said, “May I marry you?” She had rejected very many men, but she wanted
to marry this one right away. Pointing toward the lake he said, “My
father’s house is right up here,” and the girl replied, “How fine it
looks!” When they went up to it, it seemed as though a door was opened
for them, but in reality the edge of the lake had been raised. They
walked under. So many young people were there that she did not think of
home again.
Meanwhile her friends missed her and hunted for her everywhere. Finally
they gave her up, and her father had the drums beaten for a death
feast. They cut their hair and blackened their faces.
Next spring a man who was about to go hunting came to the lake to bathe
himself with urine. When he was done, he threw the urine among a number
of frogs sitting there and they jumped into the water. When he was
bathing next day he saw all the frogs sitting together in the middle of
the lake with the missing woman among them. He dressed as quickly as
possible, ran home to the girl’s father, and said, “I saw your daughter
sitting in the middle of the pond in company with a lot of frogs.”
So her father and mother went up that evening with a number of other
people, saw, and recognized her.
After that they took all kinds of things to make the frog tribe feel
good so that they would let the woman return to her parents, but in
vain. By and by her father determined upon a plan and called all of his
friends together. Then he told them to dig trenches out from the lake
in order to drain it. From the lake the frog chief could see how the
people had determined, and he told his tribe all about it. The frog
people call the mud around a lake their laid-up food.
After the people had worked away for some time, the trench was
completed and the lake began draining away fast. The frogs asked the
woman to tell her people to have pity on them and not destroy all, but
the people killed none because they wanted only the girl. Then the
water flowed out, carrying numbers of frogs which scattered in every
direction. All the frog tribe then talked poorly about themselves, and
the frog chief, who had talked of letting her go before, now had her
dressed up and their own odor, which they called “sweet perfumery,” was
put upon her. After a while she came down the trench half out of water
with her frog husband beside her. They pulled her out and let the frog
go.
When anyone spoke to this woman, she made a popping noise “Hu,” such
as a frog makes, but after some time she came to her senses. She
explained, “It was the Kîkcaˊ (i. e., Kîksᴀˊdî women) that floated down
with me,” meaning that all the frog women and men had drifted away.
The woman could not eat at all, though they tried everything. After a
while they hung her over a pole, and the black mud she had eaten when
she was among the frogs came out of her, but, as soon as it was all
out, she died. Because this woman was taken away by the frog tribe at
that place, the frogs there can understand human beings very well when
they talk to them. It was a Kîksᴀˊdî woman who was taken off by the
frogs, and so those people can almost understand them. They also have
songs from the frogs, frog personal names, and the frog emblem. All the
people know about them.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] See story 76. This myth is more often localized at Wrangell, and
the woman’s name is said to have been Qałtsîˊxkǃî.
23. HOW THE FROGS HONORED THE DEAD
One time, when they were afraid of being attacked, all of the Kîksᴀˊdî
and Kāˊgwᴀntān encamped on Kᴀnᴀsqǃēˊ (St. Lazaria island). There are
two parts to this island separated at high tide, and the Kîksᴀˊdî
encamped upon one, while the Kāgwᴀntān lived upon the other. On the
same island there is also a small salt-water pond at the bottom of
which was a creature called ʟǃīn, and, being pressed for food on
account of their fear of the enemy, the allies often tried to bail out
this pond when the tide left it, to get at the sea animal.
While the people were there, a chief of the Kāˊgwᴀntān died, and, after
he had been in the house among his friends for eight days, one of his
friends said to the Kîksᴀˊdî, “Take care of his dead body.” All the
Kāˊgwᴀntān chiefs marry Kîkcaˊ (Kîksᴀˊdî women). But the real frog
tribe thought they were the ones who were summoned, because they are
also Kîkcaˊ.
Then all the Kîksᴀˊdî made ready to go ashore to burn his dead body.
They chopped much wood and made a fire, while all of the Kîksᴀˊdî and
Kāˊgwᴀntān stood around it, and everyone felt badly. All at once a big
frog, as long as the hand and wrist, jumped out from the place where
the fire was and began making a noise. All looked at it. It had come
out because the frogs were the ones to whom the Kāˊgwᴀntān had spoken.
After that it jumped into the fire and burned up.
Then all the people tied themselves up (gᴀˊxᴀnî) (i. e., tied their
blankets around their waists, as they did when they were engaged in
lifting the sun[36]) out of respect to the chief. All felt very badly
about the dead man, and one person said, “It will not be like draining
out the ʟǃīn lake (ʟǃīn āˊya). Let us go to war.” So they captured
slaves and killed them for the dead man, and, when they put food into
the fire for him, they also named the frog that it might receive some
as well.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See _Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of American
Ethnology_, p. 430.
24. THE BRANT WIVES[37]
A Kîksᴀˊdî youth lived with his father in a long town. When he was well
grown, he went about in the woods hunting with bow and arrows. One time
he came close to a lake and heard the voices of girls. When he got
nearer he saw two girls bathing there. Then he skirted the shore toward
them, and, when he was very close, discovered two coats just back of
the place where they were. These were really the girls’ skins. He took
them up, and they began talking to him, saying, “Give us those skins.”
But he said, “I want to marry both of you.” So he married both of them
and took them to his father’s house.
Both of this man’s wives used to look over his hair to pick out the
lice. When spring was coming on and the brants were coming from the
south, the girls sat on top of the house with him and kept saying,
“There comes my uncle’s canoe. There comes my father’s canoe.” They
were beginning to get homesick, and they asked their husband if he
would let them go home. When the brants began coming, one would say,
“Those are my friends coming up. I am going to ask them to give me
something to eat.” So, when they were above the house, she said, “Give
me something to eat,” and down came green herbs one after another.
When it was time for the brants to start back south, both of the girls
had become tired. They wanted to go home. They knew when it was time
for their father’s canoe to pass over, and just before it was due they
told their husband to go up into the woods after something. When he
came down, his wives were gone. He said to his father, “Do you know
where they went?” but he answered, “No.”
Then the young man said, “I will start down on foot to the place
whither I think they have gone.” So he set out, and after he had gone
on for some time, he heard people making a noise. It was the brant
tribe in camp. On this journey he took a bag full of arrows with
mussel-shell points, and bows. For this reason, when he came back of
the place where they were, and they caught sight of him, they were
afraid and flew away. Then he went down to the place where they had
been sitting and found all kinds of green herbs such as brants live on.
After this the girls said to their father, “Let us camp a little way
off. He has been with us for some time, and we have gotten his heat.
Therefore let us camp near by so that he can come to us and be taken
along.” But their father answered, “When he comes behind us again and
camps, say to him, ‘Our fathers[38] do not like to see your bows and
arrows. Get rid of them.’” They came to him and repeated these words,
but he said, “I do not take them in order to do harm to your fathers
but to get game for myself. I wish you would tell them that I want to
go along, too.” So they told him to come down, and, when he did so, his
father-in-law said, “Bring out the best coat. I want to put it on my
son-in-law.”
After that his wives said to him, “We are going to start along with
you. When we set out do not think about going back and do not look
down.” Then they put a woven mat over him and started. After they had
gone on for some distance the man wanted to urinate and dropped down
from among them on the smooth grass. The brants did not want to leave
him, and they followed. It was quite close to their real camping place.
The brant tribe was so large that he felt as if he were in his own
father’s house. They would play all the evening, and he felt very happy
among them.
When they arrived at their real home, this man took off his bag of bows
and arrows and hid it back in the woods so that they could not see
it. In the same town were fowls of all kinds—brants, swans, herons,
etc.—and by and by war arose over a woman, between the brant tribe and
the heron tribe. They went outside and started to fight. The swan tribe
was between, trying to make peace. When they came out to fight for the
second time, the brant tribe was pretty well destroyed by the heron
people’s long, pick-like bills. It was from the herons that the Indians
learned how to make picks. This is also the reason why the ʟǃūkǃnᴀxᴀˊdî
use the swan as their crest, for they are very slow, and the Kîksᴀˊdî
use the brant as their emblem because they are very lively.
Then the brant chief said to his son-in-law, “Your wives’ friends are
almost destroyed. Could you do anything with your bows and arrows to
help them?” You could not see whether these were brants or people. They
looked just like people to him. When he ran among them to help his
wives’ friends, he killed numbers at each shot and made them flee away
from him. The heron tribe was so scared that they sent out word they
would make peace. So messengers were sent back and forth, and the heron
chief was taken up among the brants while the brant chief was taken
up among the herons.[39] They renamed the heron with his own name and
the brant with his own name. In making peace they had a great deal of
sport and all sorts of dances. From that time on the heron has known
how to dance, and one always sees him dancing by the creeks. Then the
birds began to lay up herbs and all kinds of things that grow along the
beach, for their journey north.
Meanwhile the man’s people had already given a feast for him, and he
never returned to his father. He became as one of the brants. That is
why in olden times, when brants were flying along, the people would ask
them for food.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] See story 54.
[38] Meaning their father and his brothers.
[39] See _Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of American
Ethnology_, p. 451.
25. STORY OF THE PUFFIN
There is a place called G̣ānᴀxaˊ and a creek close by called
G̣ānᴀxaˊ-hīn whither many people used to go to dry salmon and do
other work. One day some women went out from there at low tide to a
neighboring island to dig shellfish. They brought their canoe to a
place where there was a hole in the side of the island, but, when they
endeavored to land, a breaker came in, upset the canoe, and drowned all
of them except one. In former times, when this woman went by in her
father’s canoe, she used to think the birds here looked pretty and was
in the habit of saying, “I wish I could sit among those birds.” These
birds were the ones that saved her. They felt so happy at having gotten
her that they flew about all the time.
Meanwhile drums were beaten at the town to call people to the death
feast, for they thought that she was drowned.
One time a canoe from the village containing her father happened to
pass this place, and they said to him, “Look among those birds. Your
daughter is sitting there.”
The puffin chief had ordered the łᴀgwâˊtcǃ, a bird which lives on the
outer islands and is the puffin’s slave, to braid the woman’s hair, and
she always sat on the edge of the cliff.
Her father was very rich, so he filled many canoes with sea-otter,
beaver, and marten skins for the birds to settle on when they flew out.
When they reached the place, however, he could not see his daughter,
for they had taken her inside. Then he became angry. They carried all
sorts of things out there but in vain.
At last, about four days afterward, the girl’s mother thought of the
white hair that had belonged to her grandfather. In the morning she
said to her husband, “We have that old hair in a box. What can we do
with it? We ought to try a stratagem with it. Suppose we put boards on
the canoes, spread the hair all over them, and take it out.” They did
this, and, when they got to the cliff where their daughter used to be,
they saw her sitting on the edge with her hair hanging over. They went
close in. Then all the birds flew out to them, and each stuck a white
hair in its head where you may see it at this day. The girl, however,
remained where she was.
Then these birds flew in to the puffin chief and told him about the
hair. They thought a great deal of it. Therefore the chief told them to
carry the girl back to her father. But before she went he said to her,
“If you are ever tired of staying with your father, come back to us.”
At that time she had a nose just like one of these birds, because she
had wanted to be one of them.
The sea gull is also the slave of the puffin. Therefore the Huna people
say that when anyone goes to that place it calls his name, because it
was the slave of the puffin at the time when this woman was there.
Because some of their people were drowned at that island, all of the
Tǃᴀˊqǃdentān claim it. Later they built a house which they named after
it.
26. STORY OF THE WAIN-HOUSE PEOPLE
People came to a fort to live and began to kill bears, ground hogs,
porcupines, mountain sheep, etc., with spears, and bows and arrows,
laying the meat up in the fort. After they had killed some of these
animals they would cut off their heads, set them up on sticks, and
begin to sing for them.
There was a young man among them who had been put into a
mountain-sheep’s skin instead of a cradle as soon as he was born. When
he grew older he was able to follow the mountain sheep to places where
no one else could get, so he killed more than the others. He would also
play and dance around the heads after they had been cut off and say, “I
wish my head were cut off, too.” Then people sang about it. Meanwhile
the sheep were getting tired of losing so many of their number.
One day all the people went up to a mountain to hunt, and, finding a
flock of sheep, began to chase them to a certain place where they could
bunch all together. Suddenly this youth became separated from the other
people, and on the very top of the mountain was met by a fine-looking
man who shone all over and had a long white beard. This man led him
through a door into what he at first thought was a house, but it was
really the inside of the mountain. All at once it looked very strange
to him. Piles of horns lay about everywhere.
Meanwhile all of his friends had missed him and were hunting about,
but had to go home without him. They thought he was gone forever. They
hunted for him every day and found his horn spear stuck into the ground
at a certain place near the top of the mountain, but nothing more.
After searching everywhere in vain they became discouraged and beat the
drums for him.
Meanwhile the mountain sheep tried to fit a pair of horns on the young
man’s head. They heated these first in the fire, and tried to put them
on, when it seemed to him as if the insides of his head were all coming
out.
The people kept up their search for him, however, and about a year
afterward a man climbed up on the same mountain to hunt sheep. Above
him he saw a big flock, and he heard a noise as though some one were
shouting or talking there. Then he went straight down, for he knew that
it was the person who had been lost, and he knew that the mountain
sheep had captured him. Pointing this mountain out to the people, he
said to them, “It is he, for I know his voice.” So all the people
started up.
Now the sheep could see whenever the Indians set out to hunt for the
person they had taken, and they said to him, “There come your friends.
If you will tell them to throw away their weapons, we will let you
go to them.” So he said to his friends, “If you will lay down your
hunting weapons, I will tell you what these mountain sheep say to me.”
Afterward he said, “They say that I am being punished because you are
destroying them too much, and, when you have killed them, you take the
heads and put them on sticks.” Although he was among the mountain sheep
he retained his own language. He said besides, “The mountain-sheep
chief tells me to say to you that you must hang up the sheep skins
with their heads toward the mountain and the rising sun and put eagle
feathers upon them. They tell me to say, ‘Do not put our heads on
sticks. Grizzly-bears’ heads are the only ones you should treat that
way—not ours.’” One could not see or hear this man unless he were
specially purified by bathing in urine. Afterward the sheep went right
into the mountain with him to the place where they have their homes.
Now they tried in every way to recover him, and finally came out with
dogs. Then the mountain sheep said to him, “You can go among your
friends after a while, but now you may talk to them from the top of a
little cliff.” So his friends came up underneath this, and he talked
down to them. By and by the sheep again changed their minds regarding
him, and one day he said to his friends, “This is the last time I shall
come to see you. If you are going to begin a war on my account, try it
in the fall. Then they always come down into the thick timber below the
glacier, and you can come up there with dogs.”
In the autumn, therefore, they prepared to kill the sheep. The people
were told to put the sheep heads toward the rising sun and throw their
skins about anywhere without drying, for they thought that this would
make the mountain sheep let their friend go.
Then the mountain-sheep chief said to the man, “They are going to let
you go now, because all of your fathers are suffering very much from
not having their skins well dried.”
The mountain sheep could easily see when all of his friends started out
to fight for him, and they got him ready to send down to them. Then
they said, “Now you will be allowed to start down to them.” When they
got down far enough the dogs which were coming up in front met the
flock he was standing among. Then they took off his mountain-sheep skin
and put it aside, leaving him in human form, and he chased all the dogs
away from them.
He stood in the midst of the flock of sheep, and all the people stood
below. Then he said to his friends, “Do not kill any more mountain
sheep, for they will now let me go among you.” So they broke all of the
shafts of the spears they had used in fighting the mountain sheep and
threw them away.
When he came down he smelt like the things that grow on the tops of
cottonwood trees (dōxkwāˊnkǃ). They brought him into the house and he
saw the mountain-sheep skins lying about there at random. Then he said,
“They let me come among you again that I might have you dampen these,
hang them up, and dry them thoroughly.” After they had worked upon the
skins for some time they put red paint upon them and eagle down. The
man who had come down from among the sheep told his people to say this
to the skins while they were doing so: “We will put your skins in just
the position in which they came off from the flesh.”
In the morning all of the houses shook. Every piece of flesh that had
come off of the mountain sheep was in its place in the skins, and,
when the man who had come back to them opened the door, they came down
from the drying racks and marched off. But they had been so long among
the Indians that just before they reached the highest mountain where
they belonged they lost their way and became scattered over all the
mountains. Because the mountain sheep once saved (or captured) a man,
they have beards and look in other respects like human beings.
After this the mountain sheep sent a spirit called Ỵīx̣âˊ
(A-very-young-man (or -yēk)) to the man who had been rescued, to be
his strength (yēk). There was great rejoicing among his friends when
this spirit began to manifest itself in him, and all commenced to sing
for him. At the command of this spirit he had them make him a pair
of snowshoes with which his spirit could take him around the fire, a
shaman’s mask, and bows and arrows.
Then they came with him to Fort-by-small-lake (Ākǃᵘ Nū), just west of
Juneau,[40] and built a big house for him with inside rooms (tǃāqǃ),
corner and middle posts, the last mentioned being carved to represent
the Great Dipper (Yᴀxtêˊ). At that time the shaman fasted for four days
and Yᴀxtêˊ (the constellation) appeared to him. So from that house the
people were called Yᴀxtêˊ-hît-tan (Wain-House people).
The mountain-sheep tribe gave this man the name of Skōwadᴀˊł, and he
was also called Cᴀxtcāˊtc (Long-toothed-humpback). When his spirit was
about to work in him, two porcupine bladders were blown up and hung in
the house, and, when the spirit arrived, all stood up in the customary
way. Then he put on his mask and his snowshoes, which were thrown down
on the floor for him, and carried his bow and arrows in his hand.
Although he could not see through this mask, he climbed up on the walls
of the inside rooms and ran around there backward. While there he shot
at a bladder and the arrow passed straight through it.
When the shaman’s spirits left him he said, “You people are going to
see a wonderful gift. It is coming to such and such a place.” In the
morning they went out with a dog and armed with spears, and before they
got far away the dog began to bark at a bear. Then the animal ran under
a log, and all climbed on top of the log prepared to spear it. The
shaman had said, “Something is going to happen to one of you,” and sure
enough the first man that speared this bear fell down before it and was
caught and killed. Then the others quickly speared the bear through and
through and killed it.
Meanwhile a spirit came to the shaman, who had remained at home,
saying, “Your friend has been killed by a bear.” They brought the bear
and the dead man’s body down at once and laid the body before him in
the middle of the house. Then the shaman took some of the red paint
with which they had brought the mountain sheep to life and put it on
the body after which he began running around it. The third time he did
this the dead man sat up. The shaman always had such strength.
Some time afterward he again began testing his spirits, because they
were going south to war, and, when they left him, he told his people
that they would destroy an entire town.
When he was walking around in the woods a raven fell in front of him,
and on getting back to the house he said to his clothes man, “I am
in luck.” He told some one to return with him, and they found the
raven still with life in it. Then he said to his friends, “I will set
up all these things.” So he took sticks and set them all round the
raven. “Before I cut it,” he said, “I will let the wings flap over
it. This will be (i. e., represent) your enemies. Before I cut it I
will cause it to kill all of your enemies. The raven will have so much
strength.” When they tested him[41] the spirit said, “All people on
sticks,” meaning that it wanted all of their foes to fall on sticks and
be destroyed when they fought. Then they prepared, saying, “We will
start.” The shaman said, “At the moment when we arrive a man is going
to chop down a tree in front of us.”
Toward morning they came close to the fort, all prepared for fighting.
After they had surrounded it a man came out with a stone ax and climbed
up a tree to chop off limbs. Then they shot him with arrows, unnoticed
by the fort people, so that he fell down dead. But a little while
afterward the fort people said, “Where is that man who climbed the tree
a short time ago. He is not there now.” At once they rushed together on
both sides, and all those in the fort were destroyed just as the shaman
had predicted. Then they returned to their own fort, which was also
known as Eulachon-trap fort (Cāł nū).
Another time five women went around the island where they had their
fort, after mussels, and came to a reef on the outer side. They left
their canoe untied and it floated away. Then the tide began to come up.
They stood up on the reef with their hands in the air, singing death
songs for themselves, for they knew they were about to die. After that
the reef was called Woman reef (Cā qǃāˊtǃagu), on account of the women
who were destroyed there.