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TLINGIT MYTHS AND TEXTS
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yes, you are my younger brother. We were once coming down Nass river in a canoe with our father and had just reached its mouth when you fell overboard and sank forever." Then the sculpin said, I can not be your younger brother for I am a very old person." Said Raven, I want you to be next to me. There will be many sculpins, but you shall be the principal one." So he placed the sculpin (weq!) in the sky where it may still be seen [as the Pleiades].[1]

Raven saw a canoe out after halibut and said, “Come ashore and take me across,” but they paid no attention to him. Then he said, "If you do not I will put you up in the sky also. I will make an example of you, too." Then he held his walking stick out toward the canoe and they found themselves going up into the sky. That is what you can see in the sky now. It is called The-halibut-fishers (DAnA q u s!ike).[2]

Raven went to another place and determined to invite some people to a feast, so he invited all the seal people. When each seal came in he smeared its forehead with pitch, and, as soon as it got warm, the pitch ran down over the seal s eyes and blinded it. Then he clubbed it to death.[3]

He went along again, saw a nice fat deer, and said to it, "My friend this is you is it?" There was a deep, narrow canyon near by and Raven laid a rotten stick across it saying, "Let us go across to the other side upon this," but the deer said, "No, I can not. It will break with me and I shall get hurt." "No, you shall see how I cross it." So Raven went over and Deer tried to follow him but fell to the bottom of the canyon and was crushed to death. Then Raven went down and ate him, stuffing himself so full that he could scarcely move. He then acted as though he were very sad and pretended to cry, saying, "My friend, my friend, he is gone." He pretended that the wild animals had devoured him.[4]

After this Raven went to ground-hog's house for the winter. The ground-hogs go into their holes in September. At home they live like human beings and to them we are animals just as much. So Raven spent the winter with one of them and became very sick of it,

  1. ↑ "So nowadays, when a person wants people to think he knows a great deal and says, ‘I am very old,’ they will answer, ‘If Sculpin could not make Raven believe he was so old and knew so much, neither can you make us believe it of you. An older person will come along and show you to the world as the sculpin is seen now.’ So, to-day, when children go out in the evening, they will say, There is that sculpin up there."
  2. ↑ "When a child was lazy and disobedient, they told him how the halibut fishermen got up into the sky for their laziness. Therefore the children were afraid of being lazy." (From the writer's informant.)
  3. ↑ "This is brought up to a child to prevent him from being a murderer in secret, or a coward." (From the writer's informant.)
  4. ↑ "This episode is brought up when one who was the enemy of a dead man is seen to act as if he were very sad in the house where his body lies. People say to one another, He is acting as Raven did when he killed his friend the deer. It is also applied to a person who is jealous of one who is well brought up and in good circumstances. When such a person dies he will act like Raven." (From the writer's informant.)
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