MYTHS RECORDED IN ENGLISH AT WRANGELL (continued 2)

Now he had a big house built, and everything that he said had to be done. The people that formerly made fun of him were like slaves to him. He also gave great feasts, inviting people from many villages. But, after he had become very great among them, he was too hard upon the people of his town. His wife was prouder than when she was with her father and if boys or anyone else displeased her they were put to death.

As they were now very proud and had plenty of people to work for them, the husband and wife spent much time sitting on the roof of their house looking about. One spring the woman saw a flock of swans (g̣oqł) coming from the southeast, and said, “Oh! there is a high-caste person among those birds that I was going to marry.” Another time they went up, and a flock of geese (tǃāwᴀˊq) came along. Then she again said to her husband, “Oh! there is the high-caste person I was going to marry.” By and by some sand-hill cranes (dūł) flew past, and she repeated the same words. But, when the brants (qên) came over, and she spoke these words, they at once flew down to her and carried her off with them. Her husband ran after the brants underneath as fast as he could, and every now and then some of her clothing fell down, but he was unable to overtake her.

When the birds finally let this woman drop, she was naked and all of her hair even was gone. Then she got up and walked along the beach crying, and she made a kind of apron for herself out of leaves. Continuing on along the beach, she came upon a red snapper head, which she picked up. She wandered on aimlessly, not knowing what to do, because she was very sad at the thought of her fine home and her husband. Presently she saw smoke ahead of her and arrived at a house where was an old woman. She opened the door, and the old woman said, “Come in.” Then she said to the old woman, “Let us cook this red snapper head.” “Yes, let us cook it,” said the latter. After they had eaten it, the old woman said to her, “Go along the beach and try to find something else.” So she went out and found a sculpin (wēqǃ). Then she came back to the house and cooked that, but, while they were eating, she heard many boys shouting, and she thought they were laughing at her because she was naked. She looked around but saw no one. Then the old woman said to her, “Take it (the food) out to that hole.” She went outside with the tray and saw an underground sweathouse out of which many hands protruded. This was the place from which the shouting came. She handed the tray down and it was soon handed up again with two fine fox skins in it. Then the old woman said to her, “Make your clothing out of these furs,” and so she did.

After she had put the skins on, this old woman said, “Your father and mother live a short distance away along this beach. You better go to them. They are living at a salmon creek.” So the girl went on and soon saw her father and mother in a canoe far out where her father was catching salmon. But, when she ran down toward the canoe to meet them, her father said to his wife, “Here comes a fox.” As he was looking for something with which to kill it, she ran back into the woods.

Then she felt very badly, and returned to the old woman crying. “Did you see your father?” said the latter. “Yes.” “What did he say to you?” “He took me for a fox. He was going to kill me.” Then the old woman said, “Yes, what else do you think you are? You have already turned into a fox. Now go back to your father and let him kill you.”

The woman went to the same place again and saw her father still closer to the shore; and she heard him say, “Here comes that big fox again.” Then she ran right up to him, saying to herself, “Let him kill me,” and he did so. Years ago all the high-caste people wore bracelets and necklaces, and each family had its own way of fixing them. Now, as this woman was skinning the fox, she felt something around its foreleg. She looked at it and found something like her daughter’s bracelet. Afterward she also cut around the neck and found her daughter’s necklace. Then she told her husband to come and look saying, “Here on this fox are our daughter’s necklace and bracelet.” So they cried over the fox and said, “Something must have made her turn into a fox.” They knew how this fox ran toward them instead of going away.

Now they took the body of the fox, placed it upon a very nice mat, and laid another over it. They put eagle’s down, which was always kept in bags ready for use, on the body, crying above it all the time. They also began fasting, and all of her brothers and relations in that village fasted with them. All cleaned up their houses and talked to their Creator (Cagūˊn). One midnight, after they had fasted for many days, they felt the house shaking, and they heard a noise in the place where the body lay. Then the father and mother felt very happy. The mother went there with a light and saw that her daughter was in her own proper shape, acting like a shaman. Then the woman named the spirits in her. The first she mentioned was the swan spirit, the next the goose spirit, the next the sand-hill-crane spirit, the next the brant spirit. Another spirit was the red-snapper head spirit which called itself Spirit-with-a-labret-in-its-chin (Tūts-ya-ūˊwu-yēk), and another the fox spirit (Nāg̣ᴀsǃeˊ koyēˊk). Now the father and mother of this woman were very happy, but her husband lost all of his wealth and became poor again.⁠[77]

Raven went to another place and turned himself into a woman. Then she thought within herself, “Whose daughter shall I say I am?” She saw a sea gull sitting out on a high rock and thought she would call that her father. Years ago a chief would always pick out a high place in the village on which to sit in the morning, and when Raven saw the sea gull she thought within herself, “I am Tᴀcᴀkītūᴀˊn’s (Sitter-on-a-high-cliff’s) daughter.” A canoe came along filled with killer whales returning to their own village, and she married one of them. When they got near the town, some one on the beach called to them, “Where is that canoe coming from?” and one replied, “We have been after a wife and we have her.” “Which chief’s daughter is that?” they inquired, because in olden times people never went for any woman by canoe except the daughter of a chief. “It is Tᴀcᴀkītūᴀˊn’s daughter,” said they. “It is Cudāˊxduxōˊ’s (Barked-hemlock’s) daughter.” All of the killer whales believed this.

After that, the killer whales began to notice that their food was disappearing very rapidly, although they were always out fishing and hunting and had had their house piled full of boxes of grease. They said, “What is wrong? What has become of all the grease and fat in these boxes?” They could not find out for a long time. Raven wore a labret at that time set with abalone shell which was formerly very valuable, and it is from him that high-caste people afterward used these. After some time they found this labret in one of the boxes of grease and said, “Just look at this labret in here.” Then Raven exclaimed, “Ih! my labret, that is always the way with my labret. Whenever it feels like doing so, it will leave my lip and go off anywhere.”

By and by Raven said, “I wonder what is wrong that I have such bad dreams. I dreamt that all the people of this village were asleep, and my husband went to sleep and never woke up. My dreams always come true. Whatever I dream surely happens.” Late the next night she got a stick, sharpened the ends, and killed her husband; and early in the morning they heard her crying, “My husband, Cāwᴀˊt-kaʟᴀˊqdagê’s father.” Years ago, before the white laws came in force, when a chief used these words in his speech, people knew that he had a grudge against some one and was going to murder him. The killer whales, however, did not know what she meant.

Then Raven told the people that her husband had said, “Take me and place me quite a distance from the town.” They did so, and she said, “When you hear me cry, I don’t want any of you to pass the place where I am mourning. Tie up the fingers of my right hand. Allow me to eat with my left hand only. You people must also wait upon me. You must bring me everything I eat. Also paint my face black.” She being the widow, they had to do everything just as she told them, and these are the regulations people have observed up to the present time. When they heard her crying around the spot where her husband’s body had been laid, no one dared go near, and to this day those who go by a house where people are mourning have to be very quiet. Nor do they pass it at all unless they are compelled to.

Raven stayed there mourning for a long time, but she was really eating the killer-whale’s body. After she had remained by it for a very long time, she would come home chewing gum, but, when the husband’s relations asked her for a piece, she would say, “No, no one can chew this gum but Macaˊ,” which was the name she gave to herself.

She lived there for a long time, continually crying out of doors, but she was really crying for joy because she intended to kill all of the killer whales.

While sitting outside one day a kēkǃᵘ (a small sea gull with black head and white body) flew past, and Raven said, “Here comes the man I made white.” By and by she saw another, called kuʟêˊta, also white, and repeated the same words. Then some swans came along far up in the sky, and she said the same thing about them. The killer whales heard all this and said, “Since you have made them white, can’t you make us white also?” “It will hurt you to be made white,” said Raven. “Those people that came along were made white because they were brave.” Then she sharpened the same hardwood stick with which she had killed her husband and told all of the killers to lie in a row. She began pounding this into their ears, and so killed all of them but the last. This looked up in time to see what she was doing and rushed into the sea saying, “Raven has finished us sure enough” (Qothagᴀˊsînīˊyēł). Raven remained there for some time eating the whales she had killed.

The reason why there are so many cowards among men nowadays is because Raven, being a man, made himself into a woman at that time. The people that live single all their lives are such as came from Raven at that period. This is also why thieves are great talkers and, when they have gotten into trouble, have a way of getting out, and why some women are bad and deceive their husbands; for Raven said that his husband had wanted to be buried a long way from town, and they believed him. This is why the Tlingit used to be very careful of the way they spoke and even of the way they walked when in public.⁠[78]

After that Raven came to a fish-hawk (kūnackᴀnỵēˊt) and exclaiming, “Oh! my friend” entered its house, where was a great quantity of food. He felt very happy at the sight, and said to the bird, “I will stay with you all winter.” Then he stayed so long that the hawk began to get tired of him, because Raven would not work. When he saw that the bird was getting weary of him he would say, “The time for me to work hasn’t come yet. When I work you will have plenty of rest. You will not have to do a thing. This beach will be covered with all kinds of fish, and you will be tired of preparing them.” So the hawk would think of what Raven was going to do for him, forget everything else, and work all the harder to supply him with food while Raven stayed in the house. Raven would also talk to him, saying, “I remember to have seen you long ago. You were very high-caste. I remember it very well.” In that way he made the hawk forget for a time all the bad feelings he had had toward him. But finally the little hawk determined to go away, and he left Raven there alone.⁠[79]

Then Raven went to another industrious bird, called hīnỵîkłēˊx̣î, a fishing bird living along the river. He called him “brother-in-law,” and was invited to have something to eat, but next morning the bird left him for he knew that he was a lazy fellow.⁠[80]

After that Raven came to the goose people, and married a woman among them. By and by they said to him, “We are going to leave for other countries. I don’t think you can stand the journey.” “Oh! yes,” said Raven, “I think I can stand the journey. If you can, I can.” So they set out, and, when Raven became tired, his wife flew along under him to hold him up. Finally they came to camp and began going out on the beaches to dig roots. Raven helped them, but he did not like the goose life nor the food they ate, so he commenced to get very lean. One day he killed a goose and began cooking it apart by himself, but they discovered him and said, “He is a man-eater.” So they left him.⁠[81]

Raven went to another place, and they said to him, “There will soon be a great feast here,” and they asked him to make a totem pole. He finished it, and, when they put it up, they had a big dance. The people who gave this were of the Wolf clan, so he danced with one of the two Raven parties. Afterward he made a long speech to the host. Then they danced again, and Raven held a spear in his hands. This meant that he was going to invite to a feast next, and was done that they might give him more than the others. So nowadays some are in earnest in doing this while others go through the performance and leave without keeping it in mind. Raven was the person who first had those dances and speeches.

While they were engaged in the last dance the opposite company of Ravens danced very hard and showed fight by crossing the line which is always set between. For this reason Raven would not go to the next feast, to be confronted by these people. They sent after him many times, and when they finally became tired of sending, began the feast without him. Then he told his slave to go over and see if they were already eating, and on his return he said, “They are having a grand time. They are eating a great quantity of food.” “Take me there,” said Raven to his slaves. So they went along with him, one on each side. When he came there he saw that they were having a grand time distributing boxes of food to all the head chiefs, and he said to a slave, “Ask them where this chief shall sit.” He did so, but they went on with their feast without paying the slightest attention to him. Then Raven made his slave ask again, “Where shall this chief sit? Where shall this chief sit?” and again they paid no attention, although he shouted so that all in the house could hear him. When the people left he was still standing around, so his slaves said to him, “Why were you so particular? We could have had a great deal to eat.” After all were gone Raven ate the leavings.

So nowadays, when a person wants more than anyone else and makes people send for him again and again, they go on with the feast, lest those of the opposite party think that the host cares more for this one person than for all the rest of them and leave his house. That is why they paid no attention to Raven when he did come. One reason why Raven stayed away was that he thought he would make them come after him several times because he had promised to give a feast in return. Nowadays a person who is going to give a feast acts in the same way, and people know by it what he intends.

The following winter Raven gave his feast. This was at Alsek river, and you can still see his house there with the boxes inside [a rock hollowed out like a cave with other rocks inside of it]. When they came in sight of that the Indians would pray to it.

As soon as his guests came, Raven went down to meet them with his bow and arrows. That is why people now go down with their guns. He had so much respect for his guests that he had all of his relations act as servants, washing their hands and waiting on them while they ate. Therefore the natives now act just so when they invite people from other towns. Raven taught that all who came after should do just as he had done. He also prepared chewing tobacco for his guests.

Then he began building his house, and, when the frame, consisting of four uprights and two crosspieces, was completed, he and his friends danced the first dance. In this dance people sing funeral songs. Eight songs, or one song with eight verses, are used at this time, following a certain regular sequence and, if one that does not know the song starts it and begins with the wrong verse, it is looked on as a disgrace to his people. The guests danced, wearing their masks, hats, emblem coats, and other festal paraphernalia. After that he distributed his property, the people that had invited him before and the leading chiefs obtaining most of it.⁠[82]

After this Raven returned to the place where he was born and found the box which had held the sun, moon, and stars, and which now contained his mother, still hanging up in the house of Nās-cᴀˊkî-yēł. Then he went out with his bow and arrows and shot a whale (yāˊî). It floated ashore on the beach and every day he saw all kinds of sea birds sitting upon it, but he did not like the looks of any of them. Finally, however, he shot a bird called cāx and a large bird which was very pretty and had a bill that looked like copper. Then he went to Nās-cᴀˊkî-yēł’s house, took down the box which contained his mother,⁠[84] and liberated the flickers (kūn) which she always kept under her arms. When Nās-cᴀˊkî-yēł saw that, he said, “All those pretty things of mine are gone.” They knew that Raven had done this, so they called him into the house, and Nās-cᴀˊkî-yēł asked him if it was indeed he. He said, “Yes.” Then Nās-cᴀˊkî-yēł said, “Go and fell that tree standing over there,” for he wanted the tree to kill him. But when the tree fell upon Raven it could not kill him because he was made of rock. Finding him still alive, Nās-cᴀˊkî-yēł called him in the following day and said, “Go and clean out that canoe.” It was a canoe just being made, and when Raven got into it to clean it out it closed upon him. Then he simply extended his elbows and broke the canoe after which he smashed it up for firewood. All this Nās-cᴀˊkî-yēł saw, and again sent for him. He came in, and they put into the fire a large copper kettle made like a box, filled it with water, and put heated stones into it. Then they told him to get in, and they covered it over in order to kill him. Raven, however, again changed himself into a rock, and, when they thought he was cooked to pieces and looked inside, they saw that he was still there. Then they told him to come out.

Now Nās-cᴀˊkî-yēł was very angry and said, “Let rain pour down all over the world, and let people die of starvation.” Then it became so wet and stormy that people could not get food and began to starve. Their canoes were also broken up, their houses fell in on them, and they suffered terribly. Now Nās-cᴀˊkî-yēł asked for his jointed dance hat and when he put it on, water began pouring out of the very top of it. It is from Nās-cᴀˊkî-yēł that the Indians obtained this kind of hat. When the water rose so as to cover the house floor, Raven and his mother got upon the lowest retaining timber. This house we are talking of, although it looked like a house to them, was really part of the world. It had eight rows of retaining timbers, and, as the water came up, Raven and his mother climbed to a higher one. At the same time the people of the world were climbing up into the hills. When the waters reached the fourth retaining timber they were half way up the mountains. When the house was nearly full of water, Raven had his mother get into the skin of the cāx he had killed, while he got into the skin of the white bird with copper-colored bill, and to this very day Tlingit do not eat the cāx because it was Raven’s mother. The cāx, which is a great diver, now stayed on the surface of the water, but Raven himself flew to the very highest cloud in the sky and hung there by his bill.⁠[85]

After Raven had hung to this cloud for days and days, nobody knows how long, he pulled his bill out and prayed to fall upon a piece of kelp, for he thought that the water had gone down. He did so, and, flying off, found the waters just half way down the mountains.

Then he traveled along again and came to a shark which had a long stick it had been swimming around with. He took this, stuck it straight down into the sea and used it as a ladder on which to descend under the ocean. Arrived at the bottom, he gathered up some sea urchins and started along with them.

By and by Raven came to a place where an old woman lived and said to her, “How cold I am after eating those sea urchins.” As she paid no attention to him, he repeated it over and over for a long time. At last she said, “What low tide is this Raven talking about?” He did not answer, and presently she said again, “What low tide are you talking about?” After she had asked him this question many times Raven became very angry and said, “I will stick these sea-urchin shells into your body if you don’t keep quiet.” At last he did so, and she began singing, “Don’t, Raven, the tide will go down if you don’t stop.” At the same time Raven kept asking Eagle, whom he had set to watch the tide, “How far down is the tide now?” “The tide is down as far as half a man.” By and by he asked again, “How far down is the tide?” “The tide is very low,” said Eagle. Then the old woman would start her song again. “Let it get dry all around the world,” said Raven to Eagle. By and by Eagle said, “The tide is very, very low now. You can see hardly any water.” “Let it get still drier,” said Raven. Finally everything became dry, and this was the lowest tide that there ever was. All kinds of salmon, whales, seals, and other sea creatures lay round on the sand flats where the people that were saved could get them. They had enough from that ebb tide to supply them for a long, long time. When the tide began to rise again all the people watched it, fearing that there would be another flood, and they carried their food a long distance back, praying for it to stop.

Quite a while before this flood took place the shamans had predicted it, and those who worked from that time on collecting food were saved while the others were destroyed.

After the flood Raven stayed in a town of considerable size. A man there, named Cᴀqǃᵘkǃᵘ, collected all kinds of big sea animals, as whales and seals, at the time of this great ebb and made a great quantity of grease out of them, while Raven collected only small fishes like cod and red cod and obtained but a few stomachs full of oil. He would eat this up as fast as he made it, but his companion worked hard so as to have a large quantity on hand.

By and by Raven said to Cᴀqǃᵘkǃᵘ, “My uncle, I had a bad dream last night. I dreamt that there was war here and that we were all killed. You must be on the watch.” After that Raven said to the birds, “You must make a lot of noise now.” They did so and Cᴀqǃᵘkǃᵘ, thinking warriors were coming to kill him, ran out of the house. At once Raven began carrying off the boxes of grease to a certain place in the woods. Just as he was at work on the last of these the people of the house came back, pushed him into it, and tied him up, but he made a hole with his bill and escaped. Then he went to the place where he had hidden the boxes and stayed there for a year, until he had eaten everything up.

Next Raven returned to Nass river and found that the people there had not changed their ways. They were dancing and feasting and invited him to join them.

By and by he came to where war was going on between two different parties, and he said to them, “Make carved fighting hats, greaves, and war coats to protect your bodies.” The name of one village was Gîtǃîˊkc and the warring families were the Gînᴀxdâˊyîkc (or Gîtgîcᴀłk) and the Gîtᴀnduˊ. The people of Gîtǃîˊkc were getting the worst of it. There were only three of them left—the chief, his sister, and his sister’s daughter. So the chief began sending to all the villages for an aged man who was very smart and knew the old stories. Whenever he brought in an old man, however, the latter would talk of what good food he had been eating and what a high family he belonged to, or tell what a wild life he had led when he was young, all which had no interest for the chief. He thought if he could find an old man that would tell him just the old story he wanted, he would pay him well. Finally he found that among his enemies was Old-man-who-foresees-all-troubles-in-the-world, the one spoken of at the beginning of this story, and he sent for him without letting the rest of his enemies know about it.

After a while he heard this old man coming along, talking very loud, like a brave person, and he thought, “This is the old man from whom I am going to hear the story.” Then the old man said, “Chief, if you are pleased with the story I am about to tell you, let me know how long I shall stay in your house, and, if you are not pleased, let me go at once.” After that he told him all about the brave people that had lived in times gone by, and said, “Always speak very highly of your enemies. If you speak slightingly of them they will get above you. If you speak to them in a nice manner, you will be able to stand alone. If you speak to your enemies kindly, they will say, ‘Let us give ourselves up to him.’” Then the chief said to the old man, “You shall stay with me a long time,” so he stayed there, and next day they waited on him, giving him water to wash his hands and face and food to eat.

After that the old man sent for a piece of Alaska maple (qǃāłqǃēˊ) and made a war hat out of it carved to resemble a wolf. Then he said, “Isn’t there a wolf skin around here somewhere?” So they killed a wolf, skinned it entire along with the claws and teeth and put the dancing hat inside to fill out the head. He sent for another piece of hard wood from a tree called sᴀks and made an arrow out of it. He burned black lines around the shaft of this arrow like those on gambling sticks. Then he said to the chief, “Your sister shall sing the war song for you, and your sister’s daughter shall beat the drum. Put the wolf on while the song is being sung and go down toward that beach just below the house. Jump over that rock four times.” There was a big rock upon the beach just below the house. As he gave these directions the old man made his voice sound as though he were making war. He began to excite the chief. “My nephews,” he continued, “are out in the canoe farthest from the beach. Be careful how you use your arrow. Do not point it toward that canoe.” When the old man was about to leave him he handed him the arrow and a bow and said, “Put on your war clothes about midnight. Then stand in front of your house and pretend that you are going to shoot. Stand with the arrow pointed toward your enemies’ village and say to the arrow just before you let it go, ‘I am shooting you to kill the chief of my enemies.’ Then let the arrow go.” After that the old man left, saying that that was all he intended to tell him.

The chief did everything just as he had been directed. At midnight he put on his war clothes and said to his sister, “You start the war song, and let my niece go to the drum.” Then he took the position the old man had told him and shot the arrow saying, “Lodge in the heart of my enemies’ chief.” He shot, and in the morning the people of that village saw that the chief was dead. They thought that he had died of heart disease, but, when they examined his body, they found the small arrow sticking into his heart. Then they cut this out and began asking one another, “Where has this arrow come from? What tribe does it belong to?” So they sent for the old man who had made it and, as he was examining it, he said, “I wonder to what place this belongs.” Just then it flew out of his hand, and he said, “Run out and see what it is going to say.” So all ran outside, and the arrow flew up and down in the sky saying “Nuˊx̣gayu.” This is the Tsimshian name of an animal, but the old man made it indicate by that the village from which it came. After that it went across to their enemies’ town. Now, when they saw this, they got into their canoes and went over to fight. As soon as the canoes had gotten around his house the chief said, “I am not afraid to be killed by you, because I know that you are all from a high family.” Then he again had his sister sing the war song and his niece beat the drum, and he acted as the old man had directed him. Just before he came out he threw out ashes which looked like smoke and concealed his movements. In the midst of this he came out and shot the arrow toward their canoes, which passed through every man in four of them. Then it came back to him, and he shot it through four more canoe loads. Those who were left went home.

The day after this still more came to fight him with like result, but the next time he made a mistake, shot toward the canoe which contained the old man’s relations, and killed all of them. Then the arrow flew back to the old man, who sent it at the chief for whom he had made it, and killed him.

Now the chief’s sister put on her brother’s war clothes, while her daughter sang the song and drummed. With the arrow which had traveled back to her, she began killing off her enemies just as her brother had done. So the people made fun of the old man, saying, “I thought you said you had killed that chief.” “I did kill him.” “Well! if you killed the chief, who is it that is killing our friends?” Still he kept assuring them that he had killed the chief. Then they started over once more. But, this time, when the woman had shot and was running back into the house, they saw by the apron she wore that it was a woman, and the canoes started shoreward, the people exclaiming, “It is a woman. It is a woman.” When all had landed, and she saw that they were coming after her, she and her daughter escaped out of the rear of the house and ran up into the woods. From the top of the mountain there she glanced back and said to her daughter, “Look at your uncle’s house. It is burning.” They could see the fire and smoke coming from it. Then they felt very sad and composed songs which the Indians sing to this very day. They cried so hard that they fell asleep. After that they went farther into the forest crying, and the mother said as she wept, “I wonder whom I can get to marry my daughter so that he can help me.”

By and by Mink came to the woman and said, “What is the matter with me? Will not I do for your daughter?” “What do you do for a living?” she asked him. “I have a smell that kills everything.” Then the woman went straight on without paying the least attention to him. Next Marten came along. To this woman they appeared as human beings. And Marten said, “What is the matter with me?” “What can you do for a living?” He said he was a very fast runner and could get anything he wanted, but she rejected him. Then she went on again singing as before, “Who will marry my daughter in order to help me?” Next came Mountain-goat. “What is the matter with me?” “What do you do for a living?” “I can kill anything with my horns. I live far up among the bluffs where nothing can harm me.” He did not please her, and she went on past. Then Wolf came, saying, “What is the matter with me? Can not I get your daughter?” “What do you do for a living?” “I am a fast runner. I can kill anything I want. I have plenty to eat.” He did not suit her, and she passed by him, but he was so determined that he met her again with a mountain goat in his mouth. She went right by, however, and came to a lake where she repeated the same words. At that place she met a very fine-looking young man, Frog. “What do you do for a living?” she asked, and he did not tell her what he did but said, “Although I am small very few people like me. Even the big animals are scared of me.” After him Grizzly Bear asked, “What is the matter with me?” “What do you do for a living?” “Don’t you see how large I am? I am a very powerful fellow.” He showed her his strength and what teeth he had, and said that he was very quick and active, but she refused to have him, and went on. Then she met the Wild Canary (sǃāsǃ). “What do you do for a living?” she said. “I am a fine singer.” She went on and met another bird, called Tsǃīnîg̣ēˊnî, and asked, “What do you do for a living?” “Don’t you see that I am a very handsome fellow. All the women want to marry me.” Then she went along and met Fox, who said, “What is the matter with me?” “What do you do for a living?” she asked. She noticed that he was dressed very warmly in very beautiful clothing. “I can run and get anything I want,” he said. “I have plenty to eat.” He did not suit her, and she went right by. After a while there came Lynx (g̣āk), who replied to her question by saying, “I am a traveler and get all kinds of birds to eat.” Next she met Wolverine (Nūsk) which answered, “I am a good hunter and I kill all kinds of animals.”

After that she went along sadly, repeating as usual, “Who will marry my daughter so that he can help me?” Then she saw a man who shone all over, standing on top of a mountain. She came very close to him, and he said, “What is the matter with me?” “What do you do for a living?” “I move about as quick as thought. Wherever I want to go, there I am at once. My father is the sun.” She said, “Let us see him then.” So he spoke to the sun. It was a cloudy day, but, when he spoke to it, the sun appeared and it became very warm. “All right,” she said, “you can have my daughter for your wife.”

After that the man took a limb from a tree and said to his mother-in-law, “You shall be this limb.” He put her inside and shoved the limb back. Then he said to her, “The world will call you ‘Woman-of-the-forest’ (Ās-gutuˊỵîk-cā). You will mock everybody that shouts or whistles. When they hear you they will know what it is.” So she became the echo.

After this a spherical cloud came down and rolled up with them. As the cloud was going up, the man said to his wife, “Don’t look at it. Keep your face hidden.” When he told her to open her eyes again she saw that she was in a beautiful place with flowers all about. It was his house. It was a grassy country and there were all kinds of fruits about the place.

There this woman had eight children, seven boys and a girl. She was very much afraid of everything, and that is why women are so to-day. Then they built for these children a small house with a painted front, put up forty boxes of every kind of fruit and berry, also dried salmon, grease, and other kinds of food, and stored the house with them. They had bracelets and a marten-skin robe made for the girl, and her grandfather said to her, “You are going to be very quarrelsome. While quarreling you will always examine your bracelets.” Then their grandfather prepared war clothes for the boys and said, “You are now going down to fight.” He also gave them a painted wooden wedge and said, “Keep this with you all the time. When you are fighting and see that your enemies are too strong for you, and you are getting beaten, put this wedge into the fire. While putting it into the fire, say this: ‘Grandfather, our enemies are beating us?’” Then they were all placed, together with their house and its contents, in the spherical cloud and set down on the site of Gîtǃîˊkc. As soon as it landed, the little house grew to be a big house with painted front, and the boxes of berries, salmon, and other provisions were all big painted boxes. Everything had been made small so as to come down without being seen.

Then the children of the sun were all very happy, and made so much noise that their enemies, who were out on the river fishing for eulachon, heard then and said, “Those are the bones of the Gîtǃîˊkc people that are making so much racket.” As soon, however, as they found that their enemies’ village was repeopled they started off in their canoes to make war upon them. They were so numerous that the children of the sun found they were going to be beaten and put their wedge into the fire. Then the sun came out fiercely, and many of the enemy became so hot that they jumped into the ocean. The ocean was so hot that they died there, while those upon land, becoming too blinded to fight, were also killed.⁠[86]

Therefore nowadays people do the same thing. When they fight and a good man of high caste is killed, his friends do not come to their opponents as though they were angry. They use good words to them, and thereby induce a man of equally high rank on the other side to come out and be killed by them. If they went there talking meanly they would not get him to come out. The woman who was saved remembered how her brother and all of her relations had been killed. Therefore she took good care in selecting a husband for her daughter, because she felt if she did so she would get all of her relatives back. That is why the Indians of good family took such good care of a daughter in old times. They knew that if she married well she would be a help to the family.

When the inhabitants of that town became very numerous the daughter of the chief there used to go out berrying. One day, while she was out after berries, she stepped into the manure of a grizzly bear and said, “That nasty thing is right in the way.” Then the grizzly bear came to her in the form of a fine-looking man, and she went off with him but they thought that a grizzly bear had killed her. Now the grizzly-bear people watched her very closely, and, whenever she went out of the den, they covered up her tracks. This girl had dentalium shells around her neck, and the bears were very much surprised to find one of these lying in her tracks every time they covered them over. Early in the morning the male bears went out after salmon, while their wives gathered firewood. They always selected wet wood for this, but the girl got nothing but dry wood, and her fire continually went out. She could never start a fire with it. One day, however, an old woman called to her and said, “You are with a different sort of people. You are brought away from your own people. I got here because the same thing happened to me. Use wet wood like the rest of the women. Leave that dry wood alone.” Then she used wet wood and had good fires.

When this girl had lost almost all the dentalia from her clothing she thought, “What is going to become of me?” But the old woman said to her, “Do you want to save yourself? Do you want to go back to your father and mother? This is not a good place where you are. Now,” she said, “go and get a piece of devil’s club, a thorn from a wild rose bush, some sand, and a small rock. When you see these bear people coming after you, throw that devil’s club back of you first. Next throw the thorn, then the mud, then the sand, then the rock.”

So the woman collected these things and started off on the run, and after a while she saw the bears coming behind her. When they had gotten quite close to her she threw back the devil’s club and there came to be so many devil’s clubs in that spot that the bears could not get through easily. While they were in the midst of these she got a long distance off. The next time they got close she threw back the thorn, and rose bushes covered the country they had to traverse, retarding the bears again and enabling her to obtain another long lead. Next she threw back the mud, and the place became so muddy that they had to wade through it slowly. After that she threw the sand which became a sand bank, and the bears slid back from it in attempting to cross. Finally she threw back the rock, and there was a high cliff which it took the bears a long time to surmount.

Before the bears had overcome this obstacle the girl came out on a beach and saw a man in front of her in a canoe fishing for halibut. She said to him, “Come ashore and save me,” but he paid no attention to her. After she had entreated him for some time he said, “Will you be my wife if I come to save you?” “Let me get into your canoe, and let us go out. Then I will talk to you about that.” Finally, when she saw that the bears were very close to her, she said, “Have pity on me. Come and save me.” “Will you be my wife, if I come and save you?” “Yes, I will be your wife.” Upon that he came in very quickly, took her into his canoe and went out again. He was fishing with a float on the end of his line, and, when he came back to it, he began pulling his line up. Then the bears rushed down to the beach and shouted, “Bring us our wife. That is our wife you have in your canoe. If you don’t bring her to us we will kill you.” At first he paid no attention, but after a while he said, “Well! if you think you can kill me, swim out here.” Immediately they plunged into the water and when she saw them coming the girl was frightened, but the man said, “Don’t be frightened. My father was of the Ginᴀxcᴀmgêˊtk.”⁠[87] When the bears got close to the canoe, he put his club into the sea and it killed them all. Then they went to his home.

The morning after this, when her husband was about to go out fishing, he said to the woman, “I have a wife living on the other side of the house. She is a very bad woman. Don’t look at her while she is eating.” After her husband got home from fishing he waited on his new wife and was very kind to her, and, when they were through eating, they went up to the top of the house to sit. Then she said to him, “I am your wife now. Anything you know or whatever you have seen you must tell me all about.” So her husband said, “This wife of mine is a very large clam. She is very high. Nobody looks at her. You see that there is always water in the place where she is sitting. Anyone that looks at her falls into this water and drifts away.” This man lived under ground, but the girl thought she was in a house because she was as if out of her head. Her husband caught halibut all of the time to give to his monster wife, and the girl thought to herself, “How does that thing he feeds so much eat?” One time, therefore, as soon as the clam began eating, she lay down, made a hole in her blanket and looked through it at the big clam eating. She saw that it was a real clam. When the clam saw that she was looking, it shot out so much water that the house was filled, and the girl was carried underneath the clam by the current. When her husband got home, however, and found the girl gone, he said to the clam, “Where is that girl?” He became very angry with the clam and killed it by breaking its shell. Then he found the girl’s dead body in the water under the clam, took it out, put eagle feathers upon it, and restored it to life. Therefore nowadays eagle feathers are used a great deal at dances and in making peace.⁠[88]

By and by the man said to his wife, “Do you know that your father lives a short distance from here? Do you want to go to see your father and mother?” She was very glad to hear that, and they started off at once, after loading the canoe down with food, for this being was rich and had all kinds of things. His canoe was a brown bear, which traveled of itself but had to be fed at short intervals.⁠[89] Just before they reached her father’s town, they landed, carried their canoe up and placed all of the food under a large tree where it would keep dry. Then the man stayed with it and told his wife to go over to her father’s house. Her father and mother had thought that she was dead, so they were very happy to see her. She said to her father, “There is a lot of food close by here. I have brought it to you.” At that time she looked very filthy to them and her clothing ragged, though to herself she appeared beautiful. So her father was very much ashamed of her and gave her some good clothing. She also smelt to them very strongly of the beach. Then they went over and brought in all the food, but her husband did not come with them.⁠[90]

At that time the woman was pregnant, and presently she gave birth to a boy. He was very smart like his father, though they did not let him know who his father was. When he grew larger, he was a fine shot with bow and arrows, bringing in all sorts of small animals, and the other boys were jealous of him.

One time, when he was out in a canoe with other boys, hunting, he began shooting at a cormorant (yūq), which kept going farther and farther out. All of a sudden it became foggy and they could not see their way, so they fastened their canoe to the end of a drifting log which was sticking out of the water, and waited. Then some one came to them and said to the boy, “I am after you. Your father wants you.” At once the boy lost consciousness, and, when he came to, found himself in a very fine house on the mainland. The chief living there said, “Do you know that you are my son?” He also gave him a name, Cᴀmgigêˊtk, and he thought a great deal of him, but the boy thought it strange that he never inquired for his mother. Then he gave his son abalone shells and sharks’ teeth (cᴀxdᴀˊq) as presents. He also made him a club and said to him, “Whenever you are among wild animals and find there are too many, put this club down and it will fight for you. When you see seals or sea lions sitting on the rocks, put it down and it will kill them.” After this it seemed to the boy as if a door were opened for him, and he saw the canoe he had left with the boys in it. They said, “What happened to you? Where have you been?” But he only answered, “Did not you see me sitting on the very top of this log?” He was so smart that they believed him. Then they reached home safe and the grandparents were very glad to see him, but only his mother knew what had happened. Like his father, the boy was a great hunter and fisherman. Before he came the people of that town had been starving, but now, especially since he had obtained the club, they had plenty to eat. His grandfather’s house was always full of halibut, seal, and sea-lion meat.

Then his grandmother said to him, “Grandson, do not go over in that direction. None of the village people go there, and those who have done so never returned.” This, however, only made the boy anxious to see what was the trouble, so he went there and, killing some seals and halibut, put them into the water to entice the creature up. Finally he saw a gigantic crab (sǃa-u) coming up in the sea, so he put his club into the ocean, and it broke the crab’s shell and killed it. Then he and his slave pulled the big crab ashore, and he took a load of its flesh home to his grandparents. His grandparents had worried all the time he was away, but his mother knew that her son had power over all kinds of fish, because his father is chief of the sea. Everything in the sea is under him.

Another time his grandmother said to him, “There is a place over in this direction where lives a big mussel (yīsǃ). No canoe can pass it without being chewed up.” So he went to the mussel and killed that. He took all of its shell home, and the people throughout the village bought it of him for spears, arrow points, and knives.

At the same time he also brought home a load of cockles, clams, and other shellfish. In the Tsimshian country the shellfish are fine, and the mussels are not poisonous as they are here. In April the Alaskans do not dare to eat shellfish, especially mussels, claiming that they are poisonous. It is because he killed the big mussel that they are all poisonous here. Since his time, too, boys and girls have done whatever their fathers used to do.

After that the boy married and had a son who was very unlike him. His name was Man-that-eats-the-leavings (Qǃa-īˊtê-cūka-qā), and, when he grew up, he was worthless. He seemed to see the shellfish, however, and understood the shellfish language.

At the same time the daughter of the chief in a certain village not far away went out of doors and slipped on slime which had dropped from a devilfish hung up in front. She said, “Oh! the dirty thing.” About the middle of the following night a fine-looking young man came to her, and she disappeared with him; and the people wondered where she had gone. This young man was the devilfish, whom she married, and she had several children by him. Meanwhile, as she was their only child, her parents were mourning for her continually. After some time had passed, her parents saw two small devilfishes on the steps of the chief’s house early in the morning, and the people said to the chief, “What devilfishes are these here on the steps?” He said, “Throw them down on the beach.” They did so, but the little devilfishes came right back. They threw them down again, but the chief said, “If they come up the third time, leave them alone. Let them do what they will, but watch them closely.” Then they came right into the chief’s house, and one climbed into the chief’s lap while the other got into that of his wife. He said, “My daughter must have gone to live among the devilfishes.” To see what they would do, he said, “My grandchildren, is this you?” Upon which they put their tentacles around his neck and began moving about. Then he gave them some food on long platters, and they acted as though they were eating from these. Afterward he said, “Take those platters and follow them along to see where they go.” They did so and saw them disappear under a large rock just in front of the town. So the people came back and said to the chief, “They went under that large rock down there. Your daughter must be under there also.” When the people got up next morning they saw on the steps the platters they had taken down, wiped very clean.

Now the chief felt very badly, for he knew what had happened to his daughter, so he said to the people in his house, “Go down and invite my daughter, and say, ‘Your father wants you to come to dinner.’” So they went down and said, “Your father has sent us to invite you, your children, and your husband to come to dinner at his house.” “We are coming,” said the woman from under the beach, “so go back. We will be there soon.” She knew the voices of all of her father’s servants. When these came back to the chief, he said, “Did you ask her? Did you go there?” “Yes, we were there.” “What did you say to her?” “We told her just what you wanted us to say to her. She said that her husband, her children, and herself would be here soon.”

So the people watched for her, and by and by she came up along with her devilfish husband and with the two little devilfishes right behind her. Her marten-skin robe was rotten, all sorts of sea weeds were in her hair, and she looked badly, although she had formerly been very pretty. Her father and mother were very sorry. Then they set out food for them and afterward took the trays down to the place where the little ones had gone under the rock.

Now the chief invited all of the people into his house, gave them tobacco to chew, and told them how badly he felt. After they had talked the matter over for a while they said to him, “You might as well have all the devilfishes killed. When those small ones are grown up you do not know what they will do to your house.” So they invited the devilfishes again, killed the big one, threw the little ones down on the beach, and kept the girl. By and by, however, the girl said to her father, “There is going to be a terrible war. All of the devilfish are assembling. Don’t allow any of the people of your town to sleep at night. Let them watch.” So, when night came on, they could see large and small devilfishes coming in through every little crack until the house got quite full of them, and some people were suffocated by having the devilfishes cover their mouths. The devilfish that they had killed was chief among them.

Just then Man-that-eats-the-leavings came to that town, and they told him what a hard time they were having every night with the devilfish, so he stayed with them until evening. When they came in this time he seemed to have control over them, and they ceased bothering the people. The large devilfishes are called dᴀg̣asāˊ. The small ones, which they threw down on the beach, are those that the Alaskan Indians see, but these do not injure anyone now because their grandfather was a human being.

Afterward they bathed the girl to take all the devilfish off of her, and put fine clothing on her. Her face was very pretty, so that all the neighboring chiefs wanted to marry her. In olden times a good looking woman was considered high-caste, for they knew she would marry well, and a good looking woman among the high-caste people was considered very high.

Among those who wanted to marry this girl was Man-that-eats-the-leavings. He lived in a brush house at a place where garbage was thrown out. He was a fine shot, however, and one day he went to a lake behind the town where a loon was swimming about and shot it. When the arrow struck it gave forth a sound like a bell and swam right up to the shore. Then he went down to it and found, instead of a loon, a canoe made out of copper. This was, in fact, the grizzly-bear canoe that had belonged to his grandfather. It had long since been forgotten. Next he found a piece of a painted house front (qǃēn) and shook it, upon which a grand house stood there with four horizontal house timbers, and he lined the inside of this house with copper plates made out of the copper canoe. Then he married the chief’s daughter without her father’s consent and took her to his house.

By and by the chief’s daughter was missed, and they hunted for her through all of the houses, but they did not look into the old brush house, for they thought she would never go there. They thought that she might have gone back to the rocks again, and they dug up all of the large rocks to look underneath them. Finally, however, they saw her going into the brush house and told her parents, and her parents felt very badly on her account. All got out spears to kill her husband, but her mother said, “I am going there to see her first.” So she went down in great anger, but found the door already open for her, and, when she went in, each side of the house shone so brightly that she could hardly keep her eyes open. She saw that the house was full of very nice things, so she said to her daughter, “Daughter, are you married?” “Yes, mother, I am married.” Her mother had intended to take her home and have her husband killed, but instead she put the fire out and sat in the ashes, as was customary in the case of a woman whose daughter married without her consent. It meant that she wanted property. And before she had sat there very long, her new son-in-law handed out eight bright copper plates and sent her home, and she told her husband all that she had seen. Then they laid their spears aside, and the following morning they saw a beautifully painted house standing where the brush house had been. Now the chief invited his daughter and her husband to a feast. The servants that were sent with the invitation were finely dressed. When they got there, they said to the girl, “We are sent after you by your father; he wants you to come to a feast, you and your husband.” They did so, and, after food had been served, he gave his son-in-law eight slaves, one for every copper plate his wife had received. And to this day, when a girl runs off with some one, and her people find he is all right, they do all they can for her.⁠[91]

By and by this chief’s daughter had a little boy who proved to be very smart and became a great hunter. He used to hunt far up on the mountains for mountain goats and other animals. One time he fell from the top of a mountain and lost consciousness, and, when he came to, he saw many men standing about him in a circle. They had cedar-bark rings around their heads and necks. Then they said to him, “What kind of spirit do you want, the Raven Spirit or the Wolf Spirit?” and he said “The Wolf Spirit.” So they held white rocks over his head, and he became unconscious. That is how he got the spirit. Then he ran around screaming, naked except for an apron, while all of the Cliff Spirits and all of the Forest Spirits sang and pounded on sticks for him. They also tied up his hair like a wolf’s ears. This is the origin of the Łuqᴀnaˊ, or secret societies, and the one this man first started is said to have been the Dog-eaters’ society. He sang a song, too, only employed nowadays by a high-caste person when he is initiated. It is called Cīnāˊxłkǃ, and goes this way, “I am above the world. I walk in high places. There is nobody else after me. I am alone.” Those who became łuqᴀnaˊs after this were not like him, because he said, “I am alone. There is nobody after me.” They only imitate him.

There are many kinds of łuqᴀnaˊs. Some are dog-eaters and some pretend to eat the arms of people. It is previously arranged between the łuqᴀnaˊ and his father what he is to do and whom he is to injure, and, after the spirit has come out, the father has to pay a great deal of money for damages. The łuqᴀnaˊs are always found at feasts, and high-caste people stand around them. The people who learned from this boy first are those in the direction of Victoria, and there they think that a person who has performed many times is very high. It is only very lately that we Alaskans have had łuqᴀnaˊs. Łuqᴀnaˊ is a Tsimshian word meaning yēk.⁠[92] When they perform up here, the southern Tlingit dance Tsimshian dances and the northern Tlingit Athapascan dances.

After this youth had come back to his people from the woods and had shown them all about the łuqᴀnaˊ, he went to the Queen Charlotte islands and came to the greatest chief there. Then the people at that place said to him, “It is terrible the way things have been going on. We have wizards (nuksǃāˊtî), who kill men in a sly way. There is one very high-caste person here who has taught himself to be a wizard.” And they told him this man’s story.

He and his friend were very dissolute young men who wanted very much to be wizards, and the former begged his slave to tell him what to do. “If you want to become one very much,” said he, “go down there and sleep among the driftwood left by the tide. Then you will see what it is.” They did this, and a very nice looking woman came to them and taught them witchcraft. This was the mouse (kǃutsǃīˊn). They thought that it was a fine thing. After a while the woman again appeared to them in a dream and said, “Would you like to be among the geese and brants?” They answered “Yes,” one saying, “I will be a goose;” the other, “I will be a brant.” At once they flew off in those forms. They thought that it was a fine thing to be wizards, and would spend all their nights going about that way, never coming in till morning. For that reason the town people began to suspect that something was wrong with them. Nowadays a person among the natives who sleeps much is said to be of no account, for it was through sleep that witchcraft started. They also say that a wizard has no respect for anything and never speaks to his neighbors.

Finally a certain man began to drink salt water and fast in order to discover the wizards. He also made a medicine. Then he dreamt about them, and went to them, telling them everything he knew. The two young men replied, “Don’t tell about us. If you keep it to yourself we will pay you ten slaves. We will let you win ten slaves from us in gambling.” And they did so.

This is the story that the łuqᴀnaˊ man told to his friends when he came home, and wherever he told it there began to be wizards. Therefore witchcraft came to Alaska through the sons of ᴀyāˊyî⁠[93] and through the Haida. They also learned from the Haida that witchcraft may be imparted by means of berries. When women are gathering these, they do not pick up the ones that are dropped accidentally, no matter how many they may be, because that is what witches do.

The shamans say it is this way: A man claims that he sees a large creek. It is witchcraft. A smaller creek flows into this. It is the lying creek. Another creek comes into it. It is the stealing creek. Still another creek comes into it. It is the profligates’ creek. All these are in witchcraft.

One time Raven came to a place called Cold-town and said to the boys there, “Let us go shooting with bow and arrows.” He took down his own canoe and they started out, but presently the canoe upset and the boys were all drowned. Then he said to them, “You will stay here.” They are the īkᴀg̣āˊxe, sea birds whose voices can be heard at a long distance.

Next Raven went to Tān-łutūˊ (the southern end of Prince of Wales island) and saw a man there named Qonᴀłgīˊc.⁠[94] Raven said to him, “What are you doing here?” “I am a great gambler,” he said. “I love to gamble.” Said Raven, “You are a gambler but you can not win a thing. If you eat forty devil’s clubs and fast many days you will become a great gambler. You will win everything you wish. But why do you want to learn gambling?” The man said, “I have been gambling steadily and I can not win anything. A person won from me my wife’s clothing and all of my food and property. Since I have so disgraced myself, I have left my town and have come here to die.” Said Raven, “Gambling is not very good. There will always be hard feelings between gamblers, yet I will show you how. One of the sticks has a red mark around it. It will be named nāq (devilfish). You will see the smoke of nāq. When you get the devilfish, you are lucky. As long as it keeps away from you, you are unlucky.” Then he said to the man, “Make a house for yourself out of devil’s clubs first and stay inside while you are fasting. After you have fasted four days, Greatest Gambler (ᴀłqāˊ-sǃāˊtî) will appear to you.”

When the man had fasted for three days, living on nothing but devil’s clubs, he started to look for more. Then he found a devil’s club, as big around as a large tree, covered with scars, and he took the bark off in eight different spots. Then he went to sleep and dreamed that a man came to him. He said, “Do you know that I am Greatest Gambler? You took the bark off from me in eight spots. It was I standing there.” Then Greatest Gambler said to him, “When you leave this place, look around down on the beach and you will find something. When you reach your own village do the same thing again, and you will find something else.”

Next morning a real person came to him and said, “I want to see your gambling sticks.” So he showed them to him, and he gave them their names. He gave all of them their names at that time. Each stick had a certain mark. One was named devilfish and the others were called after other kinds of animals and fish. They are the same to-day among both Tsimshian and Tlingit.⁠[95] The two principal sticks besides the devilfish are tuq (a small bright fish found in the sand along shore) and āncāˊdjî (a small gregarious bird which seems to feed on the tops of trees).

After Greatest Gambler had showed him how to gamble he prepared to return to his people. When he was getting ready he looked about upon the beach and found a sea otter lying there. When he reached the first place where he had camped on coming away he camped there again and on looking around as directed found a fur seal. He took off the two skins there and dried them. It took him a whole day.

When he at last entered the village everybody made fun of him, saying, “AyâˊoQonᴀłgīˊc” (said to be Haida words meaning “Come and let us gamble, Qonᴀłgīˊc”). He had made a shirt out of the sea otter and a blanket out of the fur seal, so they were anxious to gamble in order to win those things. When they first heard him speak of gambling they made fun of him, thinking to beat him as before, and the same one who had before won all of his goods sat down opposite. He was a fine gambler and therefore very rich. When they started to play, the poor man began to go through all kinds of performances, jumping up, running about, and saying funny things to his opponent, so that the latter became confused and could not do anything. The poor man began winning his goods, and, when he got tobacco, he would treat the crowd about him with it. Finally the poor man said, “That is enough. I am through,” but the rich man answered, “Stay and let us gamble more,” thinking that he would get all of his goods back. The poor man, however, said he was through but would be willing to gamble with him the next day, and he left his opponent sitting there feeling very badly. The same day, however, his opponent went over to him again and again asked him to gamble. “Oh! let us wait until to-morrow,” he said, and he spoke kindly to him. Finally they began again. Whatever words the poor man used toward his opponent at this time, people use at this day. By and by he said to the chief, “Let us gamble for food next. I want to feed my people.” Then the rich man was angry, sat down, and began gambling with him for food. Again his opponent won everything and said, “That is enough. We have plenty of time to gamble. We will gamble some other day.” So they stopped, although the chief would have persevered, and the poor man invited all of his friends in order to give them the food he had won.

Next day the chief again brought over his gambling sticks, and they recommenced. Whenever the poor man saw that his luck was turning, he would jump up, run around the circle of people, who were watching him closely, run to a little creek near by, wash his hands very clean and return to gamble. He did that over and over again while he was gambling. Sometimes he would run off and chew upon a piece of dried salmon. Then he could see the devilfish smoke much better. This time they staked slaves, and he won quite a number, after which he jumped up, saying that he had gambled enough. The chief begged him to continue, but he said, “No, we have gambled long enough. I will gamble every day with you if you desire, but this is enough for to-day.”

Next morning they gambled again. A big crowd always followed him to the gambling place because the way he acted was new to them. He would jump up, call certain of his lucky sticks by name and say, “Now you come out.” Before he began gambling he mixed his sticks well together and said, “The āsqǃancāˊdjî sticks will come out.” So they came out, flew around and around his head and settled among the other sticks again. He was the only one who could see them.

By this time the chief opposing him had become fairly crazy. He had nothing left but his house, his sisters’ children, his wife, and himself. He wanted to stake his sisters’ children, but his opponent said that he would not gamble for people. Then the chief caught hold of him and begged him, and his own friends came to him and said, “Why don’t you gamble and win those friends of his? You are very foolish not to.” “I do not want to gamble unless I can win something,” he said. “What good will those people be to me? I can not do anything with them after I win them.” “You will have the name of having won them. Remember what he did to you. He did not have pity on you. When he won your wife’s clothes did he give them back?” Then the poor man moved a piece of painted moose hide, called ckǃutǃêˊ, around in front of the chief. It made him very angry, but he dared not say anything. The chief lost his nephews, his house, and his wife’s clothes and offered to stake his wife, but his opponent refused until his cousin said, “Go on and get everything he has. If you do not want them you can give them back.” So he won his wife also. Then he put his gambling sticks away, refusing to gamble for the chief himself, because he knew that there is always trouble at the bottom of gambling. But his friends said, “If he is foolish enough to stake himself and his wife, go on and gamble. After a while he will feel it in his face (i. e., be ashamed).” So he played once more and won his opponent also.

Then he said, “Since you have staked everything and I have won, I suppose that this is all. Do you remember how you won everything from me? You were very hard on me. You even won my wife’s clothing, and you did not give me anything back. You left me in such a condition that I could not do a thing to help myself and my wife. You know that I have won you. You belong to me. You might be my slave, but I will not be that hard upon you. I have won you and your wife, but I don’t want to claim you. Take your wife also. She is yours and I don’t want to claim her either.”

High-caste people did not become gamblers, because they always remembered this saying. They always told their children that gambling belonged to lower people and was not work for an honest person. On account of what happened at that time a gambler will now get crazy over the game, and think, when he is using the last money in his purse, “I am going to win it back. I may win it back with the last cent I have.” So he keeps on and on until he goes through with everything. The whole town knows that he is going crazy over gambling, but he thinks that he is doing the right thing. When a gambler wins a lot of things from anyone nowadays, he remembers Qonᴀłgīˊc and gives some of them back. He is not as hard on him as the chief was to the poor man.⁠[96]

It is from Qonᴀłgīˊc also that the gambling sticks have different names and that there are different kinds of nāqs and different sorts of cīcts. These cīcts are lucky gambling sticks, but the lucky medicine that a gambler obtains is also called cīct. In order to get it he has to fast, remain away from his wife, and keep what he is doing secret. At that time he wishes for whatever he desires. This medicine also makes a person brave and is used when preparing for some important action. The name cīct is said to have come from a wolf which had something stuck between its teeth. When a certain man got this out, the wolf said, “I will show you my cīct. I will tell you what it is.”

People who cheat have gambling sticks like birds that are able to fly away, and they keep the names of these sticks to themselves.

It is since the time of this first gambler, too, that people have had the custom of saying to a gambler, “Why don’t you give a feast with the food you have won?”

Gamblers claim that when the sticks move in a certain way while they are gambling, it means death in the family. If they keep the rules of their cīct it will tell them what animal they are going to kill when they are out hunting.

After the rich opponent of Qonᴀłgīˊc had lost all of his property, his wife left him, and he went away from that town. He made a bow and arrows and wandered about in the forest like a wild animal. Coming down to the beach at a certain place, he found a fine bay and built his house upon it. There he began to collect clams and fish which he dried for himself. He was gone all winter, but in those times the Indians did not care for foolish people, viewing them as though they were dead, so his friends did not look for him.

While he lived in that place the chief heard a drum sounding from some distant place, but he did not take the trouble to see what it was. Finally he discovered that the noise was caused by a grouse and said to it, “I see you now. I have been wondering what it was that I heard so much.” Then he said to the grouse, “You are a great dancer, are you not?” “Yes, I dance once in a while when I am lonely.” “Come along and let us have a dance. I am pretty lonely myself.” So that evening he saw all kinds of birds, which were the grouse’s friends, and they had a dance. They danced so much that this man forgot all that he had been grieving about and felt very happy. Therefore people always dance for one who is mourning, to make him forget it. This is where the first dance came from.

Then the chief said to the grouse, “How came you to know about dancing?” “There is a person out on that island who knows a lot about medicine. He knows how to make medicine for dancing and fighting.” “You must let me see him,” said the man. The bird answered, “If you want to see this great medicine-man you must fast to-morrow. This is the great person who knows all about medicines.” Now, after the chief had fasted, he went to sleep and dreamed that a man came to him, showed him a certain leaf on the marsh and said, “Take that leaf and put it into this sack. Then go down toward the beach. As soon as you get down you will see an eagle lying there. Take off its claws and feathers, and, after you have put the leaf in them, draw the cords so as to pull its talons tight around it. After that go down to where the waves are coming in, and at the place the tide has left, stoop down, pretend to pick up something and put it into your sack. That will be the wave. Then take a feather from the back of the head of an ayahīˊya (a solitary bird that continually flies about on the beach) and put it with the rest. You will become a great dancer like that bird. Finally take this medicine to a point running far out into the ocean where the wind blows continually. Tie it there to the top of a tree, where it will always be blowing back and forth.”

The man did as he had been directed, and the day after began to think of composing a song. On account of the medicine this was not hard for him. He also felt that he could dance, and began dancing the same evening. While doing so he was very light upon his feet. He was as if in a trance, not knowing exactly what he was doing. Then he thought to himself, “I am going to the next town.” So he went there and began singing, and it was soon noised about, “A man has come here who is a great singer. He is going to dance to-night.” Then all the people went to that house where he was to dance. He danced and taught the women his songs, which were very sad. He sang about the different clans [among the Haida], picking out only good clans. So the young women of those families began to bring him presents, and each thought, “I will give the most.” They gave him all kinds of things, robes, fur shirts, blankets, leggings. He was becoming very rich through dancing.

In the same town was the young son of a chief who wanted very much to learn to dance and said to him, “How did you come to learn to dance?” He answered, “I have medicine for dancing.” “You must show me how. I will pay you well. I want very much to learn.” Then he showed him how to make the medicine. He said, “You have to fast. If you do that you will learn. Fast to-morrow, and the next day I will take you up to the woods.” When they went up he said, “After you have learned how to do this, you must think of composing a song, and you will see that you will be able to do so at once. You will be so happy over it that you will feel as though you were making a great fire.” In the morning the young man sang and found he could compose songs. Then he went up to the woods and danced all alone by himself. Like the other, he felt light as if he were in a dream. By and by it was reported all over town, “This chief’s son can compose fine songs.” He danced for them, and, because he was a younger person than the other, he danced far better. At this the youth’s boy friends said to him, “What makes you do such a thing? It doesn’t look right for you to do it.” They tried to make him believe he was above dancing, because they were jealous of him. So he went to the man who had instructed him, and the latter said, “People will do this (i. e., dance) all over the world. You will soon hear of it. You and I will not be the only ones doing it. They say this because they are jealous of you.” The youth had composed so many beautiful songs that all the girls had fallen in love with him. That was why the other youths were jealous of him. The first dancer also said to him, “It is not high-caste people like yourself merely who will compose songs. Everybody will learn these and compose others. Anybody that composes songs like this after having made medicine will have his name become great in the world.”

When this youth had told his father all he had learned, his father asked all the people of that town to come to his house and repeated it to them. Then he said, “I do not think it is well for a high-caste person to compose songs and be a dancer. They say that a person’s name will become very high and be known everywhere if he composes songs and becomes a dancer, but a chief’s son’s name is already high, and a chief’s name is known everywhere. Why should he compose songs and dance to make it so? It is better that the poorer people should do this and make their names known in the world.” If the chief had not said this, people that compose songs and dance would be very scarce among us. It is because the chief said, “Let it be among the poorer people so that their names may be known,” that there are so many composers and dancers among us. For no chief composes or dances without giving away a great deal of property.

Thus it happens that there are two kinds of dances, a dance for the chief and his sons and this common or Haida dance (Dekīˊna ᴀʟǃēˊx). In the latter, women always accompany it with songs, and, if the composer sings about some good family, members of the latter give him presents. When the chief is going to dance, he has to be very careful not to say anything out of the way. He dances wearing a head dress with weasel skins, a Chilkat blanket, and leggings and carrying a raven rattle. He is the only one whose voice is heard, and he speaks very quietly. Meanwhile, until it is time for them to start singing for him, the people are very quiet and then only high-caste people sing. The Haida dance, however, is always accompanied by noise. It is rather a dance for pleasure, while the chief’s dance is more of a ceremony. Although most of the people who witness it are high-caste, anyone is welcome. All watch the chief’s actions and listen to his words very closely. If he makes the least mistake, showing that he has not studied his words beforehand very well, they have too much respect for him to say anything to him at that time. Next day, however, after he has found it out, if he does not take his words back, the people that had heard will disgrace him by giving away a great deal of property. The Haida dance was done away with years ago, while the chief’s dance has been given up only in very recent times.

After this the man that first taught dancing married in that town and forgot all about the wealth he had lost. This shows that he was not smart, for a smart man, when he loses a very little of his property, thinks of it and next time tries to do better. One time he and his wife went away in a canoe and upset. His wife was drowned, but he was captured by the land otters who named him Tūtsǃīdîgūˊʟ, and he has strength like that of a shaman among them. When anyone is drowned by the upsetting of his canoe, they say “Tūtsǃīdîgūˊʟ has him.”

One time four boys went out hunting from Klawak with bow and arrows. They saw some black ducks and shot at them, but the ducks kept swimming out to sea, drawing them on. Far out the canoe upset. They hunted for the boys for days and days, but could not find them. Then some property was given to a shaman named Tuxstāˊ, who sent his spirit after them to the point on the beach from which they had set out. Then the shaman said, “The spirits of the boys seem to have taken the road to the land-otters’ dens.” Therefore they kept on until they saw the boys upon a point of land, but, as soon as the latter saw them, they ran into the dens of the land otter. Then the town chief said, “Let the whole town gather pitchwood and burn up the land-otter dens.” So all of the people went thither in their canoes, made fires at the mouths of the dens and killed the land otters as soon as they came out. All perished but a few, who said, “It is Tūtsǃīdîgūˊʟ’s fault that they have burned up our houses and our food.” Then Tūtsǃīdîgūˊʟ jumped into the sea from the other side of the point with the boys all around him, so that they could not be found.

After this the shaman said, “The land otters are going to make war upon the people here,” and soon after they did so. The people attacked them in return and they warred for some time. Many people fell down suddenly and were taken sick, while others were injured by having limbs of trees fall upon their heads. The shaman said that these mishaps were really effects of the land-otters’ arrows, made of the shells of the spider crab. The people were also suffering from boils and pimples all over their bodies, and he said that these were produced by the poisonous shells. So many were dying that all became frightened. Whenever anyone went out hunting or fishing he would be troubled with boils and itching places and have to return. The shaman’s spirits, which the land otters could see, were the only things they feared.

Finally the shaman saw that there were two white land otters, and he said, “If you can get hold of those you will be all right.” Then a canoe with four men started off, and the shaman sang with them telling them that his spirits were going along also to look after them. He said, “You will be lucky. You will get them. As soon as you get them put feathers on their heads.” So they went away and camped for the night. They were unable to sleep, however, on account of the strange noises about their camp as if people were talking in very low tones. Still they could not see anything. They would say to one another, “Do you hear that?” “Yes,” they answered. It was caused by the two high-caste white land otters who were talking to Tuxstāˊ’s spirits.

Next morning the men arose very early, and the eldest said to the one next in years, “Get up. I have had a queer dream. I dreamt that we had a deer and that we were taking our deer to the land-otter den.” Then one of them answered, “You have had a lucky dream. Let us start right away.” So they took the canoe down and set out. Going along on the opposite side of the point on which they had camped, they saw the two white otters swimming in the water. The shaman’s spirits had been holding them. Then the men said to them, “Stay there. We have had you for a long time now.” So the otters remained where they were, and they caught them and put feathers upon their heads. They were making deer of them. They took them home to the fort in which they dwelt and carried them in. All the people danced for them. And that night, after they had retired, the people dreamt that the land otters were dancing the peace-making dance. Some of the people said, “They really danct,” but others replied, “No, they did not dance. We only dreamt it.” Still they dressed up to dance in return. All were fasting, as was customary when peace is about to be made. They also fed the land otters and waited upon them very carefully.

By and by the shaman said that the land otters were coming, so the people made ready for them. They soaked a very bitter root, called sǃîkc, in water for a long time. Some said, “They are not coming. The shaman has made that up,” but others believed him and got ready. Finally the shaman said, “To-morrow they will be here.” The next morning it was very foggy and they could not see far out, but they heard a drum beating. At length the land-otter-people came ashore, and they helped them carry their things up to the houses. One of these land otters had two heads, one under the other. It was Tūtsǃīdîgūˊʟ. All said, “We depend on Tūtsǃīdîgūˊʟ.” Then numbers of land otters came into the house, but, as soon as Tūtsǃīdîgūˊʟ appeared at the door, everybody there but the shaman fell down as if dead. The shaman in turn filled his mouth with the poisonous water they had prepared and spit it about upon the otters, rendering unconscious all that it touched. The land otters, however, shouted, “Keep away from Tūtsǃīdîgūˊʟ. Let him do his work.” So Tūtsǃīdîgūˊʟ danced, saying, “Ha, ha, ha.” When they started a song, the land otters mentioned Tūtsǃīdîgūˊʟ’s name in the manner of the Indians. When they were through with their dance, all of the people woke up, and the land otters also came to. But, when the human beings got up on their feet, all had vanished including the two white ones.