Page:Tlingit Myths and Texts.djvu/118
finally killed this bird, took out its sinews, and worked them into a very small thread. As soon as they threw this around the monster's head it came oil. Then they took off its scalp, which had long hair like that of other shamans, and the rest of its head turned into a rock at that place. They now had two principal scalps from the two big monsters they had killed.
When the brothers now returned to the old man and related what had happened, he felt very good and said, " There would have been no person living. This monster would have killed them all, if you had not destroyed it." Everybody who heard that the monster was dead, was glad, and did not fear to go to that place any more.
After this they returned to their mother and sister: At that time their sister had just reached puberty and was shut up in the house with a mat curtain hung in front of her. So they hung the shaman s scalp up in front of the curtain. They also made her drink water through the leg bones of geese and swans so that she should not touch the drinking cups. Her mother put a large hat upon her so that she should not look at anything she was forbidden to see. If one shouted that a canoe was coming, or that anything else was taking place that she wanted to witness, she did not dare to look out. Since her time these same regulations have been observed.
Then they left that place and moved south through the interior. Having killed off the ocean monsters, they were now going to kill, those in the forest. Besides that, they hunted all of this time, kill ing bear, ground hogs, and other animals; but their sister was not allowed to look at any of them. Among other wild animals they told the wolverine and wolf that they must not kill human beings but be friendly with them. They killed ground hogs, mountain sheep, and other animals for them and told them that that was what they were to live upon.
At one place they saw a smoke far off in the woods and, advancing toward it, came to the house of a man named He-whose-hands-see (Djlnqotl n) . He was so called because he was blind and had his wife aim his arrows for him. He said to Jjqlaya k!, “My wife saw a grizzly bear and told me where it was. She aimed my arrow and I shot at it. I felt that I had killed it, but she said I had not. My wife has left me on account of this, and I don't know where she is or what I am living on or how I am living without her.” Then Lq laya k ! and his brothers gave him ground-hog skins filled with grease and fat such as the interior people used to make, also dried meat.
While they were in the interior the brothers also made needles out of animal bones and threads out of sinew for their sister to use behind the screen. She worked with porcupine quills and dyed sinews, and it is through her that the interior women are such fine workers with the needle.