Tlingit myths and texts / recorded by John R. Swanton.

  • John R. Swanton
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Tlingit myths and texts / recorded by John R. Swanton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    entrance. The person who lived there was the wife of the man he had killed. She had seen his canoe passing and thought, “lie must have killed my husband.” So she said, “Your aunt’s husband went across that way.” And the boy said, “I have seen your husband.” This woman’s name was Knife-hand (DjiwAn-yls!), because she had a knife on each hand. She said to the boy, “You better come in here and let me give you food before you go on.” “All right,’ he said. So he entered and found her cooking the parts of a human being. She called the ends of its fingers, “crab apples,” its eyes, “berries ” etc. men he told her that he did not eat that sort of food, she at once said, “Well! let us have a fight then. We will kill each other.” He agreed and she went to a large rock where he could hear her drawing both hands back and forth to sharpen them. As soon as she had finished, she threw her hand at him, but he jumped aside so*quickly that it stuck in the spot where he had been sitting, and, when she drew her hand away, the knife remained tliere. Tlien the boy jumped forward, seized it, and threw it hack with such good aim that it killed her. lie also cut her tongue out. He had no more than finished with her, however, than he noticed that the entrance hole was growing smaller and smaller. So he made himself smal also, crept into one of the ermine skins he had tied m his hair, and ran out. When he came home again with his canoe loaded down with seal and deer, his mother and grandmother were very glad to fnr t.hfiv had been weeping for him and worrying about liim very high up, and watch until t two young ones.” When he cai the old birds were away, so he w them, “What do you live on? le came to the nest, however, he saw that he went up to the young ones and said to ” The birds showed him numbers
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