MYTHS RECORDED IN ENGLISH AT WRANGELL
31. RAVEN
In olden times only high-caste people knew the story of Raven
properly because only they had time to learn it.
At the beginning of things there was no daylight and the world lay
in blackness. Then there lived in a house at the head of Nass river
a being called Raven-at-the-head-of-Nass (Nās-ca′kî-yēł), the principal deity to whom the Tlingit formerly prayed, but whom no one had seen; and in his house were all kinds of things including sun, moon, stars, and daylight. He was addressed in prayers as axcagū′n, or
Axkînaye′gî, My Creator, and Wayîgêna′lxe, Invisible-rich-man.
With him were two old men called Old-man-who-foresees-all-troubles-in-the-world (Adawū′ł!-ca′naku!) - and He-who-knows-everything-that-happens (Łiu′wat-uwadjī′gî-can). Next to Nās-ca′kî-yēł, they
prayed to the latter of these. Under the earth was a third old person, Old-woman-underneath (Hayi-ca′naku!), placed under the world by Nās-ca′kî-yēł. Nās-ca′kî-yēł was unmarried and lived alone with these two old men, and yet he had a daughter, a thing no one is able to explain. Nor do people know what this daughter was. The two old persons took care of her like servants, and especially they always
looked into the water before she drank to see that it was perfectly
clean.
First of all beings Nās-ca′kî-yēł created the Heron (Łaq!) as a very tall and very wise man and after him the Raven (Yēł), who was also a very good and very wise man at that time.
Raven came into being in this wise. His first mother had many
children, but they all died young, and she cried over them continually. According to some, this woman was Nās-ca′kî-yēł's sister and it was
Nās-ca′kî-yēł who was doing this because he did not wish her to have any male children. By and by Heron came to her and said, "What is it that you are crying about all the time?" She answered, "I am always losing my children. I can not bring them up." Then he said, "Go down on the beach when the tide is lowest, get a small, smooth stone, and put it into the fire. When it is red hot, swallow it. Do not be afraid." She said, "All right." Then she followed Heron's directions and gave birth to Raven. Therefore Raven's name was really Ītca′k!u, the name of a very hard rock, and he was hence called Ta′qłîk!-īc (Hammer-father). This is why Raven was so tough and could not easily be killed.
Heron and Raven both became servants to Nās-ca′kî-yēł, but he thought more of Raven and made him head man over the world. Then Nās-ca′kî-yēł made some people.
All of the beings Nās-ca′kî-yēł had created, however, existed in darkness, and this existence lasted for a long time, how long is unknown. But Raven felt very sorry for the few people in darkness and, at last, he said to himself, "If I were only the son of Nās-ca′kî-yēł I could do almost anything." So he studied what he should do
and decided upon a plan. He made himself very small, turned him
self into a hemlock needle, and floated upon the water Nās-ca′kî-yēł's daughter was about to drink. Then she swallowed it and soon after became pregnant.
Although all this was by the will of Nās-ca′kî-yēł and although he knew what was the matter with his daughter, yet he asked her how she had gotten into that condition. She said, "I drank water, and I felt that I had swallowed something in it." Then Nās-ca′kî-yēł instructed them to get moss for his daughter to lie upon, and on that the child was born. They named him Nās-ca′kî-yēł also. Then Nās-ca′kî-yēł cut a basket in two and used half of it for a cradle, and he said that people would do the same thing in future times, so they have since referred its use to him.
Nās-ca′kî-yēł tried to make human beings out of a rock and out of a leaf at the same time, but the rock was slow while the leaf was very quick. Therefore human beings came from the leaf. Then he
showed a leaf to the human beings and said, "You see this leaf. You are to be like it. When it falls off the branch and rots there is nothing left of it." That is why there is death in the world. If men had come from the rock there would be no death. Years ago people used to say when they were getting old, "We are unfortunate in not having been made from a rock. Being made from a leaf, we must die."
Nās-ca′kî-yēł also said, "After people die, if they are not witches, and do not lie or steal, there is a good place for them to go to." Wicked people are to be dogs and such low animals hereafter. The place for
good people is above, and, when one comes up there, he is asked,
"What were you killed for?" or "What was your life in the world?" The place he went to was governed by his reply. So people used to say to their children, "Do not lie. Do not steal. For the Maker (Nās-ca′kî-yēł) will see you."
Some time afterward a man died, and Raven, coming into the house, saw him there with his wife and children weeping around him. So he raised the dead man's blanket with both hands, held it over the body, and brought him back to life.
After that both Raven and her husband told this woman that there was no death, but she disbelieved them. Then Raven said to her, "Lie down and go to sleep." And, as she slept, she thought she saw a wide trail with many people upon it and all kinds of fierce animals around. Good people had to pass along this trail in order to live again. When she came to the end of the trail there was a great river there, and a canoe came across to her from the other side of it. She entered this and crossed. There some people came to her and said, "You better go back. We are not in a good place. There is starvation here, we are cold, and we get no water to drink."
This is why people burn the bodies of the dead and put food into the fire for them to eat. Burning their bodies makes the dead comfortable. If they were not burned their spirits would be cold. This is why they invite all those of the opposite clan as well as the nearest relations of the dead man's wife, seating them together in one place, and burn food in front of them. It is because they think that the dead person gets all of the property destroyed at the feast and all of the food then burned up. It is on account of what Raven showed them that they do so.
Because Nās-ca′kî-yēł got it into his mind to wish for daylight in the world, he had wished for a grandchild through whom it might come. Now, therefore, although he knew what answer he would receive, he sent for Łiu′wat-uwadjī′gî-can and questioned him to see whether he would answer right: " Where did this child come from? Whose is it? Can you tell?" And the other said, "His eyes look like the eyes of Raven." That is how he came to get the name Raven.
After a while the baby began to crawl about. His grandfather thought a great deal of him and let him play with everything in the house. Everything in the house was his. The Raven began crying
for the moon, until finally they handed it to him and quick as a wink he let it go up into the sky. After he had obtained everything else, he began to cry for the box in which daylight was stored. He cried, cried, cried for a very long time, until he looked as though he were getting very sick, and finally his grandfather said, "Bring my child here." So they handed Raven to his grandfather. Then his grand father said to him, "My grandchild, I am giving you the last thing I have in the world." So he gave it to him.
Then Raven, who was already quite large, walked down along the bank of Nass river until he heard the noise people were making as they fished along the shore for eulachon in the darkness. All the people in the world then lived at one place at the mouth of the Nass. They had already heard that Nās-ca′kî-yēł had something called "daylight," which would some day come into the world, and they used to talk about it a great deal. They were afraid of it.
Then Raven shouted to the fishermen, "Why do you make so much noise? If you make so much noise I will break daylight on you." Eight canoe loads of people were fishing there. But they answered, "You are not Nās-ca′kî-yēł. How can you have the daylight?", and the noise continued. Then Raven opened the box a little and light
shot over the world like lightning. At that they made still more noise. So he opened the box completely and there was daylight everywhere.
When this daylight burst upon the people they were very much frightened, and some ran into the water, some into the woods. Those that had hair-seal or fur-seal skins for clothing ran into the water and became hair seals and fur seals. Hair seal and fur seal were formerly only the names of the clothing they had. Those who had skins
called marten skins, black-bear skins, grizzly-bear skins, etc., ran into the woods and turned into such animals.
Petrel (GAnu k) was one of the first persons created by Nās-ca′kî-yēł.
He was keeper of the fresh water, and would let none else touch it. The spring he owned was on a rocky island outside of Kuiu, called Deki -nu (Fort-far-out), where the well may still be seen. Raven stole a great mouthful of this water and dropped it here and there as he went along. This is the origin of the great rivers of the world, the Nass, Skeena, Stikine, Chilkat, and others. He said, This thing that I drop here and there will whirl all the time. It will not overflow the world, yet there will be plenty of water." Before this time Raven is said to have been pure white, but, as he was flying up through the smoke hole with Petrel's water, the latter said, "Spirits, hold down my smoke hole." So they held him until he was turned black by the smoke.
After this Raven saw a fire far out at sea. Tying a piece of pitchwood to a chicken hawk's bill, he told him to go out to this fire, touch it with the pitchwood, and bring it back. When he had brought it to him Raven put it into the rock and the red cedar saying, "This is how you are to get your fire, from this rock and this red cedar," and that is the way they formerly did.
Thus Raven (Yēł) went about among the natives of Alaska telling them what to do, but Nās-ca′kî-yēł they never saw. Raven showed all the Tlingit what to do for a living, but he did not get to be such a high person as Nās-ca′kî-yēł, and he taught the people much foolishness. At that time the world was full of dangerous animals and fish. Raven also tied up some witches, and so it was through him that the people believed in witchcraft. Then he told the people that some wild animals were to be their friends (i. e., their crest animals) to which they were to talk.
Once he gave a feast and invited persons to it from other places. He had two slaves after that, named Gidzage t and Gidzanu qlu. This is why the natives here had slaves. It was on account of his
example. There was a man who had no arm, so Raven thought he
would be a shaman and cure him. This is how the Tlingit came to
have shamans. After there was death he showed them how to dance
over the body placed in the middle of the floor.
Raven also taught the people how to make halibut hooks, and
went out fishing: with them. He had names for the halibut hooks and talked to them before he let them down into the sea. That is why the natives do so now. He also taught them to be very quick
when they went out halibut fishing or they would catch nothing.
He also made different kinds of fish traps and taught the people
how to use them. He made the small variety and a big trap, shaped
like a barrel, for use in the Stikine.
He taught them how to make the seal spear (kAt). It has many
barbs, and there are different kinds. One is called tsa-cAxlctdza s.
It is provided with some attachment that hits the seal .(tsa) upon
the head whenever it comes to the surface, driving its head under
water until it dies, and that is what the name signifies.
Then he showed them how to make a canoe. This he did on the
Queen Charlotte islands. At first the people were afraid to get
into it, but he said, "The canoe is not dangerous. People will seldom
get drowned."
He taught them how to catch a salmon called Icqe n, which requires
a different kind of hook from that used for halibut. The place where
he taught people how to get different kinds of shellfish is a beach
on the Queen Charlotte islands called Raven's beach to this day.
After he was through teaching the people these things, he went
under the ocean, and when he came back, taught them that the sea
animals are not what we think they are, but are like human beings.
First he went to the halibut people. They have a chief who invited
him to eat, and had dried devilfish and other kinds of dried fish
brought out. He was well liked everywhere he went under the sea
because he was a very smart man. After that he went to see the
sculpin people, who were very industrious and had all kinds of things
in their houses. The killer-whale people seemed to live on hair-seal
meat, fat, and oil. Their head chief was named GonaqAde t, and
even to this day the natives say that the sight of him brings good
fortune.
While he was under the ocean he saw, some people fishing for halibut, and he tried to tease them by taking hold of their bait. They,
however, caught him by the bill and pulled him up as far as the
bottom of their canoe, where he braced himself so that they pulled
his bill out. They did not know what this bill was and called it gone t-luwu (bill-of-something-unknown). Then Raven went from house to house inquiring for his bill until he came to the house of the chief. Upon asking for it there, they handed it to him wrapped
in eagle down. Then he put it back into its place and flew off through the smoke hole.
Raven left that town and came to another. There he saw a king
salmon jumping about far out at sea. He got it ashore and killed
it. Because he was able to do everything, the natives did all that
he told them. He was the one who taught all things to the natives,
and some of them still follow his teachings. After that he got all
kinds of birds for his servants. It was through these that people
found out he was the Raven.
Once he went to a certain place and told the people to go and fight
others. He said, "You go there and kill them all, and you will have all the things in that town." This was the beginning of war.
After having been down among the fish teaching them, Raven went among the birds and land animals. He said to the grouse
(nukt), "You are to live in a place where it is wintry, and you will
always look out for a place high up so that you can get plenty of
breeze." Then he handed the grouse four white pebbles, telling him
to swallow them so that they might become his strength. "You
will never starve," he said, "so long as you have these four pebbles."
He also said, "You know that Sealion is your grandchild. You
must be generous, get four more pebbles and give them to him."
That is how the sealion came to have four large pebbles. It throws
these at hunters, and, if one strikes a person, it kills him. From
this story it is known that the grouse and the sealion can understand each other.
Raven said to the ptarmigan: "You will be the maker of snow-
shoes. You will know how to travel in snow." It was from these
birds that the Athapascans learned how to make snowshoes, and it
was from them that they learned how to put their lacings on.
Next Raven came to the "wild canary" (s!as!), which is found in
the Tlingit country all the year round, and said: "You will be head
among the very small birds. You are not to live on what human
beings eat. Keep away from them."
Then he went to the robin and said: "You will make the people
happy by letting them hear your whistle. You will be a good
whistler."
Then he said to the flicker (kun) : " You will be the head one among
the birds next in size. You will not be found in all places. You will
be very seldom seen."
He said to the lugA n, a bird that lives far out on the ocean: " You
will live far out on the ocean on lonely rocks. You will be very
seldom seen near shore." Then he came to the snipes and said to them: "You will always go
in flocks. You will never go out alone. " Therefore we always see
them in flocks.
He said to the asojaca/tci, a small bird with greenish-yellow plumage: "You will always go in flocks. You will always be on the
tops of the trees. That is where your food is."
To a very small bird called kot!ai , about the size of a butterfly, he said: " You will be a very respectable bird. You will be seen only to give good luck. People will hear your voice always but never see you."
Then Raven came to the blue jay and said: "You will have very
fine clothes and be a good talker. People will take patterns (probably "colors") from your clothes."
Then he went to a bird called xunkAha and said: "You will never be seen unless the north wind is going to blow." That is what its name signifies.
He came to the crows and said: "You will make lots of noise. You will be great talkers." That is why, when you hear one crow, you hear a lot of others right afterward.
He came to a bird called guslyiadu l and said to it: "You will be
seen only when the warm weather is coming on. Never come near except when warm weather is coming."
He came to the humming bird and said : "A person will enjoy seeing you. If he sees you once, he will want to see you again."
He said to the eagle: "You will be very powerful and above all birds. Your eyesight will be very good. What you want will be very easy for you." He put talons on the eagle and said that they
would be very useful to him.
And so he went on speaking to all the birds.
Then he said to the land otter: "You will live in the water just as well as on land." He and the land otter were good friends, so they
went halibut fishing together. The land otter was a fine fisherman.
Finally he said to the land otter: "You will always have your house
on a point where there is plenty of breeze from either side. Whenever
a canoe capsizes with people in it you will save them and make them
your friends." The land-otter-man (ku cta-qa) originated from Raven telling this to the land otter. All Alaskans know about the land-otter-man but very few tell the story of Raven correctly.
If the friends of those who have been taken away by the land otters get them back, they become shamans, therefore it was through the land otters that shamans were first known. Shamans can see one another by means of the land-otter spirits although others can not.
The first man captured (or " saved") by the land otters was a
KiksA di named KAka . The land otters kept coming to him in large
canoes looking like his mother or his sister or other dear relation, and
pretending that tfiey had been looking for him for a long time. But
they could not control themselves as well as he, and at such times he
would discover who they were and that their canoe was nothing but
a skate. Finally, when KAka found that he could not see his friends,
he thought that he might as well give himself up to the land otters.
Then they named him Qowulka , a word in the land-otter language
now applied to a kind of fishhook which the halibut are thought to
like better than all others. Nowadays, when a figure of Qowulka
is made, it is covered with a dog skin, because it was by means of a
dog skin that he frightened the land otters, and they also hang his
apron about with dog bones. The shaman who is possessed by him
dresses in the same manner. From KAka the people learned that
the land otters affect the minds of those who have been with them
for a long time so as to turn them against their own friends. They
also learned from him that there are shamans among the land otters,
and that the land otters have a language of their own.
For two years KAka /; s friends hunted for him, fasting at the same
time and remaining away from their wives. At the end of this period
the land otters went to an island about 50 miles from Sitka and took
KAka with them. The land-otter tribe goes to this place every year.
Then an old land-otter-woman called *to KAka : "My nephew, I see
that you are worrying about the people at your home. When you
get to the place whither we are going place yourself astride of the first
log you see lying on the beach and sit there as long as you can."
And her husband said to him: "Keep your head covered over. Do
not look around." They gave him this direction because they
thought, "If this human being sees all of our ways and learns all of
our habits, we shall die." On the way across the land-otter-people
sang a song, really a kind of prayer, of which the words are, "May
we get on the current running to the shore."
The moment they came to land the land-otter-people disappeared
and he did not know what had become of them. They may have
run into some den. Then he ran up the sandy beach and sat on the
first log he came to, as he had been directed. The instant his body
touched it he became unconscious. It was a shaman s spirit that
made him so.
By and by KAka"s friends, who were at that time hunting for fur
seals, an occupation that carries one far out to sea, suddenly heard
the noise of a shaman s drum and people beating for him with batons.
They followed the sound seaward until they saw thousands and
thousands of sea birds flying about something floating upon the
ocean a mile or two ahead of them. Arrived there they saw that it was a log with Kaka′ lying upon it clothed only in a kelp apron. The people were delighted to find even his body, and took it into their canoe. He looked very wild and strange. He did not open his eyes, yet he seemed to know who had possession of him, and without having his lips stir a voice far down in his chest said, "It is I my masters." It was a shaman's spirit that said this, and to the present day a shaman's spirit will call the shaman's relations "my
masters."
The old woman that saved him and told him to sit astride of the log was his spirit and so was her husband. The log was the spirit's canoe. This woman and her husband had been captured by the land otters long before, but Kaka′ was so strong-minded a fellow
that they felt they could do nothing with him, so they let him go
and became his spirits. They could not turn him into a land otter
because he did not believe that land otters are stronger than human
beings.
After the people had brought Kaka′ to a place just around the point
from their village, he said, "Leave me here for a little while." So
most of his relations remained with him, while two went home to
tell the people who were there. They were not allowed to keep it
from the women. Then they made a house for him out of devil clubs
and he was left there for two days while the people of the town fasted.
They believed in these spirits as we now believe in God. Before he
was brought home the house and the people in it had to be very clean,
because he would not go where there was filth. After they got him
home they heard the spirit saying far down within him, "It is I,
Old-land-otter-spirit (Kū′cta-koca′nqo-yek)." This was the name of
the old woman who first told him what to do. The next spirit was
The-spirit-that-saves (Qōsîne′xe-yek). He sang inside of him the
same song that the land otters sang. It was his spirit's song and has
many words to it.
All the birds that assembled around him when he was floating
upon the sea were also his spirits. Even the wind and waves that
first upset him were his spirits. Everything strange that he had seen
at the time when the land otters got possession of him were his
spirits. There are always sea birds sitting on a floating log, and
from Kaka′ people learned that these are shamans spirits. It is
from his experience that all Alaskans Tlingit, Haida, even Eskimo
and Athapascans believe in the land-otter-men (kū′cta-qa). By means of his spirits Kaka′ was able to stand going naked for two years. This story of Kaka′ is a true story, and it is from him that
the Tlingit believe in shamans spirits (yēk).
After leaving the land otters Raven appeared at Taku. There is a cliff at the mouth of that inlet called WAs!As!e where the North Wind used to live, and Raven stayed there with him. The North Wind was very proud and shone all over with what the Indians thought were icicles. So the Indians never say anything against the North Wind, however long it blows, because it has spirits (i. e., power). Years ago people thought that there were spirits in all the large cliffs upon the islands, and they would pray to those cliffs. They had this feeling toward them because Raven once lived in this cliff with the North Wind.
Raven observed certain regulations very strictly when he was among the rivers he had created. He told people never to mention anything that lives in the sea by its right name while they were there,
but to call a seal a rabbit, for instance, and so with the other animals. This was to keep them from meeting with misfortune among the rapids. Formerly the Indians were very strict with their children when they went up the rivers, but nowadays all that has been forgotten.
After this Raven went to Chilkat and entered a sweat house along
with the chief of the killer whales who tried to roast him. Raven, however, had a piece of ice near him and every now and then put part of
it into his mouth. Then he would tell the killer whale that he felt
chilly and make him feel ashamed. "If I did not belong to the
GanAxte di family," said Raven, "I could not have stood that sweat
house." For this reason the GanAxte di now claim the raven as an emblem and think they have more right to it than anybody else.
It was from Raven that people found out there are Athapascan Indians. He went back into their country. So the Chilkat people
to this day make their money by going thither. He also showed the Chilkat people how to make tcîł, secret storehouses maintained some distance out of town, and he taught them how to put salmon into
these and keep them frozen there over winter. So the Chilkat people got their name from tcîł, "storehouse," and xāt, "salmon."
Raven also showed the Chilkat people the first seeds of the Indian
tobacco and taught them how to plant it. After it was grown up,
he dried it, gathered clam shells, roasted them until they were very
soft, and pounded them up with the tobacco. They used to chew
this, and it was so good that it is surprising they gave it up. They
made a great deal of money at Chilkat by trading with this among
the interior Indians, but nowadays it is no longer planted.
Then Raven went to a river beyond Copper river called Łaxaỵî′k and told the people that they were to make canoes out of skins. There he found a chief named ayāỵî, who had married the daughter
of another chief by whom he had five children, four boys and a girl.
His wife was always making baskets, while ayāỵî himself went out
camping or to other villages. He had a long box that he took about
everywhere he went and always had hung overhead. In those days
each family tattooed the hands in some special way. One time,
when the chief s wife was sitting under this box a drop of blood fell
out of it upon her hand. Her husband was away, so she took the
box down and looked into it. It was full of severed hands, and by
the tattoo marks she knew that they belonged to her uncles. She
was very fond of her uncles and cried continually for them.
After her husband had found her weeping several times he asked,
"What are you always crying about?" and she said, "I am getting
tired of living here. I want to go back to my father and mother."
Then he said, "We will start back to your father's place to-morrow."
So next day he carried her and her children to a place not far from
her father's town and let them off there telling them to walk across.
Then he paddled home.
Even before she started across, his wife noticed that there was a
heavy fog over her father's village, and when she got there she found
it vacant. There was nothing in it but dead bodies, and she went
from house to house weeping. Now after her children had thought
over this matter for a while, they skinned some of the bodies and
made a canoe out of them. It was the first of the skin canoes. It
was all on account of ayāỵî having murdered the people of that
town. They tied those places on the canoe that had to be made
tight, with human hair. Afterward they took it down to the water
and put it in, making a kind of singing noise as they went. Nowadays
these canoes are made of all kinds of skins, but the hair used is always
human hair and they sing in the same manner when they put them
into the water. They also made a drum out of human skin.
After that all got into the canoe, and they started for their father's
town, singing as they went, while their mother steered. When they
came in front of it the people said, "There is a canoe coming. We can
hear singing in it, and in the song they are mentioning ayāỵî's
name." That was all they could hear. The whole town came out
to look at the canoe. Then the eldest son arose in the canoe, men
tioned his father's name, and said, "Give me my uncle's hands. If
you do not give them to me I will turn this town of yours upside
down." When he started this song again he began drumming and
the town began to sink. It shook as if there were an earthquake.
Now the people of the town became frightened. They went to
ayāỵî and told him he would be killed if he did not let the hands
go. So he gave them up. When the children got these hands they
went away singing the same song. At that the town again began to sink and carried down all of the people with it. Afterward it resumed
its former position, but it is said that you can see shells all over the
place to this day.
After they had reached their own village Raven said to the eldest
boy, "Get some eagle feathers and put them on the mouths of your
uncles and all the other town people. After you have placed them
there blow them away again. Put their hands in their proper
places, and put feathers over the cuts. As soon as you have blown
the feathers away from their mouths, they will return to life." He
did so, and all the dead people came to life.
One day Raven saw a whale far out at sea and sat down on the
beach to study how he should bring it ashore. Then he got some
pitchwood and rocks of the kind that was formerly used in making
fire, flew out to the place where he thought the whale would come
up, and went into its open mouth. He made a fire inside of the
whale and cooked everything there. Only he would not touch
the heart. When the whale took in many fish he ate them. Finally
he did cut the whale's heart out and killed it, after which it began
drifting about from place to place. Then he sang: "Let the one
who wants to be high-born like me cut the whale open and let me
out, and he will be as high as I am." He also sang: "Let the whale
go ashore. Let the whale go ashore on a long sandy beach." Finally
he heard waves breaking on a sandy beach, and he said again: "Let
the one who wants to be high-born like me cut the whale open and
let me out, and he will be as high as I am." Suddenly he heard the
voices of children. These children heard his voice, went home and
informed their parents. Then the people all came there and cut the
whale open, and Raven flew off into the woods crying "Q!one′,
q!one′, q!one′."
Raven stayed up in the woods a long time in order to get the
grease and smell off of his feathers, and, when he came down again,
he saw boxes and boxes of whale grease. Then he made believe he
was surprised and asked the people where they got all of it. They
said: "We found a whale that had come right in here where we could
get it easily. So we are making oil out of it." Said he: "Did you
hear anything inside when it first came ashore." "Yes! there was
some strange sound in there, and something flew out calling itself q!one′." Then Raven answered, "Years ago just such a thing as
this happened, and all of the people of that town that heard the noise
died. It brings bad luck to hear such a noise in a whale. You people must leave this right away. Don't eat any of it. Leave it here."
Then all of the people believed him and left their oil there. It became his.
Next Raven went to a place where many sea lions, seals, and porpoises were lying about. Among these there were a number of
children, who cut pieces of fat from the animals and threw them back and forth. So he made himself look like a child and, when they threw him a piece of fat, he ate it. Finally the children missed their fat and said, "What is becoming of all the fat we were playing with? It is all disappearing."
Then Raven came to a large town where everyone appeared to have died. He entered the largest house, and saw no one inside,
yet he could feel a person continually pushing against him. It was a ghost house, and the town was called the Town of Ghosts (Qayahayi ani). Afterward Raven loaded a canoe with provisions from the ghosts houses and started to paddle away, but he did not notice that a very long line was fastened to the stern of the canoe and secured at the other end round a tree. When he reached the end of this rope the canoe was pulled right back to the beach, and the goods were all carried up to the house by invisible hands. One of the ghosts also dropped a very large rock upon his foot, making him lame.
Next Raven went among the Athapascan Indians of the interior beyond the place he had reached before. There he saw a giant cannibal called Cannibal-man. Knowing that this cannibal was very smart he tried to get the better of him, so he won his confidence and learned that he was married to the black pine (łał). In the morning the cannibal bathed. After that the two became very good friends, and the cannibal said to Raven, "I am going
hunting, and I am going to get four animals, two mountain goats and two ground hogs." So the cannibal took a hide rope such as the interior Indians used to make and started. On the way Raven said to the cannibal, " Where is that man called Tsa′maya?" He was another very powerful man. And the cannibal showed him where Tsa′maya lived.
Then Raven stayed with Tsa′maya, and they became good friends
also. The latter lived all by himself at that time, all of his friends
having been killed by Wolverine-man (NusgA-qa/). So he said to
Raven, "I do not know what to do with him. I would like to kill
him." And Raven said to him, "Do you see this spear? Go and
get a bear skin and put it around yourself. Put the spear in such
a position as to make him believe he has killed a bear." Tsa′maya did
so, and by and by Wolverine-man came along. He was very glad
when he saw the bear and said, "I have another." Then he picked
the bear up, took out the spear and carried it home. After that he
went to gather wood. While he was gone Raven made himself
appear like a common blackbird and in that form said to Tsa′maya,
"Wolverine-man's heart is in his foot." Then he took the little
spear he had concealed in his long hair and gave it to Tsa′maya,
who speared Wolverine-man in the foot as soon as he came in. He
was hurt badly but ran away from them. When they caught up
with him and told him they were going to kill him, he said, "All
right." But every time they killed him he came to life again until
finally they burned him. Then, when they were about to pulverize
his bones, the bones spoke up and said to them, "Pulverize my
bones and blow them away. They will always be a bother to you and everybody else. I shall always remain in the world." That is where the mosquitoes and gnats come from.
Afterward Raven came to where a house was floating far out at
sea, called K!u datAn kahi ti. Nas-cA ki-yeJ had been keeping it
there, and in it were all kinds of fishes, but Raven did not know
how to get at them. At the same place he also met a monster,
called Qla iiAxgadayiye (which seems to mean "a thing that is in
the way"), who had a spear like the arm of a devilfish called, "devil
fish-arm spear." Raven wanted this, and obtained it by marrying
the monster's daughter. Then he got into a canoe, paddled out
near the house, and speared it. Inside he heard all kinds of songs
sung by different voices. These were the songs people were to sing
in the fishing season. When Raven threw his spear, it became very
long and wrapped itself around the house so firmly that he was
enabled to take his canoe ashore. He had great difficulty, however,
for as he did so he had to sing continually, "I think so, I think so,"
a song known to all of the Raven people. Whenever he stopped
singing, the house went back to the place where it had been at first.
This happened three times and the fourth time he got it in.
After that the door of the house opened, and all kinds of fish came out of it. He sang, "Some go to Stikine river. Some go to Chilkat river," which they immediately did. Then he sang again, "Some go to the small creeks to provide the poor people." That
is how fish came to be all over the world.
Now Raven went farther and came to a woman and a little girl all alone. She was crying and Raven asked her, "What are you crying about?" "I have lost all of my friends. I am all alone here
with my little girl. The people kept going off hunting or fishing and never come back. What has happened to them I do not know." Then Raven said to the girl, "Do you know the thing with which
they make fire?" She said "No," for they had kept their fires all night since the other people were gone. Then Raven showed her how to make fire with the fire drill. He said, "Drill away until you get a lot of this fine stuff. Then take some and eat it."
After the girl had done this she became pregnant and gave birth to a male child whom they called Fire-drill's son (Tu li-yA di). Then Raven said to her, "There is a cold spring back here. Bathe your little one in it every day, and he will grow up very fast." To this day they call that spring Water-that-makes-one-grow. The
woman bathed him as directed and he soon grew up into a man very skilful at work of all kinds. Finally he asked his mother:
"Mother, is this the way you have always been? Didn't you have a father, mother, and friends?" But she said, "We have always been this way." He was so bright that she would not tell him. Then the child went on asking, "Whose houses are those? I think
that you had friends who have all died off, and you will not tell me."
So his grandmother finally told him what had happened.
This boy was a good shot with arrows, but he said, "What can I do? All the canoes lying here are old and broken." In the night, however, his father, Fire-drill, appeared to him in a dream and said, "Take one of those old canoes up into the woods and cover it with brush. No matter how old it is. Do it." The morning after he had done this, he went there and found a very pretty little canoe with all things in it that he needed. Then his father appeared to him again, pulled the root of a burned tree out of the ground and made it into a little dog for him. He called it GrAnt (Burnt), and it could scent things from a great distance. Although small it was
as powerful as a bear. He also gave his son a bow, and arrows pointed
with obsidian(?). Finally he gave him a very powerful club called
QotAca yi-qlus.
Now he thought of what his grandmother had told him, took his canoe down, and prepared to go away. He told his mother that he might be gone for two days and said, "Take care of this fire drill.
Hang it in a safe place overhead, and, if I am killed, it will fall."
He went along on the water shooting at birds and suddenly saw a canoe coming toward him. "There is the thing that has killed all of my mother's friends," he thought. Then he began talking to his dog, his club, and his bow and arrows, all of which could understand
him.
The man coming toward him had only one eye, placed in the middle of his face and from this fact was called LecAwa gi (Man-with-one-eye). He was a very big man whose home was in a cliff. Then he said to the boy, "Is this you, my nephew?" He answered, "It is I." "Where did you come from?" "From my uncle's village." "Yes, I know you." The one-eyed man could read the boy's thoughts and said to him, "It was not I who killed your uncles and your mother's friends. It was the East wind and the North wind." He mentioned all of the winds. But the boy knew that this big man was after him, and he knew what he meant by talking to him so kindly. Then the big man said, "Let us trade arrows." "Oh! no, my arrows are better than yours. They cost a great deal." One of the boy's arrows was named Heart-stopper (Teq!-gots);
because a person's heart stopped beating the instant it touched his body. Another was pointed with porcupine quills, and a third with bark. The big man made the boy believe that his arrow points were sea urchin spines, but in reality they were only the seed vessels of fireweed. This man was a bad shaman. He held his arrow points up, and said, "Do you see these arrows?" He could see that the points were all moving. Then the boy said, "It is wonderful, but my arrows are not like that. They are only good for
shooting birds." Now the shaman's object was to get Heart-stopper. Finally the boy said to the shaman, "Look here, you call yourself my uncle. That is how you did away with my uncles and my
mother's friends, is it? You will never make away with me so." That angered the big man, and before they knew it both had their arrows in hand, but the boy was the quicker and killed his antagonist; the dog helped him. Then the boy took the big man's tongue out and burned his body. All this time his mother was worrying about him.
Then he paddled along by the shore and heard some one calling to him. He thought, "There is another bad man." So he went to the place and discovered on a very steep cliff falling sheer into the
water an aperture with red paint around it and devil clubs tied into a ring hanging close by. Some one inside of this invited him in, and, as he was very brave and cared for nothing, he went up to the entrance. The person who lived there was the wife of the man he had killed. She had seen his canoe passing and thought, "He must have killed my husband." So she said, "Your aunt's husband went across that way." And the boy said, "I have seen your husband." This woman's name was Knife-hand (DjiwAn-yls!), because she had
a knife on each hand. She said to the boy, "You better come in here and let me give you food before you go on." "All right," he said. So he entered and found her cooking the parts of a human being. She called the ends of its fingers, "crab apples," its eyes, "berries," etc. When he told her that he did not eat that sort of
food, she at once said, "Well! let us have a fight then. We will kill each other." He agreed and she went to a large rock where he could hear her drawing both hands back and forth to sharpen them.
As soon as she had finished, she threw her hand at him, but he jumped aside so quickly that it stuck in the spot where he had been sitting, and, when she drew her hand away, the knife remained there. Then
the boy jumped forward, seized it, and threw it back with such good aim that it killed her. He also cut her tongue out. He had no more than finished with her, however, than he noticed that the entrance
hole was growing smaller and smaller. So he made himself small also, crept into one of the ermine skins he had tied in his hair, and ran out. When he came home again with his canoe loaded down with seal and deer, his mother and grandmother were very glad to see him, for they had been weeping for him and worrying about him ever since he left. Now he told them not to worry any longer because he had killed the bad people who destroyed their friends.
Next he said to his mother, "Mother, do not be afraid to tell me. What was it that killed my uncles when they went back here hunting?" By and by he went back into the woods to hunt and saw smoke rising a long distance off. He came to a house and entered. There he saw a very old woman called Old-mole-woman (KlAgA kqo ca -nAk u ). As soon as she saw the boy this woman said, "My grandson what is it that you are after?" The boy felt that she was an honest old woman and said, "I am looking for the person that killed my uncles and all of my mother's friends." Then she told him to come
in and eat. She picked a small piece of salmon out from between her teeth which at once turned into a whole salmon. That was
the way she got anything she wanted, and it was the only way she got her food. Then she said to the boy, "Grandson, it is
pretty hard to get at the beings that murdered your uncles. They are the hawks (kidju k). You must find their nests, which are very high up, and watch until the old birds go away, leaving their
two young ones." When he came to the nest, however, he saw that the old birds were away, so he went up to the young ones and said to them, "What do you live on?" The birds showed him numbers of human skulls and other human bones lying about the base of the tree and said, "That is what we live on." They also said, "Our father and our mother always come just at daybreak. You can not see them because they come in clouds. Our mother comes over the mountain in a yellow cloud and our father comes in a black cloud." Then he said to the birds, "Do not tell about me or I will kill you," and they believed he would do it.
Suddenly the boy saw the yellow cloud coming. He distinguished
the mother bird bringing a human body for her children to eat. Then
he killed her and threw her down to the foot of the tree along with
the body she was carrying. After that he saw the black cloud coming and presently distinguished the father bird. The father bird
said to the young ones, "Where is your mother?" and they answered,
"Our mother dropped the dead body she was bringing arid went
down after it." As he was sitting there talking the boy killed him
also and threw his body down. Then he said to the little birds, "You
must never kill people any more or live on human flesh. I will go and
get something for you to eat until you are strong enough." So he
went out hunting and brought them a lot of ground hogs, saying to
them, "This is what you are to live upon." So these birds now live
only on ground-hog meat. They do not live on human flesh any
more. They kill their victims with rocks, and a person who is about
to become rich will see them throw one of these. Then he picks it
up and it brings him good luck.
After that he went back to the old woman and told her what he
had done, and she was very happy to learn that these dangerous
birds were killed. He said to her, "I am going back to my mother
and grandmother. I and my dog have obtained a great deal of
food for them." He also gave a quantity of food to the old woman
who had helped him. His mother and grandmother were very glad
when they saw him come back with the skins of those birds and a
quantity of provisions.
Now Fire-drill's son collected enough food and grease in boxes to last his mother and grandmother all their lives and said, "Mother, I am going to leave you forever. I was not put here to be with you
always. I have done what I wanted to do. If what you have hanging overhead falls, you may know that you will never see me
again. But do not worry, for it is my duty to leave you." Then he went away.
As he was traveling along from that place, Fire-drill's son saw some one ahead of him called Dry-cloud (Gus!-xuk). He was able
to travel very fast, and he chased it. As he was running along he came to the mink people. He ran along again and came to the marten people. Both kept saying to him, "We want you to be our friend," but he paid no attention to them and kept on pursuing Dry-cloud. Then he came to the wolf people and stayed there.
One of the wolf chiefs thought a great deal of Fire-drill's son.
One time the wolves began talking about all those things that can
run very fast, and finally they spoke about the mountain goats, how
they can travel about easily among the cliffs, and said that they were
going out to hunt them. When they set out, all ran hard to see who
could kill the first one, but Fire-drill's son's dog killed a great number
before anyone could get near them, so many, in fact, that Fire-drill's
son took only the leaf lard home to show how many he had gotten.
Then the wolves all went up and brought down the dead goats, and
they felt very much ashamed that they, who were noted runners and
hunters, had gotten nothing. They wondered what they could do
to get even with Fire-drill's son. Then they took a quantity of
long stringy vines called mountain-eel (cayall tli), made them into
rings and began playing with them. They would let these roll down
the sides of the mountains and jump through them when they were
at full speed. Anyone who got caught in one of these would be cut in two.
Fire-drill's son's wolf friend said to him, however, "My friend,
don't go near those people that are playing. You do not know any
thing about the things they are using. They will kill you." He
answered, "No, I will not play with them, but let us watch them."
So they went out and watched them. Then Fire-drill's son said to
his dog, "Now, you play there and throw it as high as you can." So
the dog played with it and threw it as high as he could. It was a
fine moonlight night, and the ring rolled right up to the moon, where
it became the ring you see there whenever there is going to be a change in weather. After that his friend, the wolf chief, said to the rest of the wolves, "You know that this son of Fire-drill is a wonderful fellow. He can do anything. Do not try to injure him in anyway, but treat him as a friend."
After that Fire-drill's son and his wolf friend went off together,
and the wolf said, "Some strange being walks around here. Don't run after him or he will take your life." It was Dry-cloud that he
meant. "Don't mind me," said Fire-drill's son, "I know what he is.
I only play with him. I know that this fellow can t be killed, and I
know that he can not kill anybody else, but I have to follow him.
That was my father's advice to me." So they kept on after Dry-cloud and the wolf had to run with all his might, but it did not seem to Fire-drill's son that he was going rapidly at all. Whenever the
wolf got his tail wet in crossing a stream he was too much tired out
to shake it, so he simply yelped and Fire-drill's son shook it for him.
By and by they saw smoke far ahead of them and presently came to
where an old woman lived alone by herself. They stayed with her
for some time, and could see Dry-cloud as long as they were there,
for he lived in the neighborhood of her house. Then they helped the old
woman and collected a quantity of wood for her. After that she
said to the boy, "Grandson, there is a big fish over yonder. It killed
all of my friends in this town. That is why I am all alone here."
He went to the place where she said the monster lived and found a
red cod. He said to her, "Grandmother, that is not a monster fish.
It is good to eat." So he took his bow and arrows and told his
friend to watch him. Then he went to the red cod and killed it, and,
seeing that there were numbers of sharp spines upon it, he took off
its skin and dried it. He said to the wolf: "My friend, do you know
this woman? She is really Daughter-of-the-calm (Kaye′L!î-sī). She is
a very nice, pretty girl." Afterward Fire-drill's son married Daughter-of-the-calm and had a child by her named LAkitcine′. He gave this
boy his dog and put the red-cod skin upon him as a shirt. Then he
said to his wife: "This is going to be a very bad boy."
LAkitcine lived at Sitka. He had a wife from among human
beings, and every day, while he went out halibut fishing, she dug
clams. The dog, GAnt, that his father had given him he renamed
CAq!. LAkitcine had several children, but he killed all of them.
He would take a child up, pet it, and sing cradle songs to it, and at
the same time make his red-cod spines stick into it so that it died.
He also used the "Blarney stone" as a grindstone, and killed some of his children by rubbing their faces upon it.
His wife mourned very much for her children, and finally thought
of a way of being revenged upon him. She had a litter of puppies
by the dog. There were originally twelve, but seven died, leaving four male puppies and one female. These puppies grew up very
fast. While the man and his wife were away fishing and digging clams the puppies played about the house, and the noise they made sounded just like that of children. But the female always watched at the
door, and when their mother ran up to stop them all would be lying
about on the floor asleep. They kept getting noisier and noisier,
and sounded more and more like human beings. Finally LAkitcine
heard it and said to his wife : Who are these making so much noise
here?" "It is those dogs." Then she thought very seriously what
she should do with the puppies. The next time LAkitcine was out he heard them still more plainly, and now he thought that he heard human voices. He came ashore in great anger and said to his wife:
"It is not those dogs that I hear talking." He was so dangerous a man that his wife was very much frightened.
After that she formed a plan. So, when her husband went out halibut fishing the next time, she stuck her digging stick into the
ground, put her blanket around it, and her hat upon the end. Then she ran up through the woods and hid herself, while the little dog was watching LAkitcine . After that she crept back to the house, which
was made of brush, and in which they were again making a great deal
of noise. Looking inside, she found that the boys were all playing
about in human forms, their dog skins lying a short distance away
from them. Then she quickly ran in upon them, exclaiming, "You
must like to be dogs since you wear dog skins," grabbed the skins and
threw them into the fire. The little dog that sat outside was the
only one that remained in its original form.
Now, when LAkitcine came ashore, and saw the children, he was
angry and felt very much ashamed at having been outwitted. He
did not know how to kill them, for he thought they had more power
than he. One, named KAck U Lk !, was a shaman. He had his grand
father and the one-eyed man and his wife that his grandfather had
killed as his spirits. LAkitcine thought that he would first quarrel
with his wife, and, when he came into the house, he began to throw
and kick things about. But, when he began to beat his wife, the
children jumped upon him and fought with him. They also asked
the dog to help them. Together they killed him.
After these boys were grown up, their mother told them many
times of a certain monster at a place called KAge t!, that had been killing many people. Finally they set out to see it, anchored off the
mouth of the bay, and killed it with spears and arrows. They took
the skin from its head. Then they went throughout Alaska, killing
off the monsters of the sea and land that had troubled people and
making others less harmful. The natives say, if it had not been for
those boys, they would be there yet. They made some of these monsters promise that they would not kill people. The wolves, which were very destructive in those days, became less harmful through them. Although people in Alaska are afraid of wolves, you have not heard of anyone being killed by them.
There was one person called Teak! i s! resembling an eagle, who flew
around and was very powerful. He would say to the bears and other
game animals, " You are going to be killed." Because he kept warning
the animals, human beings were starving, so the brothers came to
him and made him promise not to injure people or forewarn the
other animals.
Afterward the brothers left their mother at that place and went up
to Laxayi k, where they had heard of a bad person called One-legged-
man (Le-laqlociO- His proper name, however, is Man-that-dries-fish-
for-the-eagle (Teak !-q!e di-At-q!An-qa), and he is very fond of spear
ing salmon. First the boys came to the prints of his one foot going
up beside the river, and after a while they saw him coming down
toward them spearing salmon. His shirt was the skin of a brown
bear and had strength as well as he.
Afterward Lq! aya/k! caught a salmon, took all of the meat out, and
got into its skin. Next day, at the time when they knew One-legged-
man Was about to come up, Lq! aya/k! put it on again and laid himself
in a salmon hole in the creek. The big man, who was just coming
along, saw a fine salmon go into the hole and said, " What a fine look
ing salmon." He thought that he could not get it, but, after he had
stood watching it for a while, it swam up toward him, and he speared
it. Just as he was dragging it ashore, however, Lq! aya/k! cut the
cord to his spear point with a knife he had taken along and swam
back into the water hole. Then the big man looked at his spear and
said to himself, "My fine spear is gone;" but after he had observed
closer he said, "This is not broken. It is cut. I suppose it is
Lq!aya/k! s doing." After that he went on up the stream while the
brothers cooked salmon for their meal.
By a by they saw One-legged-man coming down again carrying a
feather tied on the end of a long stick. He would point this feather
at different trees and then smell of it. Finally he pointed it at the
tree in which Lq! aya/k! and his brothers were then sitting and said,
"Lq! aya/k! is in that tree." Then he spoke out saying, "Give me
my spear." Lq! aya/k! kept saying to his brothers, "Shall I go out
and fight him?" But they answered, "No, no, don't go yet." He was so determined, however, that he finally went out and was killed.
Then the other brothers and the dog fell upon this man. After they
had set their dog on him, they killed him. They took his bear-skin
shirt off and burned his body. Lq laya k ! had been torn all to pieces,
but KAcklA i.k! put the pieces together, acted around him like a
shaman, and brought him back to life.
Then Lqlaya/k! went along up to the head of that stream dressed
in One-legged-man s shirt and acting like him. When he got there
he found the largest two bears that ever lived. These were the wife
and father-in-law of the man they had killed. Lqlaya k! threw down
one salmon before the woman and another very bright one before her
father just as One-legged-man had been in the habit of doing. The
woman found out right away that Lq laya k! was not her husband, but
she made love to him and he took her as his wife. His father-in-law
also thought a great deal of him. Every morning Lq laya k! would
go off down stream after salmon just as One-legged-man .had done.
On these expeditions he was always accompanied by his dog, which
kept chewing on something continually. He was really chewing
those wild peoples minds away to make them tame so that they
would not hurt Lq!aya k! s brothers. His brothers all came to him.
After that they began pursuing Dry-cloud like Fire-drill's son.
Like him they chased it from one kind of animal to another. They
chased it for months and months until they had followed it far up into
the sky where you can see the tracks of Lq!aya k! to this very day
(the milky way). Finally they reached a very cold region in the sky
and wanted to get back, but the clouds gathered so thickly about
them that they could not pass through. KAck U/Lk !, therefore, called
his spirits to open a passage. After they had done so his brothers fell
through and were smashed to pieces on the earth. KAck ! A Lk !, how
ever, had his spirits make him enter a ptarmigan (q!es!awa ), and
reached the earth in safety. Then he shook his rattle over his
brothers and brought them to life.
Before they ascended into the sky the brothers had killed all of
the monsters on Prince of Wales island and elsewhere in Alaska
except one at Wrangell called KAxqoye nduA. When they heard
about this one, they went to He-who-knows-everything-that-happens
(Liu wAt-uwadji gi-canA k u ) and said to him, " Grand father, we want
your canoe. Will you lend it to us?" Its name was Arrow-canoe
(Tcu net-yak u ). Then the old man said, "What do 3^011 want the
canoe for, grandchildren?" So they told him, and he said, "There
is a very bad thing living there. No one can get to him. Several
different kinds of spirits are to be met before you reach him. They
are very dangerous." Then he gave them directions, saying, "When
the monster is sleeping, he has his eyes open, but when he is awake he
has his eyes closed, and he is then watching everything. When you see that his eyes are closed, do not try to kill him. Approach him
when his eyes are open. The canoe," he said, u is right round there
back of my house. " They went to look for it bat saw nothing at that
place except an old log covered with moss. They said to him, " Where
is the canoe you were talking about?" Then the old man came out
and threw the moss off, revealing a fine painted canoe. Another name
for this was Canoe-that-travels-in-the-air (QAxyi xdoxoa), referring
to its swiftness. All of the paddles that he brought out to them
were beautifully painted. Then they got into the canoe and tested it.
Next day they set out and soon came to a point named Point-that
moves-up-and-down (Yen-yulu -s!itA ngi-q!a). Whenever a canoe
approached it this point would rise, and, as soon as the canoe
attempted to pass under, would fall and smash it. They, however,
passed right underneath, and it did not fall upon them. They killed
it by doing so, theirs being the first canoe that had passed under.
Beyond this they saw a patch of kelp called Kelps-washed-up-
against-one-another-by-the-waves (WucxkAduti t-glc) , which closed
on those trying to pass, but they shot through as soon as the kelp
parted. Thus they killed the kelp patch, and the kelp piled up in
one place, becoming a kelp-covered rock which may still be seen.
Next they reached Fire-coming-up-out-of-the-sea (HlnAx-qegA ntc), which rose out of the ocean quickly and fell back again. When it fell back they passed over it and killed it.
After that they came to Dogs-of-the-sea (WuclAdAgu q-caq!), after whom LAkitcine"s dog is said to have been named. These drew to
each side and then ran together upon anyone who tried to pass be
tween. Arrow-canoe was too quick for them, however, and killed
them by running through in safety. Then they became rocks.
Before the monster's dwelling were two mountains, called Mountains-that-divide (Wu cqAdagAt-ca), which formed his doors. These
would separate and come together again. Arrow-canoe passed be
tween when they were separated and killed them. You can see them
now, one on each side of a salt-water pond, looking as though they
had been cut apart.
As soon as they had passed between these they saw the monster,
a very bad shaman called also Shaman-of-the-sea (Hin-t ! Aq-i xt !1) .
He looked as though his eyes were open, so they threw a rope made
of whale sinew about his neck. Immediately he shook himself and
broke it. They made ropes out of the sinews of all the different
monsters they had killed, but he broke them. All the time they were
doing this a little bird called Old-person (Laguqa wu), kept coming to their camp and saying, "My sinews only, my sinews." So they finally killed this bird, took out its sinews, and worked them into a
very small thread. As soon as they threw this around the monster's
head it came oil. Then they took off its scalp, which had long hair
like that of other shamans, and the rest of its head turned into a rock
at that place. They now had two principal scalps from the two big
monsters they had killed.
When the brothers now returned to the old man and related what
had happened, he felt very good and said, " There would have been
no person living. This monster would have killed them all, if you
had not destroyed it." Everybody who heard that the monster
was dead, was glad, and did not fear to go to that place any more.
After this they returned to their mother and sister: At that time
their sister had just reached puberty and was shut up in the house
with a mat curtain hung in front of her. So they hung the shaman s
scalp up in front of the curtain. They also made her drink water
through the leg bones of geese and swans so that she should not touch
the drinking cups. Her mother put a large hat upon her so that she
should not look at anything she was forbidden to see. If one shouted
that a canoe was coming, or that anything else was taking place
that she wanted to witness, she did not dare to look out. Since her
time these same regulations have been observed.
Then they left that place and moved south through the interior.
Having killed off the ocean monsters, they were now going to kill,
those in the forest. Besides that, they hunted all of this time, kill
ing bear, ground hogs, and other animals; but their sister was not
allowed to look at any of them. Among other wild animals they told
the wolverine and wolf that they must not kill human beings but be
friendly with them. They killed ground hogs, mountain sheep, and
other animals for them and told them that that was what they were
to live upon.
At one place they saw a smoke far off in the woods and, advancing
toward it, came to the house of a man named He-whose-hands-see
(Djlnqotl n) . He was so called because he was blind and had his
wife aim his arrows for him. He said to Jjqlaya k!, “My wife saw a
grizzly bear and told me where it was. She aimed my arrow and I
shot at it. I felt that I had killed it, but she said I had not. My
wife has left me on account of this, and I don't know where she is or
what I am living on or how I am living without her.” Then Lq laya k !
and his brothers gave him ground-hog skins filled with grease and fat
such as the interior people used to make, also dried meat.
While they were in the interior the brothers also made needles out
of animal bones and threads out of sinew for their sister to use behind
the screen. She worked with porcupine quills and dyed sinews,
and it is through her that the interior women are such fine workers
with the needle.
After they met this man the girl's brothers asked her to make a small net for them. This net was patterned after a spider's web which Spider-spirit (Qaslstla n yek) showed to K-AckU Lk!, saying,
"You are to take this as a pattern." Then they took the old man to the creek and said, "Do you feel this creek along here?" Putting a
long handle on the net, they said to him again, "Dip this net into the
water here. It is easy. You can feel when a fish gets into it."
They gave him also a basket their sister had made and said, "When
you want to cook the fish, put it in here together with many hot
rocks." After showing him how to cook his fish they left him and
came to another camp. There another old man lived who said to
them, Do you see that mountain ? There were two mountains close
together. U A very bad person lives over there named Long-haired-
person (CAkutyA t!)." So, after the brothers had gotten a great deal
of food together for the old man, they left their mother and sister
with him and went out to look for Long-haired-person. After a while
they came upon good, hard trails made by him along which he had
set spears with obsidian points, and presently they saw him coming
along one of these with his long hair dragging on the ground. He had
a bone in his nose and swan s down around his head and wrists. Then
he said, "Come to my house. I invite you home to eat something.
I know you are there." He said this although he could not see them.
Then the boys came out to him and called him "brother-in-law,"
and he said, "It is four days since I saw you, my brothers-in-law.
Your story is known everywhere." This Athapascan shaman s
spirits were telling him all these things. So he took them home and
gave them all the different kinds of food to which they were accus
tomed, not treating them as a wild man would. Then they said to
him, "You see the old person that lives near by. Do not do any
harm to him. He is our grandfather. If you see that old blind
fellow down yonder, give him food also. Treat him like the other."
Presently the shaman said to the brothers, "Let us make a sweat
house." In olden times people used to talk to each other in the
sweat houses, and the shamans learned a great deal from their spirits
inside of them. That was why the shaman wanted them to go in.
But, when they were inside, and he and KAcklA Lk! had showed each
other their spirits, it w T as found that KAcklA LkFs spirits were the
stronger.
Now they returned to their mother and sister and took them to
the head of the Taku river, where they spent some time in hunting.
Then they crossed to this side and, moving along slowly on account
of their sister, they came to a place on the Stikine called in Athapascan
ILvkli ts, where they also hunted. Their destination was the Nass.
Coming down along the north bank of the Stikine to find a good place for their sister to cross, they started to make the passage between Telegraph and the narrows, one of them taking the dog on his back.
Before the brothers set out, however, their mother covered their sister up so that she would not look at them until they got over. But when they were half way across, they started back and it looked to
the mother as if they were drifting downstream. She said to her daughter, "Daughter, it looks as if your brothers were going to be
drowned. They are already drifting down the river." Upon that,
the girl raised her covering a little and looked out at them, and immediately they turned into stone. The pack that one of them was
carrying fell off and floated down a short distance before petrifying,
and it may still be seen there. The dog also turned to rock on its
master's head and the mother and sister on shore. One of the boys
had green and red paints with him, such as they used to paint their
bows and arrows and their faces, and nowadays you can go there
and get it. Years ago people passing these rocks prayed to them, stuffed pieces of their clothing into the crevices, and asked the rocks for long life.
Raven was then living just below this place. His smoke may still
be seen there, and they call it Raven's smoke (Yet sle ge). When
KAckU Lk! turned into a rock, Raven said, "Where is that shaman
that was going to come to after he had died?" He meant that, while
he used to restore his brothers to life by shaking his rattle over them,
he could not now restore himself; and people now apply these remarks
to a shaman who has not succeeded in saving a person after he has
been paid a great deal for his services. They w T ill say, l Where is that
shaman that could save anybody, but could not save the very person we wanted saved?" If a shaman were not truthful, they would say,
"He is trying to have KAckU Lkl s spirits but will never get them
because he is not truthful like KAck!A Lk!."
As Raven was traveling along after his encounter with the mother of Fire-drill's son, he saw a sculpin on the beach looking at him and hid from it to see what it would do. Then he saw it swim out on the surface of the ocean and go down out of sight some distance off. After that he opened the door of the sea, went to the house of the sculpin, which was under a large rock, and said to it, My younger brother, this is you, is it? " I am not your younger brother." Oh! yes, you are my younger brother. We were once coming down Nass river in a canoe with our father and had just reached its mouth when you fell overboard and sank forever." Then the sculpin said, I can not be your younger brother for I am a very old person." Said Raven, I want you to be next to me. There will be many sculpins, but you shall be the principal one." So he placed the sculpin (weq!)
in the sky where it may still be seen [as the Pleiades].
Raven saw a canoe out after halibut and said, “Come ashore and
take me across,” but they paid no attention to him. Then he said, "If you do not I will put you up in the sky also. I will make an example of you, too." Then he held his walking stick out toward the canoe and they found themselves going up into the sky. That is what you can see in the sky now. It is called The-halibut-fishers (DAnA q u s!ike).
Raven went to another place and determined to invite some people to a feast, so he invited all the seal people. When each seal came in he smeared its forehead with pitch, and, as soon as it got warm, the pitch ran down over the seal s eyes and blinded it. Then he clubbed it to death.
He went along again, saw a nice fat deer, and said to it, "My friend
this is you is it?" There was a deep, narrow canyon near by and
Raven laid a rotten stick across it saying, "Let us go across to the
other side upon this," but the deer said, "No, I can not. It will
break with me and I shall get hurt." "No, you shall see how I cross
it." So Raven went over and Deer tried to follow him but fell to the
bottom of the canyon and was crushed to death. Then Raven went
down and ate him, stuffing himself so full that he could scarcely move.
He then acted as though he were very sad and pretended to cry,
saying, "My friend, my friend, he is gone." He pretended that the
wild animals had devoured him.
After this Raven went to ground-hog's house for the winter. The
ground-hogs go into their holes in September. At home they live
like human beings and to them we are animals just as much. So
Raven spent the winter with one of them and became very sick of it, but he could not get out. The ground-hog enjoyed himself very much,
but Raven acted as if he were in prison and kept shouting to his
companion, "Winter comes on, Winter comes on," thinking that
the ground-hog had power to make the winter pass rapidly. The
ground-hog had to stay in his hole for six months, and at that time
he had six toes, one for each, but Raven pulled one of his toes out
of each foot in order to shorten the winter. That is why he has but
five nowadays.
Next Raven married the daughter of a chief named Fog-over-the-salmon (Xat-ka-qoga sli). It was winter, and they were without food, so Raven wanted salmon very much. His wife made a large basket and next morning washed her hands in it. When she got through there was a salmon there. Both were very glad, and cooked and ate it. Every day afterward she did the same thing until their house was full of drying salmon. After that, however, Raven and his wife quarreled, and he hit her on the shoulder with a piece of dried salmon.
Then she ran away from him, but, when he ran after her and seized her, his hands passed right through her body. Then she went into the water and disappeared forever, while all of the salmon she had
dried followed her. He could not catch her because she was the fog (gus!). After that he kept going to his father-in-law to beg him to have his wife come back, but his father-in-law said, "You promised
me that you would have respect for her and take care of her. You did not do it, therefore you can not have her back."
Then Raven had to leave this place, and went on to another town where he found a widower. He said to this man, "I am in the same
fix as you. My wife also has died." Raven wanted to marry the
daughter of the chief in that town, so he said, "Of course I have to
marry a woman of as high-caste as my first wife. That is the kind I am looking for." But Tsagwâ′n (a bird), who was also looking for a high-caste wife, followed Raven about all the time. He said to the people, "That man is telling stories around here. His first wife left him because he was cruel to her." For this reason they refused to give the girl to him. Then he said to the chief, "If I had married your daughter you would have had a great name in the world. You will presently see your daughter take up with some person who is a
nobody, and, when they speak of you in the world, it will always be as Chief-with-no-name. You may listen to this TsAgwa n if you want to, but you will be sorry for it. He is a man from whom no good comes. Hereafter this Tsagwâ′n will live far out at sea. And I will tell you this much, that neither Tsagwâ′n nor myself will get this woman. This is why Tsagwâ′n is now always alone. Raven also said to the chief, "You will soon hear something of this daughter of yours." All the high-caste men wanted to marry this woman,
but she would not have them.
Going on again, Raven came to an old man living alone, named DAmna/dji, and said to him, "Do you know the young daughter of the chief close by here?" "Yes, I know her." "Why don't you try to marry her?" "I can't get her. I know I can't, so I don't
want to try." Then Raven said, "I will make a medicine to enable
you to get her." "But I have no slave," said the old man; "to
get her a man must have slaves." "Oh!" said Raven, "you do not have to have a slave to get her. She will take a liking to you and nobody can help it. She will marry you. Her father will lose half of his property." Then he made the old man look young, got
feathers to put into his hair and a marten-skin robe to put over him
so that he appeared very handsome. But Raven said to him, "You are not going to look like this all of the time. It is only for a day or so."
After this the rejuvenated man got into his skin canoe, for this
was well to the north, and paddled over to where the girl lived.
He did not ask her father's consent but went directly to her, and she
immediately fell in love with him. Although so many had been after her she now said, "I will marry you. I will go with you even if my father kills me for it."
When the chief's slaves found them in the bedroom at the rear of
the house, they said to the chief, "Your daughter is married." So
her mother looked in there and found it was true. Then her father said, "Come out from that room, my daughter." He had already told his slaves to lay down valuable furs on the floor for his daughter and her husband to sit on. He thought if she were already married
it was of no use for him to be angry with her. So the girl came out with her husband, and, when her father saw him he was very glad, for he liked his looks, and he was dressed like a high-caste person.
Then the chief related to his son-in-law how a fellow came along wanting to marry his daughter, and how Tsagwâ′n had come afterward and told him that he had been cruel to his first wife. Said the chief, "This man had a wife. His first wife is living yet. I
don't want to hurt his wife's feelings."
After that his son-in-law said, "My father told me to start right
out after him to-day in my canoe." He was in a hurry to depart
because he was afraid that all of his good clothing would leave him.
He said to his wife, "Take only your blanket to use on the passage,
because I have plenty of furs of every description at home." So
she took nothing but her marten-skin robe and a fox robe.
As she lay in the canoe, however, with her head resting on his lap
she kept feeling drops of water fall upon her face, and she said many
times, "What is that dripping on my face?" Then he would say,
"It must be the water splashing from my paddle," but it was really
the drippings that fall from an old man's eyes when he is very filthy.
Her husband had already become an old man again and had lost
his fine clothing, but she could not see it because her face was turned
the other way. When the woman thought that they were nearly
at their destination she raised herself to look out, glanced at her
husband's face, and saw that he was an altogether different man.
She cried very hard.
After they had arrived at his town the old man went from house
to house asking the people to take pity on him and let him bring
his wife to one of them, because he knew that his own house was
not fit for her. These, however, were some of the people that had
wanted to marry this woman, so they said, "Why don't you take
her to your own fine house? You wanted her." Meanwhile she sat
on the beach by the canoe, weeping. Finally the shabby sister of
this old man, who was still older than he, came down to her and
said, "See here, you are a high-caste girl. Everybody says this man is your husband, and you know he is your husband, so you better come up to the house with me." Then she saw the place
where he lived, and observed that his bed was worse than that of one of her father's slaves. The other people also paid no attention to her, although they knew who she was, because she had married
this man. They would eat after everybody else was through, and, while he was eating, the people of the town would make fun of him by shouting out, "DAmna dji's father-in-law and his brothers-in-law are coming to his grand house to see him." Then he would run out
to see whether it were so and find that they were making fun of him.
Every morning, while he was breakfasting with his wife, the people
fooled him in this way.
Although he had not said so, the father-in-law and the brothers-in-law of DAmna/dji thought that he was a very high-caste person because he was dressed so finely. So they got together all their expensive furs to visit him, and they had one canoe load of slaves, which they intended to give him, all dressed with green feathers from the heads of mallard drakes. One morning the people again
shouted, "DAmna dji s father-in-law and his brothers-in-law are
coming to see him." Running out to look this time, he saw canoe
after canoe coming, loaded down deep. Then he did not know
what to do. He began to sweep out the house and begged some
boys to help him clean up, but they said, "You clean up yourself.
Those are your people coming." The people of the place also began
hiding all of their basket-work pots, and buckets.
As they came in, the people in the canoes sang together and all
of them were iridescent with color. They were very proud people.
Then the old man begged the boys to carry up the strangers goods,
but they replied as before, "You carry them up yourself. You can
do it." So the strangers had to bring up their own things into the
house and sit about without anyone telling them where. The old
man's sister was crying all the time. Then the strangers understood
at once what was the matter and felt very sorry for these old people.
After that the old man kept saying to the boys who came in to
look at his visitors, "One of you go after water," but they answered,
"Go after water yourself. You can do it." He tried to borrow a
basket for his guests to eat off of, but they all said, "Use your own
basket. What did you go and get that high-caste girl for? You
knew that you couldn t afford it. Why didn t you get a poor person
like yourself instead of a chief s daughter? Now you may know
that it isn t fun to get a high-caste person when one is poor." His
brothers-in-law and his father-in-law felt ashamed at what they
heard, and they also felt badly for him. Then the old woman gave
her brother a basket that was unfit for the chief's slaves to eat out
of, and he ran out to get water for his guests.
When he got there, however, and was stooping down to fill his
basket, the creek moved back from him and he followed it. It
kept doing this and he kept running after it until he came to the
mountain, where it finally vanished into a house. Running into this,
he saw a very old woman sitting there who said to him, "What are
you after? Is there anything I can do for you?" He said, "There
is much that you can do for me, if you can really do it. My friends are
very mean to me. My father-in-law and the other relations of my
wife have all come to my place to visit me. I married a very high-caste woman, and the people of my place seem to be very mean
about it. I am very poor and have nothing with which to entertain
them." He told all of his troubles to her from the beginning, and,
when he was through, she said, "Is that all?" "Yes, that is all."
Then the woman brushed back his hair several times with her hand,
and lo! he had a head of beautiful hair, while his ragged clothes
changed into valuable ones. He was handsomer and better clothed
than at the time when he first obtained his wife. The old woman that brought him luck is called Lle nAxxfdAq-that-lives-in-the-water
(HintAk-iJe nAxxi dAq). The old basket he had also turned into a
very large beautiful basket. Then she said to him, "There is a spring
back in the corner. Go there and uncover it and dip that basket
as far down as you can reach." He did so and, when he drew it out,
it was full of dentalia.
Now DAmna dji returned home very quickly, but nobody recognized him at first except his wife and those who had seen him when
he went to get her. Afterward he gave water to his guests, and they
could see dentalia shells at the bottom. The house was now filled
with spectators, and those who had made fun of him were very much
ashamed of themselves. After he had given them water, he gave
them handfuls of dentalia, for which his father-in-law and his
brothers-in-law gave him slaves, valuable furs, and other property.
So he became very rich and was chief of that town. That is why
the Indians do the same now. If a brother-in-law gives them the
least thing they return much more than its value.
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 (goql) 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 (t!awA q) 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
(dul) flew past, and she repeated the same words. But, when the
brants (qen) 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 (weq!). 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 (Cagu n). 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 daugh
ter 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-sriapper-
head spirit which called itself Spirit-with-a-labret-in-its-chin (Tuts-
ya-u wu-yek), and another the fox spirit (NagAsle koye k). Now
the father and mother of this woman were very happy, but her hus
band lost all of his wealth and became poor again.
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 amTAcAkltuA n s (Sitter-
on-a-high-clifFs) 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 TACAkl-
ttUVs daughter," said they. "It isCuda xduxo"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, CawA t-
kaLA qdage 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 Maca′," 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 kek! u (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 kuLle ta, 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 hard
wood 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" (QothagA sini yel). 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
way they spoke and even of the way they walked when in public.
After that Raven came to a fishhawk (kimackAnye t) 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.
Then Raven went to another industrious bird, called hinyikle xi,
a fishing bird living along the river. He called him l i 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.
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.
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 cross-pieces, 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.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag. They also have songs ready to sing at the very beginning of the feast, and, when such a song is^started
it shows that the feast will be a big one." (From the writer's informant.)
</ref>
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 Nas-cA kl-yel. Then he went out with his bow and arrows and shot a whale (ya l). 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 cax and a large bird which was very pretty and had a bill that looked like copper. Then he went to Nas-cA ki-yeTs house, took down the box which contained his mother, and liberated the flickers (kun) which she
always kept under her arms. When Nas-cA ki-yel saw that, he
said, U A11 those pretty things of mine are gone." They knew that
Raven had done this, so they called him into the house, and Nas-
CA ki-yel asked him if it was indeed he. He said, "Yes." Then
Nas-cA ki-yel 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, Nas-c A ki-y el 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 Nas-cA ki-yel 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 Nas-cA ki-ye} 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 Nas-cA ki-yel: 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 Nas-cA ki-yel: 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 cax 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 cax because it was Raven s mother. The cax, which is a great diver, now stayed on the surface of the water, but Raven him self flew to the very highest cloud in the skv and hung there by his bill.
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 RaA^en. 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, pray
ing 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 CAq! u k! u , 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 CAq! u k! u , "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
CAq! u k! u , thinking warriors were coming to kill him, ran out of the
house. At once Raven began carrying off the boxes of grease to a cer
tain 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 Gitli kc and the warring families were the GlnAxda yikc (or Gitgl-c Alk) and the GitAndu . The people of Git !i kc 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 (q!atq!e )
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 sAks 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 concontinued, "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
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 "Nuxgayu."
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 (s!as!).
What do you do for a living ? " she said. I am a fine singer." She went on and met another bird, called Tslinige ni, 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 any
thing 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 (gak), who replied to her question by saying, "I am a traveler and get all kinds of birds to eat." Next she met Wolverine (Nusk)
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 (As-gutu yik-ca). 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 Gitli kc. 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 them and said, "Those are the bones of the Gitli kc
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.
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 GinAxcAmg6 tk." 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 underground, 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.
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. 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.
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 (yuq), 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, CAmgige tk, 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 (cAxdA q) 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?" lie 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 (s!a-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 (yis!). 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 (Q!a-i t6-cuka-qa), 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 husband'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 dag̣asā. 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 (q!en) 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.
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 LuqAna′, 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 inititated. It is called Cma xlk!, 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 luq Ana s 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 luqAna s. Some are dog-eaters and some pretend to eat the arms of people. It is previously arranged between the luqAna 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 luq Ana s 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 luqAna s. LuqAna is a Tsimshian word meaning yek. 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 luqAna , 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 (nuks!a ti),-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 (k hits !i n) . They thought that it was a fine thing. After
a while the woman again appeared to them in a dream and said,
i 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 hiqAna 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 Aya yi 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 ikAga xe, sea birds whose voices can be heard at a long distance.
Next Raven went to Tan-hitu (the southern end of Prince of Wales island) and saw a man there named QonAJgl c. 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 every
thing 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 naq (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 (ałqā-s!ā′tî) 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. The two principal sticks besides the devilfish are tuq (a small bright fish found in the sand along shore) and āncā′djî (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, "Ayâ′oQonałgī′c" (said to be Haida words meaning "Come and let us gamble, Qonałgī′c"). 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 tomorrow," 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 asqlanca′dji 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 some thing," 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 ck!ut!6 , 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 every thing 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 QonAlgic and gives some of them back. He is not as hard on him as the chief was to the poor man.
It is from QonAlglc 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 QonAlgl c 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 ayahi ya (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 chiefs 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 (Dekl na ALle x).
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 .chiefs actions and
listen to his words very closely. If he makes the least mistake, show
ing 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 Tūts!īdîgū′l, and he has strength like that of a shaman among them. When anyone is drowned by the upsetting of his canoe, they say "Tūts!īdîgū′l has him."
One time four boys went out hunting from Klawak with bow and arrows. They saw some black ducks and shot at them, bat 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 Tuxstā′, 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 pitch wood 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 Tūts!īdîgū′l's fault that they have burned up our houses and our food." Then Tūts!īdîgū′l 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 Tuxstā′'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 slikc, 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 Tūts!īdîgū′l. All said, "We depend on Tūts!īdîgū′l." Then numbers of land otters came into the house, but, as soon as Tūts!īdîgū′l 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 Tūts!īdîgū′l. Let him do his work." So Tūts!īdîgū′l danced, saying, " Ha, ha, ha." When they started a song, the land otters mentioned Tūts!īdîgū′l'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.
Then the village people said to one another, "Did you see the dances?" "Yes," they answered. They knew something had happened and did not want to admit having missed it. "Did you see this Tūts!īdîgū′l?" "Yes." " How was he dressed ?" "He had two heads and wore a dancing apron. He carried two large round rattles. As soon as he moved around sideways we all went to sleep."
Now all the people were very happy because the salmon were running, but before they had left the town Raven came to them and said, "Don't leave the town. Stay right here. Don't go to any of the salmon creeks." They were very hungry for salmon, however, and said to four boys, "Go to the salmon creek close by and get some salmon for the village." So they went there and filled their canoe.
This salmon stream runs down into a sort of lake, and, while they were upon this paddling homeward, they heard some one calling to them. Presently a man came down through the woods and shouted, "Stay where you are, and I will tell you something." Looking at this man, they saw that he was naked and painted red all over. He said, "When you have gone a short distance, the fellow sitting in the bow will fall over. When you have gone a little farther, the next will do the same. A little farther still the next one will fall over. You fellow in the stern will reach home and tell the news. It is
through the shaman's own spirits that he is killed."
They could not understand this last saying for the shaman had been alive when they left, but all things happened just as the man had predicted. After they had gone a short distance the man in the bow fell over with blood pouring out of his mouth. The same thing happened to the next two. When the steersman reached town with the three bodies they asked him what was the matter, but he said, "Do not ask me any questions. Give me something to eat quickly." So they gave him some food, and, after he had finished eating, he said, "As we were paddling along from the creek with our salmon, a man came out of the woods saying, Stay where you are and I will tell you something. So we stopped, and he went on, When you get a short distance from here, the man in the bow will drop over, a little farther the next one and a little farther the next one. There will be three. It is what the shaman sees that kills him. It has happened just as he said. And he said to me, The fellow in the stern will get home and have something to eat. Just as soon as he has eaten he will drop over." And so it happened. Just as soon as he had told the story he dropped over dead. Then the shaman asked for his apron, hat, and necklace as if he were going to doctor some one. As soon as he had dressed, he turned himself around three or four times, as the shamans used to do when they were dying. Afterward blood began to flow from his mouth, and he died.
Now the people of that town were very much frightened, and none
of them went away. They had heard before that the land otters have
death and all kinds of sickness for their bows and arrows, but until
then they had not believed it. Afterward the people began to starve,
and the children especially suffered very much. One child, who must
have been very poor, would cry at night with hunger. After he had
been crying for several nights in this manner the people saw a torch
coming toward the house and heard the bearer of it say, u Come here,
grandchild, and I will feed you on q!olkAdAke x." The child did so.
This man was named Man-with-a-burning-hand (DjinakaxA dza), be
cause his hand was always on fire and what he called qlolkAdAke x
were ants (wAnAtu x). This happened at TA qdjik-an, the old town
of the Klawak people.
Now the father and mother of this child looked about for it, weep
ing continually. As they were passing a certain cliff, they heard a
child crying there, and, raising a flat rock which appeared to cover
an opening, they saw it lying inside. Then they saw that ants were
crawling out of its nose, eyes, and ears. After that many other children were brought thither, and their parents said to them, u Look at
this. Man-with a-burning-hand did this because the child cried so
much. You are always crying too. This will happen to you some
day if you do not stop." Back of the site of TA qdjik-an there is a
cliff still called Man-with-a-burning-hand. This story was mostly for
children, and, when a child cried too much, they would say, "Do not
cry so much or Man-with-a-burning-hand will get you." The story
was known all over Alaska, and the children were very much afraid
of Man-with-a-burning-hand.
In the same town, TA qdjik-an, lived a chief named GUhve t! belong
ing to the Tak w ane di family. He was bathing in the sea for strength
every day, and the people of his village bathed with him. In the cold
mornings he would rise, run down to the sea, and rush in. Then he
would run up to a good-sized tree and try to pull a limb out of it. He
would afterward go to another and try to twist it from top to bottom.
He wanted to do these things because he was trying to become a
killer of sea lions.
The same chief had a nephew who was thought to be very weak and a great coward. He would not go into the water, and the people teased him by pushing him over, when he would not do a thing in
return. He was very slow. The man's real name was DuktIu L!
(Black-skin), but they nicknamed him Atqaha sli. His real name
may also have been a nickname originally, applied to him because he
was ugly.
At the same time Black-skin was merely feigning weakness, and,
though he continued to lie in bed when the others bathed, at night
after all were asleep, he would steal off and do the same thing himself
for hours and hours. He remained in so long that he had to float to
rest his feet. On coming out he would throw water on the ashes of
the fire so as to make it steam and lay his mat on top. That was the
only bed he had. The people thought that he was a low, dirty fellow,
but in reality he kept himself very pure and would not lie or steal.
He did not say a word when they made fun of him, though he was
strong enough to have done almost anything to them if he had so
desired. When they sent him after big pieces of firewood he acted as
if they were very hard to lift, and they thought he was so lazy that
they gave him very little to eat.
The people went on in this way, bathing every day with their chief,
while Black-skin bathed at night. After they were through, the
village people would make a big fire, take breakfast and then go after
wood. As soon as the people came up, Black-skin moved into a
corner and slept there. One night, while Black-skin was bathing, he
heard a whistle that sounded to him like that of a loon. He thought,
"Now that I am seen I better let myself go." So he went toward the
place where he had heard it and saw a short, thick-set man standing
on the beach clothed in a bear skin. This man ran down toward him,
picked him up, and threw him down upon the beach. Then he said,
"You can't do it yet. Don't tell anyone about me. I am Strength
(Latsl n). I have come to help you."
Toward morning Black-skin came in feeling very happy, for he
thought that he had seen something great. He kept thinking of
Strength all the time. He could not forget him, but he was quieter
than ever in his demeanor. When they were playing in the house he
would never pay any attention, and, if they said mean things to him,
he let them go on unnoticed, although he belonged to the family of the
chief. Anything they wanted they asked him to get, and he got it.
In olden times the boys used to wrestle in the chief's house while their
elders looked on, and they would try to get him to wrestle also.
Sometimes the little boys would wrestle with him, and he pretended
that they pushed him down. Then they would make fun of him
saying, "The idea of a great man like you being thrown by a child."
When he went in bathing again, this man felt very happy for he knew that he had strength. Anything hard to do, when he looked at it, appeared easy to him. That night he heard the whistle once more. He looked round and saw the same man, and the man said, "Come over this way. Come over to me." Then they seized one another, and as soon as the short man felt his grip, he said, " Don't throw me down. Now you have strength. You are not to go into the water again. Go from here right to that tree and try to pull the limb out." So he went to the tree and pulled it right out. Then he put it back again. After he had done so, the man told him to go to the other tree.
" Twist it right down to the roots," he said. So he did. Afterward he untwisted it and made it look as before.
Just after he got to bed the people started in bathing. As they
passed him the boys would pull his hair saying, "Come on and go in
bathing, too;" but he paid no attention. After they had bathed they
went up to this limb as usual, and GUlwe t! pulled it out with ease.
Black-skin lay in bed, listening to the shouting they made. Then
GAlwe t! ran to the other tree and twisted it to the very root. When
they came home, they told the story to one another, saying, "GUJwe t!
pulled out that limb." The chief himself felt very proud, and the
people of the village were very happy that he had done so, especially
his two wives. Then they tried to get Black-skin out of bed. They
laughed at him, saying, "Your chief has pulled out the limb. Why
couldn't you? He has also twisted that tree. You sleep like a chief and let your chief go bathing in the morning." They laughed at him, saying, "He is sleeping in the morning because he has pulled out that limb and twisted that tree."
They had been bathing in order to hunt sea lions, so the young men said, "To-morrow we are going after sea lions. I wonder which part of the canoe Black-skin will sleep in. He is such a powerful fellow."
And one boy said, "Why this Black-skin will sit in the bow of the canoe so that he can land first. He will tear the sea lions in two."
Black-skin listened to all this, but he paid no attention to them. The whole town was going all day long to see the place where the limb had been pulled off and the tree twisted down to the root. Those people almost lived on this sea-lion meat, but it was very scarce and only
powerful people could get it. For this reason they picked out only the strongest fellows from among those who had been bathing with the chief, to go after them to the sea-lion island. This island was very slippery because the sea lions stayed there all of the time and very few
could get up to the place where they were. That is why they went through such hardships to get at them.
The elder of the chief's two wives had had pity on Black-skin, and would do little favors for him on the sly. So Black-skin, after he had bathed secretly, came to his uncle's wife and said, "Will you give me a clean shirt; it doesn't matter much what it is so long as it is clean, and something for my hair?" "Are you asked to go?" she said. He replied, "I am not asked, but I am going." So she prepared food for him and put it in as small a package as she could. All prepared and
got into the canoe. Last of all came down Black-skin, and, when
they saw him, they said, " Don t let him come. Don't let him come."
Seeing that he was determined to -get in they began pushing the canoe
out as fast as they could. Black-skin then seized the canoe, and they
struck his fingers to make him let go. It sounded like beating upon a
board. And, although all of them were shoving it out, he exerted a
very little of his strength, pulled the canoe back, and jumped in.
Then the people talked very meanly to him, but the chief said, u Oh!
let him be. He will bail out the canoe for us on the way over." So
he sat in the place where one bails. The uncle might have suspected
something after his nephew had pulled back the canoe, but he did not
appear to. As they went rapidly out they said, " Black-skin came
along to tear the sea lions in two." They asked him, "How many
sea lions shall I skin for you?" But Black-skin said nothing.
The sea-lion island had very precipitous sides against which great
waves came, so GUlwe t! waited until the canoe was lifted upon the
crest of a wave and then jumped ashore. He was a powerful fellow,
and seizing a small sea lion by the tail smashed its head to pieces on
the rocks. Then he thought he would do the same thing to a large
one. These large sea lions are called q Ut !-cu-qa wu (men-of-the-
islands). He went to the very largest of these and sat astride of its
tail, intending to tear it in two, but the sea lion threw him up into the
air, and, when he came down, he was smashed to pieces on the rocks.
Now, when Black-skin saw what had happened to his uncle, he felt
badly. Then he put his hand into his bundle of clothes, took out and
put on his hair ornament and his shirt, while all watched him, and said,
"I am the man that pulled out that limb, and I am the man that
twisted that tree." He spoke as high-caste Indians did in those days,
and all listened to him. He said to them, "Take the canoe closer to
shore." Then he walked forward in the canoe, stepping on the seats
which broke under his weight, precipitating their occupants to the
bottom of the canoe. The young men that were sitting in his way he
threw back as if they had been small birds. Then the people were all
frightened, thinking that he would revenge himself on them for their
meanness, but he jumped ashore where his uncle had gone and walked
straight up the cliff. The small sea lions in his way he killed simply
by hitting them on the head and by stepping on them. He looked
only at the big one that had killed his uncle, for he did not want it to
get away. When he came to it, he seized it and tore it in two. A
few of the sea lions escaped, but he killed most of them and loaded
the canoe down. While he was doing this, however, his companions,
who were very much ashamed of themselves and very much fright
ened, paddled away and left him. They said to the people in the
town, "It was Black-skin who pulled out the limb and twisted the tree." Then the town people were troubled and said, " Why did you
leave him out there? Why didn't you bring him in?"
Meanwhile Black-skin took out the sea-lion intestines and dried them. He had nothing to make a fire with and did not know what he should do. So he lay down and went to sleep, his head covered
with his blanket. Then he heard something that sounded like the
beating of sticks. Suddenly he was awakened by hearing someone
say, "I have come after you." He looked around, but could not see
anything except a black duck which was swimming about in front of him. Then he saw the black duck coming toward him and said to it, "I have seen you already." It answered, "I am sent after you. Get on my back but keep your eyes closed tight." So he did. Then the duck said again, "Now open your eyes." He opened them and
saw that he was in a fine house. It was the house of the sea lions. It
is through this story that the natives to the present day say that everything is like a human being. Each has its "way of living." Why do fish die on coming out of the water? It is because they have a "way of living" of their own down there.
Meanwhile the elder wife of the chief, who had helped Black-skin, was mourning for her husband and nephew. Her husband's body was still on that island. The older people were also saying to the
people who had left him, "Why did you do it? A powerful fellow
like that is scarce. We want such a fellow among us." Then the
widow begged the young men to go back to the island and bring home
her nephew and her husband's body but the younger wife did not
care. Finally some other people did go out. They saw the body
there, but Black-skin was gone. Then they took aboard the body,
loaded the canoe with the bodies of sea lions, and went home. When
they heard of it the wise people all said that something was wrong.
The shamans said that he was not dead and that they would see him again. They said that he was off with some wild animal. This troubled the village people a great deal. They felt very badly to think that he had kept himself so very lowly before the low-caste people, and they feared that he was suffering somewhere again when he might just as well have occupied his uncle's place.
Black-skin, however, continued to stay among the sea lions. They
looked to him like human beings, but he knew who they really were.
In the same house there was a boy crying all the time with pain. The
sea-lion people could not see what ailed him. Black-skin, however,
could see that he had a barbed spear point in his side. Then one of
the sea lions spoke up saying, "That shaman there knows what is the
matter. He is saying, ‘How is it that they can not see the bone in the
side of that child?’ " Then Black-skin said, "I am not a shaman, but
I can take it out." So he cut it out and blood and matter came out with it. Then they gave him warm water to wash the wound, and, since the young sea lion belonged to high-caste people, they said to
him, " Anything that you want among us you can have." So he
asked for a box that always hung overhead. This box was a kind of
medicine to bring any kind of wind wanted. The sea lions would
push the box up and down on the water, calling the wind to it like a
dog, whistling and saying, "Come to this box. Come to this box."
So the natives now whistle for the winds and call them. Then the
sea-lion people told Black-skin to get into it, and, as soon as he did
so, he saw that he was very far out at sea. He began to call for the
wind that blows shoreward, and it carried him ashore. Then he got
out of the box and hung it out on the limb of a tree in a sheltered
place. He did this because the sea-lion people had told him to take
very good care of that box and not go near anything unclean with it.
Black-skin had now landed only a short distance from his own
town, so he walked home, and his uncle s wife was very glad to see
him, feeling as if his uncle had come back. The dried sea-lion entrails
he wore around his head. Then he asked all of the town people to
come together, and the people who Had been cruel to him were very
much ashamed, for they thought that he had gone for good. He,
however, looked very fine. He eyed his enemies angrily but thought
thus, "If I had not made myself so humble, they might not have
treated me that way." So he overlooked it. Some of the people that
had left him on the sea-lion island were so frightened that they ran
away into the woods. Some of the old people and the good-hearted
people were very glad that he was back, but he could see that others
hung their heads as if they were ashamed. Then he said, "Some of
you know how cruel you were to me. You know well that you are
ashamed of yourselves. But I can see that some of you feel good
because you know that you felt kindly toward me. It will always be
the case that people who are cruel to poor people will be ashamed of
it afterward." They had thought that he would avenge himself on
them, but he talked to them in a very kindly manner saying, "Do not
make fun of poor people as you did when my uncle was alive."
After this the people went out hunting and encamped in a place
called Tayu k InAxe. A man went out from here with his brother and
little son one day, and, when they returned, saw that every one had
disappeared. They felt very badly and said, "What is wrong with
our village?" Then they saw that the whole town was covered with
devilfish slime and said, "It is that monster devilfish that has done all
this." People say that he had seen the red glow of the salmon on the
drying frames outside. Then the two men said to the boy with them, "You must stay here. We are going off." So they made a mat
house over him and let him have their blankets. They were wild at
the thought of having lost all their friends. Then they killed a
number of porpoises and seals, went to the devilfish's place and
threw them into the water above him. After a while they saw that
the water was getting frothy around them with ascending bubbles
and presently saw the devilfish coming up. It looked very white.
One of these men was making a noise like the raven; the other was
acting like a dog salmon. All that went on was observed by the little
boy. As soon as the devilfish reached the surface they jumped upon
it with their knives and began slashing it. They cut its ink bag and
all the water became black. The devilfish and the men died.
Soon after this had happened a canoe from another camp came
there, saw this object floating on the sea some distance out from the
village, and thought that it was yet alive; so they hurried to get
past it. When they came ashore the boy told them all that had
happened, and they cried very much at seeing him there alone, for
he was their relative. After this they returned with him to their
camp, which was situated upon an island near by, and told the story
there, on which two canoe loads of people left to look for the
devilfish. After they had found it and had cut it open with their
stone axes, they saw the two men still inside, knife in hand. All the
village people that the devilfish had eaten were also there. Then
they took the bodies back to town and had a death feast.
Later on a chief's daughter at the place named QlAqA x-duu obtained a wood worm (L !uq !u x) as a pet and fed it on different kinds of oil. It grew very fast until it reached the length of a fathom.
Then she composed a cradle song for it: "It has a face already. Sit right here. Sit right here (K!esi-ya k! u A sgi. Tch^a k! A nu)." She sang again, "It has a mouth already. Sit right here. Sit right here." They would hear her singing these words day after day, and she would come out from her room only to eat. Then her mother said to her, "Stay out here once in a while. Do not sit back there always." They wondered what was wrong with her that she always
stayed inside, and at last her mother thought that she would spy upon her daughter. She looked inside, therefore, and saw something very large between the boxes. She thought it an awful monster, but left it alone, because her daughter was fond of it.
Meanwhile the people of the town had been missing oil from their boxes for some time, for this worm was stealing it. The mother kept saying to her daughter, "Why don't you have something else for a pet? That is a horrible thing to have for a pet." But her
daughter only cried.
Now, the people got ready to kill this thing, and they tried in every way to induce the girl to come away from her house. Her mother told her that her uncle's wife wanted her help, but, although she was very fond of her, that was not sufficient to get her out.
Next morning she said to the big worm, "Son, I have had a very bad
dream." After they had begged her to come out day after day she finally came. "Mother," she said, "get me my new marten robe."
Then she tied a rope around her waist as a belt and came out singing
a song she had been composing ever since they first began to beg her: "I have come out at last. You have begged me to come out. I have come out at last, you have begged me so hard, but it is just
like begging me to die. My coming out from my pet is going to cause
death." As she sang she cried, and the song made the people feel very badly. Then she heard a great uproar and said to her uncle's wife, "They are killing my son at last." "No," said her uncle's wife, "it is a dog fight." "No, they are killing him." They had quite a time killing the worm, and when she heard that it was dead she sang, "They got me away from you, my son. It isn't my fault.
I had to leave you. They have killed you at last. They have killed you. But you will be heard of all over the world. Although I am blamed for bringing you up, you will be claimed by a great clan and
be looked up to as something great." And to this day, when that clan is feasting, they start her four songs. This clan is the GanAxte di.
Then she went to her father and said, "Let that pet of mine be burned
like the body of a human being. Let the whole town cut wood for
it." So they did, and it burned just like coal oil.
Another of this woman's songs was, "You will be a story for the
time coming. You will be told of." This is where the GanAxte dl
come from. No one outside of them can use this worm. What causes so many wars is the fact that there are very many people
having nothing who claim something. The GanAxte di also own Black-skin. They represent him on poles with the sea-lions intes tines around his head.
The girl's father felt very badly that she should care for so ugly a creature, but to please her and make her feel better, he gave a feast along with tobacco and said, "If my daughter had had anything else for a pet, I would have taken good care of it, too, but I
feared that it would injure the village later on, so I had to have it killed."
In the town where this occurred a man named S!āwa′n became a shaman. He told the people to leave and go somewhere else because spirits were saying in him, "If you stay in this village, you will all die." There was so much respect for shamans in those days that people obeyed everything that they told them to do. By and by his spirit said to the shaman, "You will be asked to go somewhere, my master. My masters, the people of the village, do you go away with me?" And the village people kept saying to him, "Yes, we are going along with you." Then the spirit said, "The persons that are going to invite me from here are not human beings. They are already getting ready to come."
By and by the canoe came after him. He seemed to know that there was something about to happen, and said, "Somehow or other you people look strange." He put all of his things into small boxes
ready to depart. Then he got in and they covered him with a mat until they reached their village, when he got up and saw some fine houses. The fronts were beautifully painted. Among these houses was one with a crowd of people in front which they tried to make him believe was that where the sick person lay. His rattle and belt, however, ran up on the shore ahead of him and entered the proper
house, which was in another part of the town. These people were land otters, and they called him by name, S!āwa′n, S!āwa′n. They said to him, "All the shamans among us have been doctoring him, and they can not do a thing. They can not see what is killing him. That is why we have asked you to come."
Then the shaman thought within himself, "Who will sing my songs for me?" but the land otters spoke out, saying, "We can sing your songs. Don't be worried." Inside of this house there hung a breast plate made out of carved bones, such as a shaman used in his spiritual combats. The land otters saw that he wanted it and said, "We will pay you that for curing him." Then the shaman began to perform. He could see that the land otter was made sick by an arrow point sticking in its side, but this was invisible to the land otters. After he had pulled it out, the sick otter, who belonged to the high-caste people, sat up immediately and asked for something to eat. The shaman kept the arrow point, however, because it was made of copper, and copper was very expensive in those days.
Then one of the land-otter shamans said to him, I will show you something about my spirits." And so he did. He saw some very strange things. When he was shown one kind of spirit, the land otter said, "You see that. That is Sickness (Nīk!). What he called Sickness was the spirit of a clam. These clams look to the spirits like human beings. That is why the spirits are so strong." He also showed him the Spirit of the Sea (Deki na yek), the Spirit of the Land (Da qna-yek), the Spirit from Above (Krye gl), and the Spirit from Below (Hayi nAq-yek). All these became the man's spirits afterward.
Nowadays, when a man wants to become a shaman, he has to cut the tongue of a land otter and fast for eight days. You can tell a shaman who has been fasting a great deal because his eyes become very sharp.
After he had shown all of the spirits, they said, We will take you
to your town any time you want to go." Then they took him to his
own town. They had to cover him up again.
The people of S!āwa′n's village were always looking for him, and
one day four men in a canoe saw something far out on the shore which looked very strange. A number of sea gulls were flying around it. Going closer, they saw the shaman lying there on a long sandy beach, the gulls around him. They did not know of any sandy bay at that point, and said that it was the shaman that brought
it up there. They then took him into the canoe and brought him over. He was so thin that he appeared to have fasted a long time.
After they got him home the spirits began mentioning their names, saying, I am Spirit of the Sea; I am Spirit of the Land," etc. Every time a spirit mentioned his name, the people would start its songs.
This is the last thing that happened in the Raven story. From this time on everything is about spirits (yēk) over and over again. Very few people believed in Nās-ca′kî-yēl. Most believed in the spirits. From the time that these come into the story you hear little about
Raven because people had so much more faith in spirits. You notice that in every Tlingit town in Alaska there are shamans, and years ago, when a shaman died, there was always one right after him, and he was always of the same family. It is through these that the
Raven story has been getting less and less.
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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