beach and saw a man in front of her in a canoe fishing for halibut. She
said to him, “Come ashore and save me,” but he paid no attention to
her. After she had entreated him for some time he said, “Will you be my
wife if I come to save you?” “Let me get into your canoe, and let us go
out. Then I will talk to you about that.” Finally, when she saw that
the bears were very close to her, she said, “Have pity on me. Come and
save me.” “Will you be my wife, if I come and save you?” “Yes, I will
be your wife.” Upon that he came in very quickly, took her into his
canoe and went out again. He was fishing with a float on the end of his
line, and, when he came back to it, he began pulling his line up. Then
the bears rushed down to the beach and shouted, “Bring us our wife.
That is our wife you have in your canoe. If you don’t bring her to us
we will kill you.” At first he paid no attention, but after a while he
said, “Well! if you think you can kill me, swim out here.” Immediately
they plunged into the water and when she saw them coming the girl was
frightened, but the man said, “Don’t be frightened. My father was of
the Ginᴀxcᴀmgêˊtk.”[87] When the bears got close to the canoe, he put
his club into the sea and it killed them all. Then they went to his
home.
The morning after this, when her husband was about to go out fishing,
he said to the woman, “I have a wife living on the other side of the
house. She is a very bad woman. Don’t look at her while she is eating.”
After her husband got home from fishing he waited on his new wife and
was very kind to her, and, when they were through eating, they went up
to the top of the house to sit. Then she said to him, “I am your wife
now. Anything you know or whatever you have seen you must tell me all
about.” So her husband said, “This wife of mine is a very large clam.
She is very high. Nobody looks at her. You see that there is always
water in the place where she is sitting. Anyone that looks at her falls
into this water and drifts away.” This man lived under ground, but the
girl thought she was in a house because she was as if out of her head.
Her husband caught halibut all of the time to give to his monster wife,
and the girl thought to herself, “How does that thing he feeds so much
eat?” One time, therefore, as soon as the clam began eating, she lay
down, made a hole in her blanket and looked through it at the big clam
eating. She saw that it was a real clam. When the clam saw that she was
looking, it shot out so much water that the house was filled, and the
girl was carried underneath the clam by the current. When her husband
got home, however, and found the girl gone, he said to the clam, “Where
is that girl?” He became very angry with the clam and killed it by
breaking its shell. Then he found the girl’s dead body in the water
under the clam, took it out, put eagle feathers upon it, and restored
it to life. Therefore nowadays eagle feathers are used a great deal at
dances and in making peace.[88]
By and by the man said to his wife, “Do you know that your father lives
a short distance from here? Do you want to go to see your father and
mother?” She was very glad to hear that, and they started off at once,
after loading the canoe down with food, for this being was rich and
had all kinds of things. His canoe was a brown bear, which traveled
of itself but had to be fed at short intervals.[89] Just before they
reached her father’s town, they landed, carried their canoe up and
placed all of the food under a large tree where it would keep dry. Then
the man stayed with it and told his wife to go over to her father’s
house. Her father and mother had thought that she was dead, so they
were very happy to see her. She said to her father, “There is a lot of
food close by here. I have brought it to you.” At that time she looked
very filthy to them and her clothing ragged, though to herself she
appeared beautiful. So her father was very much ashamed of her and gave
her some good clothing. She also smelt to them very strongly of the
beach. Then they went over and brought in all the food, but her husband
did not come with them.[90]
* * * * *
At that time the woman was pregnant, and presently she gave birth to
a boy. He was very smart like his father, though they did not let him
know who his father was. When he grew larger, he was a fine shot with
bow and arrows, bringing in all sorts of small animals, and the other
boys were jealous of him.
One time, when he was out in a canoe with other boys, hunting, he began
shooting at a cormorant (yūq), which kept going farther and farther
out. All of a sudden it became foggy and they could not see their
way, so they fastened their canoe to the end of a drifting log which
was sticking out of the water, and waited. Then some one came to them
and said to the boy, “I am after you. Your father wants you.” At once
the boy lost consciousness, and, when he came to, found himself in a
very fine house on the mainland. The chief living there said, “Do you
know that you are my son?” He also gave him a name, Cᴀmgigêˊtk, and he
thought a great deal of him, but the boy thought it strange that he
never inquired for his mother. Then he gave his son abalone shells and
sharks’ teeth (cᴀxdᴀˊq) as presents. He also made him a club and said
to him, “Whenever you are among wild animals and find there are too
many, put this club down and it will fight for you. When you see seals
or sea lions sitting on the rocks, put it down and it will kill them.”
After this it seemed to the boy as if a door were opened for him, and
he saw the canoe he had left with the boys in it. They said, “What
happened to you? Where have you been?” But he only answered, “Did not
you see me sitting on the very top of this log?” He was so smart that
they believed him. Then they reached home safe and the grandparents
were very glad to see him, but only his mother knew what had
happened. Like his father, the boy was a great hunter and fisherman.
Before he came the people of that town had been starving, but now,
especially since he had obtained the club, they had plenty to eat. His
grandfather’s house was always full of halibut, seal, and sea-lion meat.
Then his grandmother said to him, “Grandson, do not go over in that
direction. None of the village people go there, and those who have
done so never returned.” This, however, only made the boy anxious to
see what was the trouble, so he went there and, killing some seals and
halibut, put them into the water to entice the creature up. Finally he
saw a gigantic crab (sǃa-u) coming up in the sea, so he put his club
into the ocean, and it broke the crab’s shell and killed it. Then he
and his slave pulled the big crab ashore, and he took a load of its
flesh home to his grandparents. His grandparents had worried all the
time he was away, but his mother knew that her son had power over all
kinds of fish, because his father is chief of the sea. Everything in
the sea is under him.
Another time his grandmother said to him, “There is a place over in
this direction where lives a big mussel (yīsǃ). No canoe can pass it
without being chewed up.” So he went to the mussel and killed that.
He took all of its shell home, and the people throughout the village
bought it of him for spears, arrow points, and knives.
At the same time he also brought home a load of cockles, clams, and
other shellfish. In the Tsimshian country the shellfish are fine, and
the mussels are not poisonous as they are here. In April the Alaskans
do not dare to eat shellfish, especially mussels, claiming that they
are poisonous. It is because he killed the big mussel that they are all
poisonous here. Since his time, too, boys and girls have done whatever
their fathers used to do.
After that the boy married and had a son who was very unlike him. His
name was Man-that-eats-the-leavings (Qǃa-īˊtê-cūka-qā), and, when he
grew up, he was worthless. He seemed to see the shellfish, however, and
understood the shellfish language.
* * * * *
At the same time the daughter of the chief in a certain village not far
away went out of doors and slipped on slime which had dropped from a
devilfish hung up in front. She said, “Oh! the dirty thing.” About the
middle of the following night a fine-looking young man came to her,
and she disappeared with him; and the people wondered where she had
gone. This young man was the devilfish, whom she married, and she had
several children by him. Meanwhile, as she was their only child, her
parents were mourning for her continually. After some time had passed,
her parents saw two small devilfishes on the steps of the chief’s
house early in the morning, and the people said to the chief, “What
devilfishes are these here on the steps?” He said, “Throw them down on
the beach.” They did so, but the little devilfishes came right back.
They threw them down again, but the chief said, “If they come up the
third time, leave them alone. Let them do what they will, but watch
them closely.” Then they came right into the chief’s house, and one
climbed into the chief’s lap while the other got into that of his wife.
He said, “My daughter must have gone to live among the devilfishes.” To
see what they would do, he said, “My grandchildren, is this you?” Upon
which they put their tentacles around his neck and began moving about.
Then he gave them some food on long platters, and they acted as though
they were eating from these. Afterward he said, “Take those platters
and follow them along to see where they go.” They did so and saw them
disappear under a large rock just in front of the town. So the people
came back and said to the chief, “They went under that large rock down
there. Your daughter must be under there also.” When the people got up
next morning they saw on the steps the platters they had taken down,
wiped very clean.
Now the chief felt very badly, for he knew what had happened to his
daughter, so he said to the people in his house, “Go down and invite
my daughter, and say, ‘Your father wants you to come to dinner.’” So
they went down and said, “Your father has sent us to invite you, your
children, and your husband to come to dinner at his house.” “We are
coming,” said the woman from under the beach, “so go back. We will be
there soon.” She knew the voices of all of her father’s servants. When
these came back to the chief, he said, “Did you ask her? Did you go
there?” “Yes, we were there.” “What did you say to her?” “We told her
just what you wanted us to say to her. She said that her husband, her
children, and herself would be here soon.”
So the people watched for her, and by and by she came up along with her
devilfish husband and with the two little devilfishes right behind her.
Her marten-skin robe was rotten, all sorts of sea weeds were in her
hair, and she looked badly, although she had formerly been very pretty.
Her father and mother were very sorry. Then they set out food for them
and afterward took the trays down to the place where the little ones
had gone under the rock.
Now the chief invited all of the people into his house, gave them
tobacco to chew, and told them how badly he felt. After they had
talked the matter over for a while they said to him, “You might as
well have all the devilfishes killed. When those small ones are grown
up you do not know what they will do to your house.” So they invited
the devilfishes again, killed the big one, threw the little ones down
on the beach, and kept the girl. By and by, however, the girl said to
her father, “There is going to be a terrible war. All of the devilfish
are assembling. Don’t allow any of the people of your town to sleep at
night. Let them watch.” So, when night came on, they could see large
and small devilfishes coming in through every little crack until the
house got quite full of them, and some people were suffocated by having
the devilfishes cover their mouths. The devilfish that they had killed
was chief among them.
Just then Man-that-eats-the-leavings came to that town, and they told
him what a hard time they were having every night with the devilfish,
so he stayed with them until evening. When they came in this time he
seemed to have control over them, and they ceased bothering the people.
The large devilfishes are called dᴀg̣asāˊ. The small ones, which they
threw down on the beach, are those that the Alaskan Indians see, but
these do not injure anyone now because their grandfather was a human
being.
* * * * *
Afterward they bathed the girl to take all the devilfish off of her,
and put fine clothing on her. Her face was very pretty, so that all the
neighboring chiefs wanted to marry her. In olden times a good looking
woman was considered high-caste, for they knew she would marry well,
and a good looking woman among the high-caste people was considered
very high.
Among those who wanted to marry this girl was
Man-that-eats-the-leavings. He lived in a brush house at a place where
garbage was thrown out. He was a fine shot, however, and one day he
went to a lake behind the town where a loon was swimming about and shot
it. When the arrow struck it gave forth a sound like a bell and swam
right up to the shore. Then he went down to it and found, instead of a
loon, a canoe made out of copper. This was, in fact, the grizzly-bear
canoe that had belonged to his grandfather. It had long since been
forgotten. Next he found a piece of a painted house front (qǃēn) and
shook it, upon which a grand house stood there with four horizontal
house timbers, and he lined the inside of this house with copper plates
made out of the copper canoe. Then he married the chief’s daughter
without her father’s consent and took her to his house.
By and by the chief’s daughter was missed, and they hunted for her
through all of the houses, but they did not look into the old brush
house, for they thought she would never go there. They thought that
she might have gone back to the rocks again, and they dug up all of
the large rocks to look underneath them. Finally, however, they saw
her going into the brush house and told her parents, and her parents
felt very badly on her account. All got out spears to kill her husband,
but her mother said, “I am going there to see her first.” So she went
down in great anger, but found the door already open for her, and, when
she went in, each side of the house shone so brightly that she could
hardly keep her eyes open. She saw that the house was full of very
nice things, so she said to her daughter, “Daughter, are you married?”
“Yes, mother, I am married.” Her mother had intended to take her home
and have her husband killed, but instead she put the fire out and sat
in the ashes, as was customary in the case of a woman whose daughter
married without her consent. It meant that she wanted property. And
before she had sat there very long, her new son-in-law handed out eight
bright copper plates and sent her home, and she told her husband all
that she had seen. Then they laid their spears aside, and the following
morning they saw a beautifully painted house standing where the brush
house had been. Now the chief invited his daughter and her husband to
a feast. The servants that were sent with the invitation were finely
dressed. When they got there, they said to the girl, “We are sent
after you by your father; he wants you to come to a feast, you and
your husband.” They did so, and, after food had been served, he gave
his son-in-law eight slaves, one for every copper plate his wife had
received. And to this day, when a girl runs off with some one, and her
people find he is all right, they do all they can for her.[91]
* * * * *
By and by this chief’s daughter had a little boy who proved to be
very smart and became a great hunter. He used to hunt far up on the
mountains for mountain goats and other animals. One time he fell from
the top of a mountain and lost consciousness, and, when he came to,
he saw many men standing about him in a circle. They had cedar-bark
rings around their heads and necks. Then they said to him, “What kind
of spirit do you want, the Raven Spirit or the Wolf Spirit?” and he
said “The Wolf Spirit.” So they held white rocks over his head, and he
became unconscious. That is how he got the spirit. Then he ran around
screaming, naked except for an apron, while all of the Cliff Spirits
and all of the Forest Spirits sang and pounded on sticks for him. They
also tied up his hair like a wolf’s ears. This is the origin of the
Łuqᴀnaˊ, or secret societies, and the one this man first started is
said to have been the Dog-eaters’ society. He sang a song, too, only
employed nowadays by a high-caste person when he is initiated. It is
called Cīnāˊxłkǃ, and goes this way, “I am above the world. I walk in
high places. There is nobody else after me. I am alone.” Those who
became łuqᴀnaˊs after this were not like him, because he said, “I am
alone. There is nobody after me.” They only imitate him.
There are many kinds of łuqᴀnaˊs. Some are dog-eaters and some pretend
to eat the arms of people. It is previously arranged between the
łuqᴀnaˊ and his father what he is to do and whom he is to injure, and,
after the spirit has come out, the father has to pay a great deal
of money for damages. The łuqᴀnaˊs are always found at feasts, and
high-caste people stand around them. The people who learned from this
boy first are those in the direction of Victoria, and there they think
that a person who has performed many times is very high. It is only
very lately that we Alaskans have had łuqᴀnaˊs. Łuqᴀnaˊ is a Tsimshian
word meaning yēk.[92] When they perform up here, the southern Tlingit
dance Tsimshian dances and the northern Tlingit Athapascan dances.
After this youth had come back to his people from the woods and had
shown them all about the łuqᴀnaˊ, he went to the Queen Charlotte
islands and came to the greatest chief there. Then the people at that
place said to him, “It is terrible the way things have been going on.
We have wizards (nuksǃāˊtî), who kill men in a sly way. There is one
very high-caste person here who has taught himself to be a wizard.” And
they told him this man’s story.
He and his friend were very dissolute young men who wanted very much to
be wizards, and the former begged his slave to tell him what to do. “If
you want to become one very much,” said he, “go down there and sleep
among the driftwood left by the tide. Then you will see what it is.”
They did this, and a very nice looking woman came to them and taught
them witchcraft. This was the mouse (kǃutsǃīˊn). They thought that it
was a fine thing. After a while the woman again appeared to them in a
dream and said, “Would you like to be among the geese and brants?” They
answered “Yes,” one saying, “I will be a goose;” the other, “I will be
a brant.” At once they flew off in those forms. They thought that it
was a fine thing to be wizards, and would spend all their nights going
about that way, never coming in till morning. For that reason the town
people began to suspect that something was wrong with them. Nowadays a
person among the natives who sleeps much is said to be of no account,
for it was through sleep that witchcraft started. They also say that a
wizard has no respect for anything and never speaks to his neighbors.
Finally a certain man began to drink salt water and fast in order to
discover the wizards. He also made a medicine. Then he dreamt about
them, and went to them, telling them everything he knew. The two
young men replied, “Don’t tell about us. If you keep it to yourself
we will pay you ten slaves. We will let you win ten slaves from us in
gambling.” And they did so.
This is the story that the łuqᴀnaˊ man told to his friends when he came
home, and wherever he told it there began to be wizards. Therefore
witchcraft came to Alaska through the sons of ᴀyāˊyî[93] and through
the Haida. They also learned from the Haida that witchcraft may be
imparted by means of berries. When women are gathering these, they do
not pick up the ones that are dropped accidentally, no matter how many
they may be, because that is what witches do.
The shamans say it is this way: A man claims that he sees a large
creek. It is witchcraft. A smaller creek flows into this. It is the
lying creek. Another creek comes into it. It is the stealing creek.
Still another creek comes into it. It is the profligates’ creek. All
these are in witchcraft.
* * * * *
One time Raven came to a place called Cold-town and said to the boys
there, “Let us go shooting with bow and arrows.” He took down his own
canoe and they started out, but presently the canoe upset and the boys
were all drowned. Then he said to them, “You will stay here.” They are
the īkᴀg̣āˊxe, sea birds whose voices can be heard at a long distance.
* * * * *
Next Raven went to Tān-łutūˊ (the southern end of Prince of Wales
island) and saw a man there named Qonᴀłgīˊc.[94] Raven said to him,
“What are you doing here?” “I am a great gambler,” he said. “I love to
gamble.” Said Raven, “You are a gambler but you can not win a thing.
If you eat forty devil’s clubs and fast many days you will become a
great gambler. You will win everything you wish. But why do you want
to learn gambling?” The man said, “I have been gambling steadily and I
can not win anything. A person won from me my wife’s clothing and all
of my food and property. Since I have so disgraced myself, I have left
my town and have come here to die.” Said Raven, “Gambling is not very
good. There will always be hard feelings between gamblers, yet I will
show you how. One of the sticks has a red mark around it. It will be
named nāq (devilfish). You will see the smoke of nāq. When you get the
devilfish, you are lucky. As long as it keeps away from you, you are
unlucky.” Then he said to the man, “Make a house for yourself out of
devil’s clubs first and stay inside while you are fasting. After you
have fasted four days, Greatest Gambler (ᴀłqāˊ-sǃāˊtî) will appear to
you.”
When the man had fasted for three days, living on nothing but devil’s
clubs, he started to look for more. Then he found a devil’s club, as
big around as a large tree, covered with scars, and he took the bark
off in eight different spots. Then he went to sleep and dreamed that a
man came to him. He said, “Do you know that I am Greatest Gambler? You
took the bark off from me in eight spots. It was I standing there.”
Then Greatest Gambler said to him, “When you leave this place, look
around down on the beach and you will find something. When you reach
your own village do the same thing again, and you will find something
else.”
Next morning a real person came to him and said, “I want to see your
gambling sticks.” So he showed them to him, and he gave them their
names. He gave all of them their names at that time. Each stick had
a certain mark. One was named devilfish and the others were called
after other kinds of animals and fish. They are the same to-day among
both Tsimshian and Tlingit.[95] The two principal sticks besides the
devilfish are tuq (a small bright fish found in the sand along shore)
and āncāˊdjî (a small gregarious bird which seems to feed on the tops
of trees).
After Greatest Gambler had showed him how to gamble he prepared to
return to his people. When he was getting ready he looked about upon
the beach and found a sea otter lying there. When he reached the first
place where he had camped on coming away he camped there again and on
looking around as directed found a fur seal. He took off the two skins
there and dried them. It took him a whole day.