Page:Tlingit Myths and Texts.djvu/92
finished, they came to a big tree they had already marked out and began to chop at it from all sides. This was the biggest tree ever known. While they worked, the women would come around it wailing and mourning for their dead friends. It took two days to chop this tree down, and, if anybody broke his stone ax, they felt very sorry for him and beat the drums as though some one were dead. Then they cut the tree in two and took a section off along the whole length where the upper side of the canoe was to be, and the head workman directed that it be burnt out inside with fire. So all the people assembled about it to work, and as fast as it was burnt they took sticks and knocked off the burnt part so as to burn deeper and to shape it properly when it had been burned enough. There was one heavy limb that they let stand, merely finishing about it. This work took them all winter. During the same time they bathed in the sea and whipped one another in order to be brave in the approaching war.
Toward spring they got inside of the canoe with their stone axes and began to smooth it by cutting out the burnt part. Then they began to give names to the canoe. It was finally called Spruce-canoe (Sīt-yāku). The thing they left in the middle was the real thing they were going to kill people with. Finally they finished it by putting in seats.
Now they were only waiting for it to get warmer. In those days there were special war leaders, and in fighting they wore helmets and greaves made of common varieties of wood.
There was a shaman among these people named QālA tk ! belonging to the Naste di. Because they were going to war, all of his people would come about him to help him capture the souls of the enemy. One time he said to his clothes man, Go out for food, and be brave. The head spirit is going to help you." So the clothes man went out as directed arid the spirit showed him the biggest halibut in the ocean. For the float to his line he used the largest sea-lion stomach, and, when he began to pull it up, it looked as though the whole ocean were flowing into its mouth. But the shaman told him to be cour ageous and hold on though the hook looked like nothing more than a small spot. It did not even move, for the strength of the spirits killed it, but it was so large that they had to tow it in below the town. Then all the people who were going to fight cut the halibut up and began to dry it. There was enough for all who were going to war and for all the women left at home. When it was dried they started to pack part away in the canoe. Then they pushed the canoe down on skids made of the bodies of two women whom they had captured from the southern people on a previous expedition and whom they now killed for the purpose. Meanwhile the southern people thought that they had destroyed all of those at the north and were scattered everywhere in camps, not taking the trouble to make forts.