

When the Yakutat man came before this fort again, his copper plates were all gone, and he began to use cedar bark. His people would tie a rock on each piece and throw it into the water. Meanwhile the fort chief put his canoe on the walls of the fort and began to put Indian beads, caribou skins, moose skins, and other articles into it. Since these ʟǃenēˊdî have the dog salmon for their emblem, the chief’s sister began acting like one when it is shaking out its eggs. She pretended to be shaking out riches in the same way, and, while she did so, they threw the canoe over the edge of the fort, and all the good things spilled out. The man from Yakutat was foolish to try to contend with so wealthy a chief. His name (i. e., the Yakutat man’s) was Kāˊyeswūsâˊt. They chased him out with riches, and told him to come back again with more property. A song was composed about this afterward to the effect that he was simply fooling the people with this yellow cedar bark which was not real property at all. (See song 43.)

In the same fort a woman gave birth to a boy, who exclaimed as soon as he was born, “How many things there will be for all the people who are holding my mother.” In olden times certain women used to hold a woman who was about to give birth, and they were paid for this service. The child grew very fast. He was going to be the greatest liar among his people. After he was grown up and had a family of his own, his mother died, and he started for Chilkat to invite people to the death feast. This was before the Russians came.

He said to his children, “Pull away. Pull fast.” He had started off without any of the property he had intended to take, but on his way Indian rice hailed into his canoe, and a large box of grease floated down to him. When he got close to the mouth of Chilkat river he came in front of a waterfall. He tasted the water of this and found it very sweet. Then he took all of his buckets and filled them with it so that they might put this water on the rice when they ate it. As he was bound for Klukwan, the village farthest up the river, he said to his children, “Blow on the sail.” They did so and passed right up to Klukwan. Then he stood up in his canoe and began to talk. They took all of his stuff up, and in the evening the drums were beaten as a sign that he was going to give out property.

He began to cry in the customary manner as he beat the drums. Then he took a piece of bark and put it in front of his eyes, upon which the tears ran down it in a stream. Afterward he gave out two copper plates and invited the people to eat what he had brought. Then the people danced for him in return, and a man came in with something very shiny on top of his head.⁠[43]

That is all he told when he returned.

27. THE ALSEK RIVER PEOPLE

Once there was a famine among the people of Alsek (Ałsēˊx) river. There were two shamans there, one of whom began singing to bring up eulachon, while the other sang for strength in order to obtain bears and other forest animals.

The first shaman’s spirit told him that if he would go down the little rapids he would see great numbers of eulachon. So he dressed up next morning and went straight down under the water in a little canoe.

That night the other shaman’s spirits came to him, saying that the first shaman would remain under water for four nights; that he had gone into a house where were eulachon, salmon, and other fish and had thrown the door open.

At the end of four days they hunted all around and found him lying dead on the beach amid piles of eulachon. As soon as they brought him up, all the eulachon that were in the ocean started to run up river, and everyone tried to preserve as many of them as he could.

In the same town were two menstruant women, and the other shaman told these that there would be a great many land otters about the town that evening. Just as he had said, at the time when his spirits came to him that evening, numbers of land-otter-men came through the village. They could be heard whistling about the town. Finally some one said, “Why is it that it sounds as if they were all where the two women are?” Sure enough, they found that the land otters were talking inside of the two women. The ones that were inside of them were really land-otter-men, that is, men who had been taken away by the land otters and made like themselves.