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TLINGIT MYTHS AND TEXTS
55

Ka gwAntan chiefs marry Kikca (KiksA di women). But the real frog tribe thought they were the ones who were summoned, because they are also Kikca .

Then all theKiksA di made ready to go ashore to burn his dead body. They chopped much wood and made a fire, while all of the KiksA di and Ka/gwAntan stood around it, and everyone felt badly. All at once a big frog, as long as the hand and wrist, jumped out from the place where the fire was and began making a noise. All looked at it. It had come out because the frogs were the ones to whom the Ka gwAntan had spoken. After that it jumped into the fire and burned up.

Then all the people tied themselves up (gA xAni) (i. e., tied their blankets around their waists, as they did when they were engaged in lifting the sun[1]) out of respect to the chief. All felt very badly about the dead man, and one person said, "It will not be like draining out the L !ln lake (L !ln a y a) . Let us go to war. So they captured slaves and killed them for the dead man, and, when they put food into the fire for him, they also named the frog that it might receive some as well.


24. THE BRANT WIVES[2]

A KiksA di youth lived with his father in a long town. When he was well grown, he went about in the woods hunting with bow and arrows. One time he came close to a lake and heard the voices of girls. When he got nearer he saw two girls bathing there. Then he skirted the shore toward them, and, when he was very close, discovered two coats just back of the place where they were. These were really the girls skins. He took them up, and they began talking to him, saying, "Give us those skins." But he said, "I want to marry both of you." So he married both of them and took them to his father's house.

Both of this man's wives used to look over his hair to pick out the lice. When spring was coming on and the brants were coming from the south, the girls sat on top of the house with him and kept saying, "There comes my uncle s canoe. There comes my father s canoe." They were beginning to get homesick, and they asked their husband if he would let them go home. When the brants began coming, one would say, "Those are my friends coming up. I am going to ask them to give me something to eat." So, when they were above the house, she said, "Give me something to eat," and down came green herbs one after another.

When it was time for the brants to start back south, both of the girls had become tired. They wanted to go home. They knew when it was time for their father s canoe to pass over, and just before it was due they told their husband to go up into the woods after some-

  1. See Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 430.
  2. See story 54.