every time she began to doze off, she felt the child coming toward
her face. She had a little child beside her. Finally the sick woman
determined that she would stay awake, so she placed her walking stick
very close to her, and, as soon as the child came too close, she would
strike it and make it run away. This continued until daylight when the
child disappeared.
Now the woman was surprised to hear no noises about the town and
wondered what was wrong. She thought she would go out to look. First
she went to her own house and saw that all the people there were dead,
with their eyes gouged out, and she saw the same thing in all the other
houses. Then the woman felt very sad. She threw her marten-skin robes
about herself, took a copper plate on each side, placed her baby on
her back and started off. She is the ʟǃêˊnᴀxx̣īˊdᴀq, which a person
sees when he is going to become very wealthy. (The ʟǃêˊnᴀxx̣īˊdᴀq is
therefore one of the ʟǃenēdî.)
One time after this a man of the Wolf clan named Heavy Wings
(Kîtcîłdᴀˊłqǃ) was out hunting and heard a child cry somewhere in the
woods. He ran toward the sound very rapidly, but, although the child’s
voice seemed to be very close to him, he could not see what caused
it. Then he stopped by the side of a creek, tore his clothes off, and
bathed in the cold water, rubbing himself down with sand. Afterward he
felt very light and, although the voice had gotten some distance away,
he reached it, and saw a woman with an infant on her back. He pulled
the child off and started to run away with it, but he did not escape
before the woman had given him a severe scratch upon his back with
her long copper finger nails. By and by he came to a tree that hung
out over the edge of a high cliff and ran out to the end of it with
the child in his arms. Then the woman begged very hard for her baby
saying, “Give me my baby.” As she spoke she put her hand inside of her
blanket and handed him a copper. When he still refused to give her
the child she handed him another. Then he gave the child back, and she
said, “That scratch I made on your back will be a long time in healing.
If you give a scab from it to any one of your people who is poor, he
will become very rich. Do not give it to anybody but your very near
relations.”
And so in fact it turned out. The sore did not heal for a long time,
not even after he had become very rich. Everything that he put his hand
to prospered, and the relations to whom he had given scabs became the
richest ones next to him.
FOOTNOTES:
[105] See story 94 and close of story 105.
36. THE THUNDERS
A high-caste girl who had four brothers went out of the house one
morning and stepped on a snail. Then she said “Oh! this nasty thing.
There isn’t a time when I go out but that snail is around this house.”
The evening after a youth of about her own age came to the girl, and
she went off with him.
When the people found that she had disappeared they searched for her
everywhere. They did not know what had become of her. Her brothers also
hunted everywhere, but for a long time without result. Some distance
behind the village was a high, perpendicular cliff without a tree or a
bush on it, and half way up they at last saw their sister with a very
large snail coiled around her. They ran about underneath and called to
her to throw herself down, but she could not. She was stuck there.
After this the four brothers tried to find some way of flying. They
tried one kind of wood after another and also bone for wings but in
vain. After they had flown for a short distance they always dropped
down again. Finally they employed yellow cedar. The first time they
used it they got half way up to the place where their sister was, but
the second time they reached her and dragged her down, leaving the
snail still there.
But the four brothers now left their own village, because they said
that their sister had disgraced them, and they became the Thunders.
When they move their wings you hear the thunder, and, when they wink,
you see the lightning.
At the time when these brothers first went away the people at their
father’s village were starving, so they flew out over the ocean, caught
a whale and brought it to the town that it might be found next morning.
So nowadays people claim that the Thunder is powerful and can get
anything, because they know that it was powerful at that time. After
the famine was over they left the world below, went to the sky to live,
and have never been seen since.
The Taqêstînaˊ claim the Thunder, because those brothers belonged to
that family.
37. ORIGIN OF THE SCREECH OWL[106]
There was a certain woman at Sitka living with her husband and her
husband’s mother. One evening she got hemlock branches, made strings
out of red-cedar bark, tied them together, and put them around herself.
Then she went out to a flat rock, still called Herring rock, where
herring are very abundant, just as the tide was coming over it, and,
when the fish collected in the branches, she threw them up on the
beach. Every day during the herring season she did the same thing, and
after she reached the house she put her apron carefully away until next
time.
One day her old mother-in-law heard her cooking the herring and said,
“What is that you are cooking, my son’s wife?” “Oh!” she answered, “a
few clams that I have collected.” “Will you give me some?” said the old
woman, for she was hungry, but, when she reached out her hand for it,
her daughter-in-law dropped a hot rock into it and burnt her.
When her son came home that evening the old woman told him what had
happened. She said, “She was cooking something. I know that it did not
smell like clams. When I asked her for some she gave me a hot rock and
burnt my hand. I wonder where she got that fish, for I am sure that it
was some sort of fish. Immediately after you leave she is off. I don’t
know what she does.”
When the man heard that, he and his brother who had been hunting with
him started out at once before his wife saw them. They pretended that
they were again going hunting, but they returned immediately to a place
where they could watch the village. From there they saw the woman put
on her apron of hemlock boughs, go out to the rock, and come home
with the herring. As soon as she had gone in they went out themselves
and got a canoe load of the fish. Then the woman’s husband went up
to the house and said to his wife, “I have a load of herring down
there.” So she ran down to the canoe and saw that it was loaded with
them. She began shouting up to them, “Bring me down my basket,” for
she wanted to carry up the fish in it. The people heard her, but they
felt ill-disposed toward her on account of the way she had treated her
mother-in-law, so they paid no attention. She kept on shouting louder
and louder, and presently her voice became strange. She shouted, “Hadeˊ
wudîkāˊt, wudîkāˊt, wudîkāˊt.”[107] She also began hooting like an owl.
As she kept on making this noise her voice seemed to go farther away
from the village. The people noticed it, but paid no attention. After
she had asked for the basket right behind the village, she sounded
still more like an owl, and finally she ceased to ask for the basket,
and merely hooted (hm, hm). She had become the screech owl. She left
them altogether.
Nowadays, when a young girl is very selfish, people say to her, “Ah!
when you get married, you will put a hot rock into your mother-in-law’s
hand, and for punishment you will become an owl.”
FOOTNOTES:
[106] Story 98 is another version.
[107] This way with the basket (kāt).
38. LITTLE FELON
A certain man had a felon (kwêq) on his finger and suffered terribly,
so that he could get no sleep. He did not know what to do for it. One
day somebody said to him, “Hold it under the smoke hole of the house
and get some one to poke it with something very sharp through the smoke
hole. You will find that it will get well.” He did so, and the two eyes
of the felon came right out. Then he wrapped them up and put them away.
Late in the evening he looked at it and saw a little man there about an
inch long. It was the disease from his finger. He took very good care
of this little man and he grew rapidly, soon becoming large enough to
run about. He called the little man Little Felon (Kwêqkǃᵘ).
Little Felon was a very industrious little fellow, always at work, and
he knew how to carve, make canoes, paint, and do other similar things.
When he was working his master could not keep from working himself. He
simply had to work. They thought it was because he had come from the
hand. Little Felon was also a good shot with bow and arrows, and he
was a very fast runner, running races with all the different animals.
Finally he started to run a race with the heron, and everybody said the
heron would prove too much for him. They raced all the way round Prince
of Wales island, and, when they were through, Little Felon said to the
heron, “I have been way back among the mountains of this island, and
there are thirty-three lakes.” The heron answered, “I have been all
along the creeks, and there are fifty creeks.”
By and by a youth said to Little Felon, “There is a girl living with a
certain old woman. She is a very pretty girl and wants to marry, but
she hasn’t seen anybody she likes. Her grandmother has the dried skin
of an animal and she has been making all the young fellows guess the
name of it. Those that guess wrong are put to death. You ought to try
for her.” But Little Felon said to the boy, “I don’t care to marry,
and I don’t want to guess, because I know. You tell her that it is the
skin of a louse. It was crawling upon the woman, and she put it into
a box and fed it until it grew large. Then she killed and skinned it.
You will get her if you tell her. But be careful. That old woman knows
a lot about medicines. When you are going toward her, go with the
wind. Don’t let the wind come from her. Don’t go toward her when the
south wind is blowing. Go toward her when the north wind is blowing.
Nobody goes directly to her. People talk to her from quite a distance.
A person goes to her house only to be put to death. Those persons who
guess stand a great way off to do it. When they don’t guess right they
go to that house and are put to death. She has a large square dish in
which she cooks their bodies.”
After that the boy went toward the old woman’s camp and remained at
some distance from her for a very long time, for the south wind was
blowing continually. She seemed to know that he was there, and said to
her granddaughter, “There is a fellow coming who has been around here
for a very long time. He is the one who is going to marry you.” The
little man had said to the youth he was helping, “Don’t tell about me.
That old woman has all kinds of dangerous things with which to kill
people.”
As soon as the north wind began to blow, Little Felon told him to go
on, so he approached the old woman unnoticed and stood looking at
her for a long time. Finally she looked up, saw him, and said, “Oh!
my grandson, from how far away have you come?” He told her, and she
invited him in to have something to eat. She gave him all kinds of
food. Then, when they were through, she showed him the skin and said,
“What kind of skin is this?” He answered, “That is a louse skin,
grandma.” She looked at him then for some time without speaking.
Finally she said, “Where are you wise from, from your father?” “Oh!”
he said, “from all around.” Then she said “All right, you can marry
my granddaughter. But do you see that place over there? A very large
devilfish lives there. I want you to kill it.”
The youth went back to Little Felon and told him what she had said.
“Oh!” he answered, “there is a monster there. That is the way she gets
rid of boys, is it?” So Little Felon made a hook, went to the place
where the devilfish lived, made it small, and pulled it right out. He
put the stick over his companion’s shoulder and said to him, “Carry it
this way.” The youth did so and, coming to the old woman’s house, he
said, “Is this the devilfish you were talking about?” He threw it down,
and it grew until it became a monster again that filled the entire
house. The old woman felt very badly, and said, “Take it out of this
house and lay it down outside.” He did so, and the moment he picked it
up it grew small again.
Then the old woman said, “Do you see that cliff that goes right down
into the water? A monster rat lives there. If you kill it, you shall
have my granddaughter.” The youth went away again and told Little
Felon about it, who said, “I told you so. I knew that she would give
you a lot of things to do.” So they got their bows and arrows ready,
went to the hole of the monster, and looked in. It was asleep. They
began shooting it. They blinded it first by shooting into its eyes
and then they shot it through the heart. They ran in to it to shoot,
but, as soon as they had wounded it fatally, they rushed out again, and
it followed them. It ran right into the ocean, and they could hear it
splashing the water about it with its tail. It sounded like thunder.
Finally the rat died and drifted ashore.
Then Little Felon told the young man to take it up and carry it to the
old woman, and, as soon as he had grasped it, it was very small and
light. He carried it in to her and said, “Is this the rat you were
talking about?” Then he threw it down, and it filled the house. So she
said, “Take it up and put it outside.”
Now the old woman spoke again. “Way out there in the middle of the
ocean is a sculpin. Go out and fish for it, and you shall get my
granddaughter.” So he and Little Felon went out there and caught the
sculpin, which Little Felon made very small. He threw it into the
bottom of the canoe and left it there. When they reached land the youth
took it up to the old woman and threw it down inside. Lo! it was an
awful monster with great spines.
Now the old woman did not know what to do. She thought, “What kind
of boy is this?” Then she said, “Do you see that point? A very large
crab lives out there. Go and kill it.” When they got out there they
saw the crab floating about on its back. It looked very dangerous.
Little Felon, however, told the crab to get small, and it did so. He
killed it, put it into the canoe, and carried it to the old woman, who
exclaimed, “Oh! he has killed everything that belongs to me.”
Then the old woman said, “Go far out to sea beyond the place where you
got that sculpin. I dropped my bracelet overboard there. Go and get
it.” So he and Little Felon set out. But first they dug a quantity
of clams and removed the shells. They took these out to that place
and threw them around in the water, when all kinds of fish began to
come up. Then Little Felon saw a dogfish coming up and said to it, “A
bracelet was lost over there. Go and get it for me.” He did so, and the
youth took it to the old woman.
Then the old woman was very much surprised and said, “Well! that is
the last.” So she said to her granddaughter, “Come out. Here is your
husband. You must have respect for him always.” So he married her.
After that he went over to Little Felon and asked how much he owed him.
“You don’t owe me anything,” said Little Felon. “You remember that at
the time I was suffering so badly you pricked me through the smoke
hole.” And the youth answered, “Oh! yes, this is the fellow.” Little
Felon (Kwêqkǃᵘ) is a slender fish that swims close to the beach.
After that the young man and his wife always traveled about together,
for he thought a great deal of her. By and by, however, they had a
quarrel and he was cruel to her. So she went away and sat down on
a point, after which she disappeared and he did not know what had
happened to her. He went out on the point and hunted everywhere. He is
a lonely beach snipe, called ayᴀhīỵiỵaˊ, which is often seen hunting
about on the points to-day, and when they see him the Tlingit say,
“There he is looking for his wife.”
39. ORIGIN OF THE FERN ROOT AND THE GROUND HOG[108]
The girls of a certain place were playing house under a cliff back of
their village, and each of them took some kind of food there. Among
them were two very poor little orphans who had no food to bring, so the
elder went home and brought up the bony part of a dry salmon and the
younger a fern root named kǃwᴀłx. Then the older girls took these from
them and threw them away, so that they began to cry very hard.
While the girls were crying, the cliff behind them fell over in front
and imprisoned them all. They began to cry from fright. After that they
began to rub on the cliff the tallow and salmon they had with them, and
the little birds that had also been imprisoned began to peck it off, so
that at length they began to make a hollow in the rock. In course of
time the birds pecked a hole entirely through, and, when it was large
enough, the girls began to crawl out. Finally all of the girls were
taken out except one poor little girl who got stuck half way. The walls
had in reality closed in on her, and they continued to do so until they
had cut her quite in two. Her head became the fern root (kǃwᴀłx) and
her body became a ground hog.
FOOTNOTES:
[108] Evidently fragmentary.
40. THE HALIBUT THAT DIVIDED THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS
Formerly there was but one village on the Queen Charlotte islands
(Dekīˊ qoan āˊnî, Town-far-out). Every day the people used to go out
from this village to fish for halibut, and all were successful except
one man. Though the people all about his canoe were pulling in fish he
caught nothing day after day, and he became angry.
One calm day, however, he had a bite. Pulling at his line he found that
something very strong was attached to it. After he had pulled it up a
short distance it would pull the line away from him, and each time he
let it go for fear of losing it. When he at last got it up, however,
it was only a little halibut about as big as a flounder. He could not
catch anything else.
In the evening, after this man had brought his halibut ashore and had
entered his house, he said, “I have a very small halibut. It might
bring me luck.” His wife took up her knife and went down to it, but
when she saw that diminutive fish she took it by the tail and threw it
up on the beach. Then the halibut, which was still alive, began to
flop up and down faster and faster. Presently the woman saw a larger
halibut lying there. Everybody now watched it, and it kept flopping
and increasing in size until it became as large as a paddle. By and by
it grew to the size of a large piece of red-cedar bark prepared for
roofing, and at length it covered the entire beach. Toward evening it
was a veritable monster, which smashed the whole town in pieces by its
motions. Before that the Queen Charlotte group formed one large solid
body of land, but the halibut broke it into the various portions that
exist to-day. At that same time the people of this single village were
scattered all over the group.
41. THE IMAGE THAT CAME TO LIFE
A young chief on the Queen Charlotte islands married, and soon
afterwards his wife fell ill. Then he sent around everywhere for the
very best shamans. If there were a very fine shaman at a certain
village he would send a canoe there to bring him. None of them could
help her, however, and after she had been sick for a very long time she
died.
Now the young chief felt very badly over the loss of his wife. He went
from place to place after the best carvers in order to have them carve
an image of his wife, but no one could make anything to look like her.
All this time there was a carver in his own village who could carve
much better than all the others. This man met him one day and said,
“You are going from village to village to have wood carved like your
wife’s face, and you can not find anyone to do it, can you? I have seen
your wife a great deal walking along with you. I have never studied her
face with the idea that you might want some one to carve it, but I am
going to try if you will allow me.”
Then the carver went after a piece of red cedar and began working upon
it. When he was through, he went to the young chief and said, “Now
you can come along and look at it.” He had dressed it just as he used
to see the young woman dressed. So the chief went with him, and, when
he got inside, he saw his dead wife sitting there just as she used to
look. This made him very happy, and he took it home. Then he asked the
carver, “What do I owe you for making this?” and he replied, “Do as you
please about it.” The carver had felt sorry to see how this chief was
mourning for his wife, so he said, “It is because I felt badly for you
that I made that. So don’t pay me too much for it.” He paid the carver
very well, however, both in slaves and in goods.
Now the chief dressed this image in his wife’s clothes and her
marten-skin robe. He felt that his wife had come back to him and
treated the image just like her. One day, while he sat mourning very
close to the image, he felt it move. His wife had also been very
fond of him. At first he thought that the movement was only his
imagination, yet he examined it every day, for he thought that at some
time it would come to life. When he ate he always had the image close
to him.
After a while the whole village learned that he had this image and all
came in to see it. Many could not believe that it was not the woman
herself until they had examined it closely.
One day, after the chief had had it for a long, long time, he examined
the body and found it just like that of a human being. Still, although
it was alive, it could not move or speak. Some time later, however, the
image gave forth a sound from its chest like that of crackling wood,
and the man knew that it was ill. When he had some one move it away
from the place where it had been sitting they found a small red-cedar
tree growing there on top of the flooring. They left it until it grew
to be very large, and it is because of this that cedars on the Queen
Charlotte islands are so good. When people up this way look for red
cedars and find a good one they say, “This looks like the baby of the
chief’s wife.”
Every day the image of the young woman grew more like a human being,
and, when they heard the story, people from villages far and near came
in to look at it and at the young cedar tree growing there, at which
they were very much astonished. The woman moved around very little and
never got to talk, but her husband dreamed what she wanted to tell him.
It was through his dreams that he knew she was talking to him.
42. DJĪYĪˊN[109]
While the Tlingit were still living at Klinkwan (Łînqᵒ-ān) a famine
broke out. There was an orphan girl there named Djīyīˊn who was taking
care of herself. Once in a while her father’s sister would help her,
but all were starving, her father’s sister also being poor.
One day some women were going off to dig tsǃēt roots, and this orphan
very much wished to accompany them, but they would not take her. They
said she was dirty and would bring them bad luck. When she laid hold of
the canoe they struck her fingers to make her let go, but she was very
hungry and very persistent, so that her father’s sister finally took
her in. When they encamped that night she did not come back, and they
did not know what she was living on. The women who were angry with her
said, “What is the matter with her? Why doesn’t she come back to eat?”
When they got ready to start home the orphan had not returned, and they
left her there alone. They also threw water on the fire.
The girl’s aunt, however, procured a coal and threw it into the brush
house where they had camped, along with a piece of dried salmon. She
was careful not to let the others see what she was doing. Then she went
back and said to the girl, “Are you coming?” “No,” she replied, “since
they don’t want to take me, I better stay.” Then her aunt said, “I have
put a live coal in that brush house along with a piece of dried salmon.”
As soon as the others had gone away the orphan made a big fire and
cooked her roots and salmon, but she did not feel like eating.
Therefore, instead of doing so, she went away and dug some more roots.
In the evening she went back to her brush house, thinking she could eat
now, but found that she had no appetite. So she lay down and went to
sleep. Early in the morning she was awakened by a great noise which she
found on looking out was made by a flock of brants (qên). She felt so
tired that she lay down again and went to sleep, and, when she awoke
once more, she thought she would set out after more roots. Going down
to the flat where these roots grew, she found it covered with brants
feeding upon them. When they saw her they flew away. Then she began
removing the dead grass from the place where she was going to dig, and
to her surprise came upon several big canoes looking as if they had
been buried there, which were loaded with eulachon oil, dried eulachon,
dried halibut, and dried salmon. She felt very happy. She thought how
lucky it was that she had remained there when all of the village people
were starving.