Page:Tlingit Myths and Texts.djvu/106

This page needs to be proofread.
92
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
[bull. 39

Then all of the people believed him and left their oil there. It became his.[1]

Next Raven went to a place where many sea lions, seals, and porpoises were lying about. Among these there were a number of children, who cut pieces of fat from the animals and threw them back and forth. So he made himself look like a child and, when they threw him a piece of fat, he ate it. Finally the children missed their fat and said, "What is becoming of all the fat we were playing with? It is all disappearing."[2]

Then Raven came to a large town where everyone appeared to have died. He entered the largest house, and saw no one inside, yet he could feel a person continually pushing against him. It was a ghost house, and the town was called the Town of Ghosts (Qayahayi ani). Afterward Raven loaded a canoe with provisions from the ghosts houses and started to paddle away, but he did not notice that a very long line was fastened to the stern of the canoe and secured at the other end round a tree. When he reached the end of this rope the canoe was pulled right back to the beach, and the goods were all carried up to the house by invisible hands. One of the ghosts also dropped a very large rock upon his foot, making him lame.[3]

Next Raven went among the Athapascan Indians of the interior beyond the place he had reached before. There he saw a giant cannibal called Cannibal-man. Knowing that this cannibal was very smart he tried to get the better of him, so he won his confidence and learned that he was married to the black pine (łał).[4] In the morning the cannibal bathed. After that the two became very good friends, and the cannibal said to Raven, "I am going hunting, and I am going to get four animals, two mountain goats and two ground hogs." So the cannibal took a hide rope such as the interior Indians used to make and started. On the way Raven said to the cannibal, " Where is that man called Tsa′maya?" He

  1. ↑ The writer's informant added, "In our days when a person is making a living dishonestly by lying and stealing he is not told so directly, but this story is brought up to him and everyone knows what it means."
  2. ↑ "When older people were giving their children advice they would bring up this part of the story and tell them not to be greedy and selfish, but honest. They would say they did not want them to be like Raven, who ate up all his playmates fat. When people went about trading they would also bring up this story to a person who wanted to make all the profit himself. They would tell him he was like Raven, who wanted to enjoy everything himself." (From the writer's informant.)
  3. ↑ "This episode is brought up to a child people desire to make honest. They say that just as these goods were taken back from Raven, and he was made to feel shame at having been discovered, a thief will always be found out. If the child becomes a thief when he grows up, they tell him that he will be classed among the very lowest no matter how well born he was. They also tell the little ones that there is a Creator watching them all the time, just as these ghosts watched. The Raven could not see them, but they saw him. They say that a person who does evil things is like a crippled or deformed person, for he has disgraced his family. They tell them that a person who gets that low is nobody and that the Creator despises him." (From the writer's informant.)
  4. ↑ What immediately follows was probably considered by my informant too indecent to relate.
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.