into which salmon run, and were surprised on encountering people.
They thought it was some war party from very far south and beat a
precipitate retreat to the fort. Then the people in the fort saw a big
canoe all covered with abalone shell come out from this place and make
straight toward them. When it had come close in, the chief questioned
these strangers and learned that they were on a friendly visit from
Yakutat. It took the strength of all the people to bring up this canoe.
Then they made the fort chief a present of land-otter skins, marten
skins, skins of all kinds. This was the custom in olden times, a slave
being generally given back.
The chief at this place had a nephew named Yêtx̣âˊ who was very fond
of gambling. The fourth day that the visitors were in town the chief’s
nephew was away from home, and the fire went out. Then he acted as
though he were crazy. He went down to the valuable canoe of the
visitors, broke off the stern piece for firewood, and threw it indoors
so that the abalone shells fell off of it.
Next morning, when the man that owned the canoe got up, he saw that his
stern piece was missing, and that burnt abalone shells were lying by
the fire. He called to his companions, “Get up and let us be gone. Push
the canoe down and load it quickly.” He had a number of copper plates
and other property which he had not yet unpacked, and, after he had
gotten a little distance from the fort, he landed and took these out.
Then he went right back in front of the fort to destroy them on account
of the injury he had received. When these people came opposite they
took out a copper plate, struck it on the edge of the canoe so as to
make it sound and threw it into the sea. They threw away four. Then the
fort chief also took four coppers, flung them on the wall of the fort
and threw them into the ocean.
[I have explained to you before where this copper came from. It came
from the Copper river. Probably this rich man came several times before
the fort. Coppers were valued according to their height when they were
first made, some at four slaves and some at six.][42]
When the Yakutat man came before this fort again, his copper plates
were all gone, and he began to use cedar bark. His people would tie
a rock on each piece and throw it into the water. Meanwhile the fort
chief put his canoe on the walls of the fort and began to put Indian
beads, caribou skins, moose skins, and other articles into it. Since
these ʟǃenēˊdî have the dog salmon for their emblem, the chief’s sister
began acting like one when it is shaking out its eggs. She pretended
to be shaking out riches in the same way, and, while she did so, they
threw the canoe over the edge of the fort, and all the good things
spilled out. The man from Yakutat was foolish to try to contend with so
wealthy a chief. His name (i. e., the Yakutat man’s) was Kāˊyeswūsâˊt.
They chased him out with riches, and told him to come back again with
more property. A song was composed about this afterward to the effect
that he was simply fooling the people with this yellow cedar bark which
was not real property at all. (See song 43.)
In the same fort a woman gave birth to a boy, who exclaimed as soon as
he was born, “How many things there will be for all the people who are
holding my mother.” In olden times certain women used to hold a woman
who was about to give birth, and they were paid for this service. The
child grew very fast. He was going to be the greatest liar among his
people. After he was grown up and had a family of his own, his mother
died, and he started for Chilkat to invite people to the death feast.
This was before the Russians came.
He said to his children, “Pull away. Pull fast.” He had started off
without any of the property he had intended to take, but on his way
Indian rice hailed into his canoe, and a large box of grease floated
down to him. When he got close to the mouth of Chilkat river he came
in front of a waterfall. He tasted the water of this and found it
very sweet. Then he took all of his buckets and filled them with it
so that they might put this water on the rice when they ate it. As he
was bound for Klukwan, the village farthest up the river, he said to
his children, “Blow on the sail.” They did so and passed right up to
Klukwan. Then he stood up in his canoe and began to talk. They took all
of his stuff up, and in the evening the drums were beaten as a sign
that he was going to give out property.
He began to cry in the customary manner as he beat the drums. Then he
took a piece of bark and put it in front of his eyes, upon which the
tears ran down it in a stream. Afterward he gave out two copper plates
and invited the people to eat what he had brought. Then the people
danced for him in return, and a man came in with something very shiny
on top of his head.[43]
That is all he told when he returned.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Or on the side toward Sitka.
[41] That is, when the people allowed him to perform before them.
[42] An “aside” by the story-teller.
[43] This last was said to be “the way the story went,” but otherwise
was unexplained.
27. THE ALSEK RIVER PEOPLE
Once there was a famine among the people of Alsek (Ałsēˊx) river. There
were two shamans there, one of whom began singing to bring up eulachon,
while the other sang for strength in order to obtain bears and other
forest animals.
The first shaman’s spirit told him that if he would go down the little
rapids he would see great numbers of eulachon. So he dressed up next
morning and went straight down under the water in a little canoe.
That night the other shaman’s spirits came to him, saying that the
first shaman would remain under water for four nights; that he had gone
into a house where were eulachon, salmon, and other fish and had thrown
the door open.
At the end of four days they hunted all around and found him lying dead
on the beach amid piles of eulachon. As soon as they brought him up,
all the eulachon that were in the ocean started to run up river, and
everyone tried to preserve as many of them as he could.
In the same town were two menstruant women, and the other shaman told
these that there would be a great many land otters about the town that
evening. Just as he had said, at the time when his spirits came to him
that evening, numbers of land-otter-men came through the village. They
could be heard whistling about the town. Finally some one said, “Why is
it that it sounds as if they were all where the two women are?” Sure
enough, they found that the land otters were talking inside of the two
women. The ones that were inside of them were really land-otter-men,
that is, men who had been taken away by the land otters and made like
themselves.
A person would often creep close up to these women to find out
what they were, but every time something spoke out inside, “Do
not sneak around here for I can see you.” They could not get at
them. These land-otter-men had come to the women to turn them into
land-otter-people also.
A menstruant woman is the only thing that will enfeeble the power of a
shaman’s spirit, therefore, although the shaman endeavored to get these
land-otter-men out of the women, his spirits kept turning back. When
the shaman’s spirit came to him next evening, it said that there were
more land-otter-men coming to take away the ones in these women and
the women with them. He told the people to be watchful, because there
was going to be a great disturbance that night. When night came on the
people were all very much frightened at the noises the land-otter-men
made under the houses, and they had great trouble keeping the two women
in their rooms so that they should not be carried off. All the people
helped them, but the land otters were invisible. After that nobody went
out to camp for a long time. Then they said to the two women, “Take
your bloody clothes to different beaches, leave them there, and tell
the land otters that they are too great animals to fight with weak
beings.” In those times whenever a menstruant woman said anything of
that kind it had to be obeyed. So the land otters went off.
The shamans in those times were very strict and strong, and whatever
they saw was true. By and by these shamans said, “Something is going
to happen to that great town there by the lake.” When the things that
had happened in their neighbors’ town regarding the land otters were
reported to the people there, they said, “Are you afraid of those
things that stutter and can not talk like you and I?” By and by two men
started hunting from this place. When they had reached the top of a
neighboring mountain, they looked back and saw a great flood come down
between the mountains and overwhelm their town. This flood was caused
by an avalanche which poured into the lake and filled it up, forcing
the water out. Some human bodies were hanging to the branches of trees.
The men knew this had happened on account of the way they had spoken
of the land otters, and, starting on aimlessly, they came to the town
where the shamans lived.
One of these two shamans had a quantity of oil which he was going to
carry to another town. He wanted to buy skins of kinds different from
those his own people had. When they reached a camping place outside of
the town the man’s spirit told him to go down to the beach at low tide
and carry a hook with him. A shaman’s spirits never liked salt things.
There he saw a very big devilfish under a rock, and his spirit said to
him, “Look out, master, that is a big live devilfish.” As soon as he
had hooked it, he saw what appeared to be two ducks flying toward him
from either side, but they were really the devilfish’s arms. Then his
spirit told him to run up quickly on the bank, and he squatted down
there under a rock, while the devilfish’s tentacles swept over him,
carrying all the forest trees along with them. Two days after this his
spirit told him to set out again.
When this shaman arrived at Kǃᴀkᴀnuwūˊ, where many people lived,
everybody wanted to see him and try his strength, because they had
heard that he was a great shaman. One evening they began trying him.
They threw his mask on his face and it stayed there, covering up his
eyes so that he could not see where he was going. Then, when he ran
around the fire, the people stuck out their feet to trip him, but he
jumped over them every time. This showed how strong his spirits were.
Another time his spirits came to him they built a big fire and he
started around it. Then he threw the fire round upon everyone who was
there and as high up as the ceiling, but the fire hurt nobody. By and
by his clothes man said, “Another spirit is coming to him soon, named
Gutsǃcaxoˊtǃqā.” This spirit had a big knife in his hand with which he
would hit people on the breast. When it came to him, the shaman told
the older people to stand up straight and motionless and not to fear,
for if one got scared he would die. He hit one, and they laid him in a
certain place. Then everyone said, “You better kill that shaman, for
he has slain the best man in the company.” After his spirits had gone
away, however, the shaman went to the body out of which blood was still
flowing and said, “It will be all right,” while his spirits made a
noise. Then the man got up and jumped about. The people looked at the
wounded place, but there was not so much as a scar upon it.
After a while the shaman began trading off his grease to all who wanted
it. One day he said, “Something is about to come up that will be very
dangerous to you people.” It was the moon. When the moon came up it
shone brightly, and the stars were bright, but after a time the moon
began to hide its face from them. That was what he had predicted. The
people, however, thought this was caused by the shaman himself.
Then the leading men and women of the Kāˊgwᴀntān dressed themselves up,
put grease on the fire, and began dancing to dance the moon out. After
awhile it came out just a little, so they felt very happy and danced
still harder. They continued doing so until the whole moon was out. At
the same time people took whatever property they had, held it up and
called the moon for it. They say the moon acts in this way because it
feels poor and lonely, so, when the moon or sun does thus, they act in
this manner. After that the shaman went home and told his fellow shaman
how everyone had tried him in this place. “When I went around the fire,
people put out their feet to make me stumble. They tried me in every
way.”
The shaman left at home was also trying to exert his power. His spirits
were singing inside of him in order to bring salmon into the creeks,
and he told someone to make him a one-barbed hook (dinaˊ). Whenever
the salmon he was after came he was going to use this in order to get
it. When it came up it filled the whole of Alsek river and broke all
the hooks of those who tried to catch it. Then the shaman selected a
small boy and said, “This little boy is going to hook it.” So he gave
him the hook he had had made, and the little boy pulled it up easily.
The shaman’s spirits had killed it. This salmon was so large that all
in that town had a share, and even then it was more than they could
cook for one meal. It was the biggest salmon ever killed. There are two
creeks in that region, and to this day a young boy can easily pull in a
large spring salmon there such as is hard for an adult to manage.
There is a hole near by called Hole-Raven-bored (Yēł-djuwᴀtuˊłia),
because Raven made it long ago. In early times, whenever there was to
be a large run of eulachon or other fish, quantities of rocks came out
of that hole. So people used to go there to look at it.
In one place Alsek river runs under a glacier. People can pass beneath
in their canoes, but, if anyone speaks, while they are under it, the
glacier comes down on them. They say that in those times this glacier
was like an animal, and could hear what was said to it. So, when they
camped just below it, people would say, “Give us some food. We have
need of food.” Then the glacier always came down with a rush and raised
a wave which threw numbers of salmon ashore.
The people were also in the habit of going up some distance above
the glacier to a place called Cānyukᴀˊ after soapberries which grow
there in abundance. The first time they went up they discovered
people who were all naked except about the loins, and there was a
shaman among them who was reputed to have a great deal of strength.
For that reason they tried him. They took mussel shells, clam shells,
and sharp stones and tried to cut his hair, but a single hair on
his head was 3 inches across, so everything broke. This shaman had
many spirits. Some were glacier spirits, called Sītǃ tu kohaˊnî,
Fair-girls-of-the-glacier; others were of the sky tribe called Gūsǃ tu
kohaˊnî, Fair-girls-of-the-sky.
The shaman said that, on their way down, one canoe load of the
down-river people would be drowned as they passed under the glacier;
but the spirits of the shaman below told him about this, and he went up
to see the Athapascan shaman. In those days shamans hated one another
exceedingly. So the Athapascan shaman placed kᴀqǃᴀnaqǃᴀqǃ, something to
destroy all of one’s opponent’s people, before his guest. The latter,
however, all at once saw what it was and went home. Soon after he got
there, the Athapascan shaman died, killed by his rival’s spirits, and
his spirits passed to one of his friends.
The shamans living on Alsek river had a great deal of strength. All
things in the sea and in the forest obeyed them. A rock just south
of Alsek river, named Tᴀˊnᴀku, has within it the spirits of a shaman
called Qātsatîˊ. When a person wanted to kill some animal he placed
things there, and now the Tǃᴀˊqǃdentān make a door like it and use it
as an emblem. Near by is a place where many wild onions grow. They were
planted there by Raven.
There is a small river beyond Alsek to which the Alsek River people
once went for slaves. On their second expedition they killed a rich
man, and those people, who were called ʟǃuqǃoedîˊ, built a fort. Among
them was a very brave man, named Łucwâˊk, who conceived the idea of
making the gate very strong, and of having it fastened on the inside so
that it could be opened only wide enough to admit a single person at a
time. Now, when the Alsek River people came up again and tried to enter
the fort through this door, they were clubbed to death one at a time.
By morning there were piles of dead bodies around the door.
Then the survivors begged Łucwâˊk to let them have the bodies of those
who had been wealthy, but he climbed up on the fort and said, “I will
name my fort again. Know that it is Eagle fort. The eagle’s claws are
fastened in the dead bodies, and he can not let go of them. Poor as we
are you always bring war against us, but now it is our turn. We have
done this work, and I can not let one go.” Toward evening, however,
he had all of the bodies thrown outside, and climbed on the top beam
of the fort where he walked about whistling with happiness. Meanwhile
his opponents loaded their canoes with the dead and took them home.
When they burned these, they took all the women they had enslaved in
previous expeditions and threw them also into the flames. Then all
the Eagle people assembled, returned to Eagle fort, burned it, and
destroyed nearly everybody inside. Łucwâˊk’s body was not burned,
because he was a brave man, and brave men do not want to sit close to
the fire in the Ghosts’ home like weaklings.
Another time some Alsek people went visiting at a certain place and
were invited to take sweat baths. But their hosts remained outside,
and, when the Alsek people came out, they killed them. One of their
victims was a man named Sītāˊn, related to the Athapascans. He
protected himself at first by holding a board in front of his face.
Then they said, “Take down the board, Sītāˊn. What we are doing now is
especially for you.” In those times a person used to make some kind of
noise when he went out expecting to be killed. So Sītāˊn uttered this
cry, ran out, and was killed.
After they had collected all of the dead bodies on a board a woman came
crying out of the town. Then they said to her, “Are you really crying?
If you are really crying for the dead bodies, lend us your husband’s
stone ax so that we can cut firewood with which to burn them.” In those
times stone axes were valuable and, when one was broken, people beat
a drum as though somebody had died. It means that this woman was very
sorry indeed for the dead people when she lent her stone ax for this
purpose.
When the Alsek River people heard of this slaughter they were very sad,
but first they started their respective shamans fighting. It was really
the shamans’ spirits that fought. The shaman would stand in one place
and say, “Now we are going to fight.” He would also perform with knives
just as if he were fighting something, though at that time the shamans
were very far apart. Their spirits, however, could see each other
plainly. They would also give the names of those warriors who were to
be killed.
On the next expedition from Alsek against the people who had killed so
many of their friends, they killed the same number on the other side.
That was the way people did in olden times. They kept on fighting until
both sides were even. Therefore they stopped at this point.
28. THE YOUTHFUL WARRIOR
A man belonging to the Wolf clan went hunting with his brothers-in-law.
He wore a black bear-skin coat. They went up a certain creek after
grizzly bears, but one time at camp he climbed a tree with his bear
skin on and was filled with arrows by his companions who mistook him
for an animal. Then he said to them, “I will not say that you filled me
with arrows. I will say that I fell from the tree.” So, when they got
him home, he said, “I fell from a tree.” After he was dead, however,
and his body burned, they found mussel-shell arrow points lying among
his bones.
After this his friends told his sister’s son to go up to the
place where he had been killed. The name of this place is
Creek-with-a-cliff-at-its-mouth (Wᴀtłag̣êˊʟ), and it is near Port
Frederick. When the hunters came into camp with a bear the boy
pretended to be asleep, but really he was looking through a hole in his
blanket. While they were cooking the bear some of them suggested that
they say to this boy, “The bear’s soup is very sweet,” but others did
not wish to. They tried to get the boy to eat some of it, but he would
not. Then they started home with him.
After he had reached home he said to his mother, “Let us go down to
the beach. I want you to look over my hair for lice.” But, when she
got down there with him, he said, “Mother, I want you to tell me truly
what my fathers meant. They said, ‘Wake this young fellow up and let
him drink some of this bear’s soup.’” Then his mother became frightened
and said to him, “Your uncle went to that creek. They shot him full of
arrows there.” When he found that out he chased his mother away.
When he was a few years older he began bathing for strength in winter
time. After people had whipped each other they would go to the shaman
to see what he predicted. This had been going on for some time when
four persons went out of the town to carve things for the shaman. They
were gone so long that late in the winter it was thought they had been
lost, and the shaman was consulted. They laid him in the middle of the
house and tested his spirits in every way to find out what the matter
was. Finally, the shaman got his spirits to take a certain man up to
the sky to see if he could discover the missing men. The man he chose
knew that the young man was preparing to kill some one, so, when he
awoke, he said to him, “Tell the shaman that they are there (i. e.,
in the heaven to which those go who are killed).” And the youth said
to the people, “The persons who destroyed my uncle are the same who
destroyed these. Let us go to war.”
Then they made a war hat for the young man all covered with abalone
shells, and he went out to fight. Every time he went out he conquered,
because he was strong. The missing men, however, got home safely. After
some time the youth came against a fort where lived an old sister of
his father, and this woman shouted down to him during the fight, “I
never thought that that boy would grow into such a powerful man. When I
took away the moss[44] from his cradle he never felt how cold it was.”
So the young man, when he got into the fort, inquired, “Who said that
to me?” “It was your father’s sister who said it.” So he pitied his
father’s sister, pulled off his war hat, and smashed it on the rocks
in front of her, breaking the abalone shells all to pieces. He gave up
fighting, and they made peace.
Some time after this, however, he killed one of his own friends
belonging to another town, and they came over and killed two of his
people in revenge. After that every time the young man ate, he would
say, “I will leave this good part for my enemy,” meaning that he would
feed them on a good war. He always made fun of his enemies because he
was brave. So the people at this place, when they had destroyed all of
his companions, took him captive because he had talked so much. They
would not let him touch the bodies of his friends, and he said to them
at last, “Let me have my friends.” “Will you do this any more?” they
said. “No, I will not set out to war any more. Let me have my friends.”
Then they lowered a canoe into the water with himself and a few others
who had been preserved, and they started home with the bodies. On the
way one of his companions said to him, “I wish you would steer this
canoe well.” “It can not be steered well,” he said, “because there are
so few to paddle it.” Some of the women belonging to his enemies were
in the canoe along with them. When they burned their dead, they put
these women into the fire along with the bodies. Then the man gave up
all idea of fighting. He was the last one left in that clan.
After they had made peace on both sides, a man named Qoxtīˊtc came
there from Prince of Wales island on the way to Chilkat. He went to
the man who used to fight so much and said, “How is Chilkat? Is it a
town?” He answered, “It is a notable town. A man has to be careful
what he does there or he will suffer a great shame.” Then he started
for Klukwan, which he wanted to see very much. He came in sight of
the first village, Yêndēˊstaqǃê, with many people going around in it,
and said to his wife, “Put on your earring [of abalone shell].” The
earring was called Earring-that-can-be-seen-clear-across-the-Nass
(Nāˊskᴀnᴀx-dutīˊn). Then the man also put on his leggings and dressed
up finely, for if one were not dressed up just right he would suffer a
great shame. Afterward he began dancing in his canoe. When he came away
from Chilkat he left his dancing clothes with the people but brought
back a great quantity of presents received for dancing.