Tlingit myths and texts / recorded by John R. Swanton.

  • Swanton, John Reed, 1873-1958.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Tlingit myths and texts / recorded by John R. Swanton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    it down, press it against his heart and weep as he held it there. He wept all the time. After this man had been a widower a long time he married again. One evening, when he was sitting on the bed playing with his new Avife, the basket fell right over his head. Ha tried to pull it off, and his wife laughed, not knowing why it had been up there. lA^ien he was unable to pull it away his wife also tried, but it stuck tight around his neck. He became frightened and worked very hard at it. Sud- denly the basket said to him, .Yes, pull me off of your head. Why don’t you press me against your heart again?” At last if they had not cut the strings the basket would have choked him to death. Then he put it farther back and in the morning threw it into the fire. 82. THE CKYING-FOR MEDICINE One of the Kasq!ague/di named Floating (NAlxa'c), living at Wran- gell, had a wife called Axtci'k! who kept running away from him. He was a great hunter and hunted continually among the mountains of Bradfield canal accompanied by his slave. One day, as they were pulling along in a canoe wliile the dogs ran on shore, they heard the dogs barking at a certain place. They landed and ran thither. Then they saw the dogs lying on the ground vdth saliva dropping from their mouths, while a small bear ran along some distance off. The hunter saw this bear climb up the side of a cliff and was about to pursue it when he suddenly lost all of his strength and lay there just like his dogs. He watched the bear, however, and saw it go into a hole in the verj’ middle of the cliff. Then he said, ‘That is not a bear. It could not have climbed up there and have gone into that cliff had it been one. It must be something else.” Floating thought a great deal of his wife and was suffering much because she had now been gone from him for eight months. 'VVlien he saw tins bear go into the inaccessible hole in the cliff, he went back to to^vn and made a very large, strong rope out of roots and a cedar-bark basket large enough to hold one person. W^ith these he went back again to the cliff and climbed to a position above the hole the bear had entered. Then he tied a rope around his slave’s wa.ist, and another to the basket and put the slave inside. He was going to lower him down to the hole. Now the man said to his slave, ‘ ‘When I get you to the mouth of the hole, shake this basket very hard so that I may know it.” He gave him a little wooden dipper and said, “Dip that into the hole and see what you get out.” Then he lowered the slave. When the latter put his dipper into the hole it came out filled with ants. Then the slave screamed, but his master said, “I -will let you drop if you don’t hold up. Put that dipper in again and see what you bring out. The slave 49438—Bull. 39—09 16