Page:Tlingit Myths and Texts.djvu/61
Then the women began bringing up shellfish, which they afterwards boiled to get the insides out, ran small sticks through them, and hung them up to dry for their children. One day they went down on the beach as usual, leaving their babies in camp, and the smallest began crying. Then a child somewhat larger shouted, "The baby is crying. The baby is crying." Its mother said, "Bury one of those cockles in the fire and cook it for her," but the little boy under stood his mother to say, "Dig a hole for your little sister in the fire and put her into it." So the little boy began to pull the fire apart and to make a hole in the middle of it. He tried to knock his little sister into this hole but she kept getting up again, so he shouted, "She keeps trying to get away from me." After a while he became too strong for his little sister; put her in, and covered her over.
When his mother came up, she said, "Little son, where is your little sister?" "I have buried her in the fire. She is there." So after that they named the stream Creek-where-a-person-was-burned (Kaxsîganîhīn).
18. VARIOUS ADVENTURES NEAR CROSS SOUND
There is a place in the neighborhood of Cross sound called K!udē′sq!ayîk, which people used to frequent in olden times to hunt, catch halibut, and so on. People were then in the habit of traveling from camp to camp a great deal. One time a man and his wife went out to to get cedar bark off from some trees, and the man went quite a distance up into the woods from his wife with his stone ax and tree climber. This tree-climber was an apparatus composed of ropes, with a board for the climber to stand on. But, while he was high up in a tree, the board slipped from under the man's feet, and the rope held him tight to the tree by his neck so that he died. Since he did not come back, his wife went home and reported that he was missing. Then they hunted for him everywhere, and finally a man found him hanging from the tree dead. The dead man was brother of a chief. So they took the board that had fallen from under his feet home, laid it across the neck of a slave and killed him to be revenged on the board. They kept the board and exhibited it at feasts. Afterward people were called for the death feast.
People continued going to the different bays hunting, and one day a canoe with two men in it anchored close by a cliff. While they were there one of them saw two huge devilfish arms moving across the bay. They ran ashore and hid under a rock, letting the arms pass over them, while the devilfish took the canoe into its hole under water.
Then the men started up the hill. On their way home they saw in a small creek what appeared to be a little halibut, but on coming