3. ENGLISH VERSION OF THE STORY OF THE FOUR BROTHERS[1]
There were four brothers who owned a dog of an Athapascan variety called dzi.[2] They had one sister. One day the dog began barking at something. Then KAckU Lk!, the eldest brother, put red paint inside of his blanket, took his rattle, and followed. The other brothers went with him. They pursued it up, up, up, into the sky. The dog kept on barking, and they did not know what it was going to do. It was chasing a cloud.
When they got to the other side of the world they came out on the edge of a very steep cliff. They did not know what to do. The dog, however, went right down the cliff, and they saw the cloud still going on ahead. Now these brothers had had nothing to eat and were very hungry. Presently they saw the dog coming up from far below bringing the tail of a salmon. After a while they saw it run back. Then they said to one another, What shall we do? We might as well go down also." But, when Lq!aya k!, the youngest brother, started he was smashed in pieces. The two next fared in the same way. KAck ! A r Lk !, however, braced his stick against the wall behind him and reached the bottom in safety. Then he put the bones of each of his brothers together, rubbed red paint on them, and shook his rattle over them, and they came to life.
Starting on again around this world, they came to a creek full of salmon. This was where the dog had been before. When they got down to it they saw a man coming up the creek. He was a large man with but one leg and had a kind of spear in his hand with which he was spearing all the salmon. They watched him from between the limbs of a large, dead tree. When he got through hooking the salmon, he put all on two strings, one of which hung out of each corner of his mouth. Then he carried them down.
Then LqJaya k! said to his brothers, "Let us devise some plan for getting the salmon spear." So he seized a salmon, brought it ashore and skinned it. First KAckU Lk! tried to get inside of it but failed. When Lq!aya k! made the attempt, however, he swam off at once, and, if one of his brothers came near him, he swam away. Then the other brothers sat up in the dead tree, KAckU Lk! at the top.
When the big man came up again after salmon, Lq!aya k! swam close up to him, and he said, "Oh! my salmon. It is a fine salmon." But, when he made a motion toward it with his spear, it swam back into deep water. Finally it swam up close, and the big man speared it easily. Then Lqlaya k! went to the tail of the fish, cut the string
- ↑ This story was told by Dekina k!". According to some, the story begins with the birth of five children from a dog lather. See stories 97 and 31 (pp. 99-106).
- ↑ EAkitCAne , the father of these boys, is said to have lived near the site of the Presbyterian school at Sitka and to have used the "blarney stone," so called, as a grindstone.
