salmon and a bundle of halibut home with her. On roasting a piece of
salmon, however, she found that she could not eat it. She did not know
what had gotten into her that she could not force herself to eat. She
wished that her aunt were with her. Next morning she discovered that
the spirits were keeping food away from her because she was becoming
a shaman. The brants had become her spirits. The brant spirits always
come to Raven people like her. So she became a great shaman and was
possessed by spirits every day, while sea gulls, crows, and all kinds
of sea and woodland birds sang for her. This happened every day. Two or
three times a day she would go to see the buried canoes, but she could
not eat anything, and she gave up digging roots because she had no way
of sharpening her sticks. Meanwhile everyone in the village thought
that she had starved to death.
After some time had passed, the girl wished that some one would come
to her from the village, and the day after a canoe appeared in sight.
This made her very happy, especially when it got close and she found it
contained some people of her acquaintance from the village. She called
them up to her brush house and gave them some food from the canoes, and
they remained there two or three days. They were out hunting for food.
After a while she told them it was time for them to go, and, when they
were on the point of starting, she said, “Do not take a bit of the food
I have given you. Leave it all here. Tell the people of our village
that Djīyīˊn is still living and is doing well. Tell my aunt that she
must try to get here as soon as she can.”
When these people got back to the village and told what had happened to
the orphan, how much food she had and how lucky she had been, all the
town people who had been dying of starvation started off immediately
for the place where she was living. When they came in sight of her
brush house they saw that from the sky right down to it the air was
filled with birds. There were so many that one could not see through
them. They could also hear men and women singing and the shaman
performing, but, when they came close, all of the birds flew away.
As soon as the shaman heard that her people were coming she walked out
to meet them and asked, “Which canoe is my aunt in? Let her land here.”
All of the food in one of her canoes she gave to her aunt. Then she
said, “I want two women to come ashore to help me with my singing.” The
high-caste women in the canoes, who were all painted up, would rise one
after the other, but she would not have them, and finally called two
who were orphans like herself and had been treated very badly by their
own people. All the others then started to come ashore, and she told
them where to camp. She had room enough in her own house only for the
two girls and her aunt.
These high-caste people had brought their slaves with them when they
came to her, and she got them herself in exchange for food. She had
three brush houses built to hold them. She also dressed up the two
little orphans so that they looked very pretty. After a long time the
people left her to return to their own village, and, when another long
period had elapsed, her spirit made the town chief sick, and they hired
her to come and treat him.
This shaman had belonged to a very high-caste family, but they had
died off and left her very poor, and nothing remained of her uncle’s
house except the posts. Grass grew all about inside of it, and when the
shaman was entering the village she saw the posts of her uncle’s house
and felt very sad. She told them to land near by. Then she looked up,
raised an eagle’s tail in one hand, blew upon it, and waved it back and
forth in front of them. The fourth time a fine house stood there. Then
they carried all of her things into this, and she had the slaves she
had procured work for her, while the two orphans she had taken were now
considered high caste.
At that time the sick chief’s daughter also fell sick. Then the spirits
turned all the minds of the chief’s people away from her, and they paid
other shamans in the village. The sick ones, however, continued to get
worse and worse, until they finally remembered that she also was a
shaman and sent for her. When the messenger came one of the orphans
asked, “How much will they pay the shaman?” “Two slaves,” they said.
She thought that this was not enough, and the messenger went back. When
he came again, she again asked, “How much are they going to pay the
shaman?” “Two slaves and some goods.” Then she agreed, and, as soon as
the messenger had left, Djīyīˊn said to the two girls, “Come on. Let us
go.”
As soon as she had arrived at the house she sat down between the two
sick people and worked very hard to cure them. Her spirits could see
immediately what the matter was. This house was crowded with people
except around the fire where the shaman was performing. Then Djīyīˊn
walked around and said, “The witch that is killing you two has not
come.” They sent to all the houses in the village and assembled those
who were there in the house in place of the previous occupants. Djīyīˊn
examined all of them again, and again said, “The witch is not yet
here.” Finally the spirits in her began to say, “The road of the witch
is very clear now. The road of the witch is straight for this house.”
Again they said, “The witch is coming.” By and by they began to hear a
bird whistling in the woods back of the house, and she said, “Yes, hear
her. She is coming.” And when the sound came near the door she said,
“Open the door and let her come in.” So they opened the door, and there
sat a wild canary (sǃāsǃ). Then the shaman told her to sit between the
two sick persons, and she did so. She was making a great deal of noise,
and the shaman said, “Tie her wings back.” Not long afterward the
people heard a great noise like thunder which seemed a great distance
off. Then the shaman said, “Here are her children. They are offended
and are coming in. Stop up all of the holes so that they may not
enter.” The noise grew louder and louder, however, and presently birds
began to fly in right through the boards. At last the house became
so full of them as to be well nigh suffocating, and very many of the
people were injured. Whoever the birds flew against would have a cut or
bruise. All at once the house again became empty, not a bird being left
inside except the one that was tied.
By this time it was morning, the people having sat in that house all
night, and the bird made still more noise. “She is already telling
about it,” said the shaman. “She wants to go to the place where she
has the food and the pieces of hair with which she is bewitching you.”
Finally she left the house, but although they had untied her wings
she walked along ahead of four men instead of flying. She went up
the way she had come down and began scratching at the roots of some
bushes some distance up in the woods. There she came upon the top of a
skull in which were some hair, food, and pieces of clothing arranged
in a certain manner along with different kinds of leaves. She took
these down to the beach and threw them out on the sea in different
directions. Afterward she went back to the house with the four men
still following her.
By and by the bird began making noises again, and the shaman, who alone
could understand her, said that she wanted to leave the place. She
hated to go back to her own place among the other birds because she
knew that they would be ashamed of her, so she asked them to take her
to a town called Close-along-the-beach (Yênqǃasēˊsîtciyî-ān). When they
took down a canoe to carry her off she flew right into it. Then the
shaman said, “When you get her to the place whither she wants to go, go
ashore and put her there, and turn right back.” Then they started on
with her, and after a time she made so much noise that they said, “Let
us put her ashore here. This must be the place.” They did so, and, as
soon as they got close in, the bird flew out upon the beach and started
up it very fast. One man followed her to see where she would go and saw
her pass under a tree with protruding roots. This was the town she had
been talking about.
As soon as the witch put the skull and other things into the water the
chief and his daughter recovered. Before the events narrated in this
story people did not know anything about witchcraft, and the ancients
used to say that it was from this bird that they learned it years ago.
FOOTNOTES:
[109] Or better Djūn. Haida versions of the same will be found in
Memoirs Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., VIII, 226, 247. Aqāˊnîqǃēs is said to be
in all probability Kayāˊnîqǃēs (For-the-leaves).
43. THE SELF-BURNING FIRE
One winter the people at a certain place on Copper river were left with
nothing to eat and began dying off. About the middle of that winter
all of the children and some of the adults were dead, and only about
half of the former population remained. When only eight men were left
they said to one another, “Let us leave. Let us walk down this side of
the river.” So they started off down the bank, and, after a long time,
one of them died of cold. They buried[110] him and went on. By and by
another froze to death and was also buried. This kept on until there
were only four. One day three of the remainder succumbed in succession,
the last at evening, leaving but one man from all that village. This
man was very sickly looking, but he felt strong, and when his last
companion fell, he left him lying there and went on rapidly. He thought
he would drop with grief, however, at the loss of his last comrade.
As he was going on quite late in the evening he suddenly heard some one
shout right ahead of him. He followed the voice, which kept on calling
continually. Finally he came to a great fire and stood near it to warm
himself. It was that that had been calling him.
When the man had become thoroughly warmed he was about to start on
again. Suddenly, however, he heard the bushes breaking behind him,
and, looking back, he saw all the men who had frozen to death and all
of the village people standing around the fire. This fire is called
Self-burning Fire (Wᴀyîˊkǃ gᴀˊnî), and it was that that had brought all
of those people to life. From that time on they were able to get their
food very easily at the mouth of the river.
FOOTNOTES:
[110] The words of the narrator, but corpses were usually burned.
44. THE GIANT OF TĀˊSNA
At Tāˊsna, near the mouth of the Yukon (?), was a large village in
which everybody had died except one small boy. His mother was the last
to perish. This boy was very independent, however, remaining in his
mother’s house all the time instead of going around to the other houses
in the place. Every day he went out with his bow and arrows and shot
small birds and squirrels for his sustenance.
On one of these hunting trips, however, he met a very large man with
bushes growing on one side of his face. The big man chased him, and,
being very quick, the boy tried to climb up a tree, but the big man
reached right up after him and pulled him down. Then the big man said,
“I am not going to hurt you. Stand right here.” So he put the boy on a
high place, went some distance away and said, “Take your bow and arrows
and shoot me right here,” pointing at the same time to a spot between
his eyebrows. At first the boy was afraid to do so, and the big man
begged him all that day. Finally, when it was getting dark, he thought,
“Well! I will shoot him. He may kill me if I don’t, and he will kill me
if I do.” The moment he shot the man, however, he saw his mother and
all the village people that had been lost. All had been going to this
big man. That was why the man wanted the boy to shoot him. It brought
all the people back.
[This story is used in potlatch speeches.]
45. THE WOMAN WHO MARRIED A LAND OTTER[111]
A man at Sitka had three little children who were crying with hunger
because he had nothing to give them. His sister had been captured by
the land otters after having been nearly drowned. Then he said to the
little ones, “You poor children, I wish your aunt were living.” Some
time afterward that same evening he heard a load set down outside,
and going out to look, he saw a very large basket filled with all
kinds of dried meat and fish, and oil. The sister he had been wishing
for had brought it. Then this woman herself came in and said, “I
have brought that for the little ones. I will be right back again. I
live only a short distance from here. We have a village there named
Transparent-village (Kānᴀˊxᴀ-dak-ān). You must come and stay with us.”
The man said that he was making a canoe and had to finish it, but she
replied, “Your nephews are coming over, and they will finish your canoe
for you.”
After the food that his sister had brought him had given out she came
to him again with more and said, “I have come after you now. Bring your
little ones and come along. I see that you are having a hard time with
them.”
So her brother prepared to go. Before he started he got some blue
hellebore (sǃîkc), which he soaked in water to make it very strong and
bitter, and finally his sister’s boys came, fine-looking young men who
were peculiar only in having very long braids of hair hanging down
their backs. In reality these were their tails. He showed them where
his canoe was so that they could go to work on it, and, after they had
completed it roughly, they pulled it down for him.
Then the man started off with his family, and, sure enough, when he
rounded the point what appeared to him like a fine village lay there.
The people came to meet them, but his sister said, “Don’t stay right in
the village. Stay here, a little distance away.”
The people of that place were very good to him and gave him all the
halibut he wanted, but he always had the blue hellebore by him to keep
from being injuriously affected. They were also in the habit of singing
a cradle song for his youngest child which went this way, “The tail is
growing. The tail is growing.” Then he examined the child, and in fact
a tail was really growing upon it, so he chopped it off.
Finally the man’s sister told him that he was staying there a little
too long, and he started back toward his village. As he went he looked
back, and there was nothing to be seen but land-otter holes. Before
they had appeared like painted houses. Then he returned to his own
place with all kinds of food given him by the land otters.
FOOTNOTES:
[111] See story 6.
46. THE LAND-OTTERS’ CAPTIVE
Several persons once went out from Sitka together, when their canoe
upset and all were drowned except a man of the Kîksᴀˊdî. A canoe came
to this man, and he thought that it contained his friends, but they
were really land otters. They started southward with him and kept
going farther and farther, until they had passed clear round the Queen
Charlotte islands. At every place where they stopped they took in a
female land otter. All this time they kept a mat made out of the broad
part of a piece of kelp, over the man they had captured until at length
they arrived at a place they called Rainy-village (Sīˊwu-āˊnî).
At this place the man met an aunt who had been drowned years before and
had become the wife of two land otters. She was dressed in a ground-hog
robe. Then she said to him, “Your aunt’s husbands will save you. You
must come to see me this evening.” When he came his aunt said, “I can’t
leave these people, for I have learned to think a great deal of them.”
Afterward his aunt’s husbands started back with him. They did not camp
until midnight. Their canoe was a skate, and, as soon as they came
ashore, they would turn it over on top of him so that, no matter how
hard he tried to get out, he could not. In making the passage across to
Cape Ommaney they worked very hard, and shortly after they landed they
heard the raven.[112] They could go only a short distance for food.
When they first started back the woman had said to her husbands, “Don’t
leave him where he can be captured again. Take him to a good place.” So
they left him close to Sitka. Then he walked around in the neighborhood
of the town and made the people suffer so much every night that they
could not sleep, and determined to capture him. They fixed a rope in
such a way as to ensnare him, but at first they were unsuccessful.
Finally, however, they placed dog bones in the rope so that they would
stick into his hands, dog bones being the greatest enemies of the land
otters.
Late that night the land-otter-man tore his hands so with these bones
that he sat down and began to scream, and, while he was doing this,
they got the rope around him and captured him. When they got him home
he was at first very wild, but they restored his reason by cutting his
head with dog bones. He was probably not so far gone as most victims.
Then they learned what had happened to him.
After this time, however, he would always eat his meat and fish raw.
Once, when he was among the halibut fishers, they wanted very much
to have him eat some cooked halibut. He was a good halibut fisher,
probably having learned the art from the land otters, though he did
not say so. For a long time the man refused to take any, but at last
consented and the food killed him.
FOOTNOTES:
[112] Supernatural beings who heard the raven call before they came to
land, died.
47. THE MAN FED FROM THE SKY
Dātg̣āˊs, the nephew of a chief at Chilkoot, used to lie all the time
bundled up in a corner made by the retaining timbers. When everybody
else was in bed he would rise and go to the fire. Then he would gather
the coals into a heap in order to warm his blanket over them. The
people of that town were starving, so Dātg̣āˊs would say, as he held
his blanket over the coals, “Would that a piece of dried salmon fell
upon this from the smoke hole.” He did this every night.
One time, as he was standing over the fire without holding his blanket
out, some one called to him, “Dātg̣āˊs, stretch out your blanket
once more.” So he stretched it out and held it there for some time
thinking, “Who is that calling me?” By and by he heard the voice again,
“Dātg̣āˊs, stretch it out farther.” So, though he could not see who was
speaking, he stretched it far out. Then half of a salmon fell upon his
blanket. He took this, cut it into small pieces, and distributed them
among a number of empty boxes that were in the house. At once all of
those boxes were full of salmon.
The uncle of Dātg̣āˊs had two wives, the younger of whom was very good
to him. Although they had to be sparing with their food, when they were
eating salmon she always put a little piece aside for him. The next
evening, after he had eaten his morsel of food and was lying down, he
was called once more by the voice, “Stretch your blanket out again.”
He ran quickly to the smoke hole and spread out his blanket under it,
but nothing came down, so he said, “I think I will wish for something.
I wish that some grease would come down to eat with the salmon.” And
suddenly a sack of grease fell upon his blanket, knocked it away, and
dropped upon the fireplace. He ran with this to the empty grease boxes
and put a spoonful in each, upon which all were immediately filled with
grease. Once more the voice called him, “Dātg̣āˊs, stretch your blanket
out again.” He did so, wishing for a sack of berries, and an animal
stomach filled with them dropped down at once. This time he held his
blanket very firmly so that it would not be carried out of his fingers.
He put a spoonful of berries into each empty berry box, and they were
all filled.
After this he sat down thinking that he would not be summoned again,
but once more the voice came, this time very loudly, “Dātg̣āˊs, stretch
out your blanket.” So he stretched it out, and there came down upon it
a sack of cranberries preserved in grease. He put a spoonful into each
empty box as before and filled them.
Again came the voice, “Dātg̣āˊs, stretch out your blanket.” Then there
came down a piece of venison dried with the fat on. When he had cut
it into many small pieces and distributed these among the boxes they
were at once filled. It was now very late, but the voice called him
once more, “Dātg̣āˊs, stretch out your blanket again.” Then there came
down a cake of dried soapberries which he broke into little pieces,
distributed among the boxes and made those full also.
Next morning the chief’s house was crowded with hungry people begging
for food, and all that the chief could give them was a little tobacco
to chew. He had nothing even for himself. Seeing this, the people began
to go out. Now, Dātg̣āˊs said to his uncle, “Why are all going out
without having had anything to eat?” He was a very quiet fellow who
seldom said anything, and, when he broke out in this manner, his uncle
became very angry with him. “Why do you want those people to stay?” he
said. “What will you give them to eat? If you have so much to say why
don’t you feed them?” “Well,” answered Dātg̣āˊs, “I will feed them.”
His uncle looked at him in surprise. He had seen him acting strangely
at night, and had wondered what he was doing. While they were talking,
the younger wife of his uncle kept looking at him and shaking her head,
because she was afraid that her husband would become angry with him.
His uncle thought that the boy was only talking, so he said, “Feed
them, then.” The boy said, “Call them all in and I will feed them.”
Half of the people had already gone out, but some stood listening to
him as he talked with his uncle, and one of these who stood near the
door called those that had gone out, to return.
When the people were all in, Dātg̣āˊs went to the place where the
salmon used to be packed away, and his uncle thought to himself, “That
fellow is going back there to those empty boxes.” When he returned with
one of them, however, it looked very heavy, and presently he handed out
a salmon to every boy in the room, telling him to roast it at the fire.
So his uncle had nothing more to say.
Next Dātg̣āˊs told some of the boys to get trays, and, after he had
filled them, he set them before the people. Telling them to keep quiet,
he went back again to the place where the boxes were and called for
help. Two more boys went back there and brought forward a box of oil to
eat with their salmon.
After they had eaten these things, he called the boys to go back with
him again and they brought out a box of venison. His uncle kept very
quiet while this was going on, and his younger wife felt very proud.
Next Dātg̣āˊs had them bring out a box of berries[113] preserved in
grease, which he passed around in large dishes. The chief began to
think that his nephew was giving too much at a time of famine, but he
could say nothing. Then preserved high-bush cranberries were served to
the people in large dishes and finally soapberries, which all the boys
stirred.
After this feast everyone left the house, but they soon came back one
by one to buy food, for they had plenty of other property. People that
were dying of starvation were strengthened by the food he gave them.
For one large moose hide he would give two salmon. He asked his uncle’s
younger wife to receive the goods that he was getting in exchange. But,
after he had obtained a great deal of property more than half of the
food was still left.
The chief, his uncle, was quite old at that time, both of his wives
being much younger. He felt very well disposed toward his nephew to
think that he had been so liberal and had kept up his uncle’s name, so
he said to him, “You have done well to me and to my village people.
Had it been another young fellow he would have hidden the food, but
instead you have brought my village people and myself to life. Now take
your choice between my wives. Take whichever you want.”
The young man did not answer at once, but the younger wife knew that he
would choose her, because the elder wife hated him. Finally he said,
“I will take the young woman, for she has been good to me.” Then his
uncle moved to one side and let his nephew take his place. He became
exceedingly wealthy, and was very good to the people of his village and
to his uncle.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] These were the berries called tînx̣.
48. THE SALMON SACK