{"collection":"Native American","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/nam/nw/tmt/tmt094.htm","path":"nam/nw/tmt/tmt094.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/nam/nw/tmt/tmt094.htm","text":"There was a very poor NexA'd\u00ee man who did not know how to provide himself with food, so he lived off of others. He was always cruising around in a small canoe, getting small bullheads and flounders. One time he went out just for the day. He did not take any food along and therefore became very hungry. Early next morning something said to him, \"I have come after you.\" He heard the voice but could not see anything. Finally, however, he stepped out from the place where he had been sitting and saw a young eagle perched upon a branch. The man was wearing an old ground-hog blanket full of holes, so he lay down again and put his eye to one of these. Then the eagle came very close to him and, taking the blanket down, he said to it, \"I have seen you now.\" Immediately the eagle looked like a human being and said, \"My grandfather has sent me for you.\"\nThe poor man followed this eagle right up to the woods and they came upon a large trail there over which the eagle led him. By and by they came to some steps which led up to a house situated high up. He followed his guide inside of this and found it very clean and nice there. Everything was just like the houses of human beings, and mats were strewn round upon the floor. Then they gave him all kinds of fine fish and game to eat, and he wanted to stay among them forever. He was very poor among his own people, but these eagles treated him well. He married one of the eagle women and remained there for a long time.\nAfter he married, this man's brothers-in-law gave him a coat and named it, as they put it on him, Camping-under-water-for-two-days (D\u00eax-h\u00een-t\u00e2'd\u00ea-uxe'). Before they put it on they warmed it. This coat was so named because, when an eagle gets hold of a seal, the\nseal is so strong that it will swim around with the eagle attached to it, and the longest time the eagle can stand this is two days. Now the poor man was an eagle himself, and he learned from the eagles how to catch fish. He thought all the time that he was spearing them, but in reality he was catching them in his talons. He became a great fisher and hunter.\nThe mother and brothers of this poor man were just as poor as he had been, and, when he saw his brother out fishing, he would leave some fish where he could find it. His brother thought that he was very lucky. Finally his mother dreamed that some one said, \"It is I, mother, who provides for you all of this fish and meat,\" and afterward they would dream that he said to them, \"I have left a fish (or seal) on such and such a point. Go there and get it.\" When they did so, sure enough it was there. Sometimes he would say in his mother's dream, \"We are going off camping. You must go there and camp near by.\" They did so and dried a lot of fish which he had gotten for them.\nIn another dream he said, \"I have married one of the eagle women. I can not come among you any more.\"\nOne time, when they were out camping, they saw an eagle working very hard to bring ashore a load of fish. After it had done so, the eagle sat up on a branch and said, \"It is I.\" It told them its name, which was the name of the missing man. It is because a friend of theirs was once among the eagle people that the NexA'd\u00ee claim the eagle. This clan is now scattered everywhere.","title":"Tlingit Myths and Texts: Myths Recorded in English at Wrangell: 70. Story of the Eagle Crest of the NexA'd\u00ee","type":"page"}