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creeks ; and he told someone to make him a one-barbed hook (dina ). Whenever the salmon he was after came he was going to use this in order to get it. When it came up it filled the whole of Alsek river and broke all the hooks of those who tried to catch it. Then the shaman selected a small boy and said, "This little boy is going to hook it." So he gave him the hook he had had made, and the little boy pulled it up easily. The shaman s spirits had killed it. This salmon was so large that all in that town had a share, and even then it was more than they could cook for one meal. It was the biggest salmon ever killed. There are two creeks in that region, and to this day a young boy can easily pull in a large spring salmon there such as is hard for an adult to manage.
There is a hole near by called Hole-Raven-bored (Yel-djuwAtu lia), because Raven made it long ago. In early times, whenever there was to be a large run of eulachon or other fish, quantities of rocks came out of that hole. So people used to go there to look at it.
In one place Alsek river runs under a glacier. People can pass beneath in their canoes, but, if anyone speaks, while they are under it, the glacier comes down on them. They say that in those times this glacier was like an animal, and could hear what was said to it. So, when they camped just below it, people would say, u Give us some food. We have need of food." Then the glacier always came down with a rush and raised a wave which threw numbers of salmon ashore.
The people were also in the habit of going up some distance above the glacier to a place called CanyukA after soapberries which grow there in abundance. The first time they went up they discovered people who were all naked except about the loins, and there was a shaman among them who was reputed to have a great deal of strength. For that reason they tried him. They took mussel shells, clam shells, and sharp stones and tried to cut his hair, but a single hair on his head was 3 inches across, so everything broke. This shaman had many spirits. Some were glacier spirits, called Sit! tu koha ni, Fair- girls-of-the-glacier ; others were of the sky tribe called Gus! tu koha ni, Fair-girls-of-the-sky.
The shaman said that, on their way down, one canoe load of the down-river people would be drowned as they passed under the glacier ; but the spirits of the shaman below told him about this, and he went up to see the Athapascan shaman. In those days shamans hated one another exceedingly. So the Athapascan shaman placed kAq !- AnaqLvq!, something to destroy all of one s opponent s people, before his guest. The latter, however, all at once saw what it was and went home. Soon after he got there, the Athapascan shaman died, killed by his rival's spirits, and his spirits passed to one of his friends.
The shamans living on Alsek river had a great deal of strength. All things in the sea and in the forest obeyed them. A rock just