Page:Tlingit Myths and Texts.djvu/72

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58
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
[bull. 39

daughter, for they had taken her inside. Then he became angry. They carried all sorts of things out there but in vain.

At last, about four days afterward, the girl's mother thought of the white hair that had belonged to her grandfather. In the morning she said to her husband, "We have that old hair in a box. What can we do with it? We ought to try a strategem with it. Suppose we put boards on the canoes, spread the hair all over them, and take it out." They did this, and, when they got to the cliff where their daughter used to be, they saw her sitting on the edge with her hair hanging over. They went close in. Then all the birds flew out to them, and each stuck a white hair in its head where you may see it at this day. The girl, however, remained where she was.

Then these birds flew in to the puffin chief and told him about the hair. They thought a great deal of it. Therefore the chief told them to carry the girl back to her father. But before she went he said to her, "If you are ever tired of staying with your father, come back to us." At that time she had a nose just like one of these birds, because she had wanted to be one of them.

The sea gull is also the slave of the puffin. Therefore the Huna people say that when anyone goes to that place it calls his name, because it was the slave of the puffin at the time when this woman was there.

Because some of their people were drowned at that island, all of the T!qldentan claim it. Later they built a house which they named after it.


26. STORY OF THE WAIN-HOUSE PEOPLE People came to a fort to live and began to kill bears, ground hogs, porcupines, mountain sheep, etc., with spears, and bows and arrows, laying the meat up in the fort. After they had killed some of these animals they would cut off their heads, set them up on sticks, and begin to sing for them.

There was a young man among them who had been put into a mountain-sheep's skin instead of a cradle as soon as he was born. When he grew older he was able to follow the mountain sheep to places where no one else could get, so he killed more than the others. He would also play and dance around the heads after they had been cut off and say, "I wish my head were cut off, too." Then people sang about it. Meanwhile the sheep were getting tired of losing so many of their number.

One day all the people went up to a mountain to hunt, and, finding a flock of sheep, began to chase them to a certain place where they could bunch all together. Suddenly this youth became separated from the other people, and on the very top of the mountain was met by a fine-looking man who shone all over and had a long white beard.