Page:Tlingit Myths and Texts.djvu/90

woods. In the morning they descended to fight, and the women and children began crying. They captured all. Meanwhile the tidal rapids began, to roar as the tide fell.

One woman among the captives was very old. They asked her what time of tide to run the rapids, and she said to herself, "It is of no use for me to live, for all of my friends and brothers are gone. It is just as well to die as to be enslaved." So she said to them, "At half tide."

Then two canoes started down ahead in order to reach some forts said to lie in another direction. They rushed straight under and were seen no more. The old woman was drowned with them. So they made a mark with their blood at the place where these two canoe loads had been drowned to tell what had happened. It may be seen to-day and looks like yellowish paint.

Next day the remaining canoes started out when the tide was high and came to another fort next morning. While they were around behind this a woman came out. Then they seized her and ran a spear up into her body from beneath many times until she dropped dead without speaking. So this fort came to be called, Fort-where- they-stabbed-up-into-a- woman s-privates (KAk !-kagus-wudu watA qi- nu). Then the people fought with clubs and bows and arrows until all in the fort were destroyed, and started on to another. When they made an attack in those days, they never approached in the day time but toward morning when everybody was sleeping soundly. Both sides used wooden helmets and spears.

At this fort the women were always digging a big variety of clam (called gaLl), storing these clams in the fort for food. The fort was filled with them. So, when the assailants started up the cliff, one of the men inside struck him with a clam shell just under the war hat so that he bled profusely. He could not see on account of the blood. Then the man in the fort took an Indian ax and beat out his brains. Afterward all in the fort seized clam shells and struck their foes in the face with them so that they could not come up. They threw so fast that the canoes were all kept away; so that place is now called Where-clams-kept-out-the-foes (Xa csixani-gaiJ). For the same reason this was the only fort where any people were saved, and on the other hand many of the enemy were destroyed by the fort people.

Now they left this fort and came to another, landing on a beach near by, and between them and the fort was what they supposed to be a fresh water pond. Then one of them called Little-bear-man, because he had on a bear-skin coat, began to shoot at the fort with arrows. But the people in the fort shouted to him, "Do not be in such great haste. The tide runs out from the place where you are." Then the bear man said, "The people here say that the tide runs out