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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    This man led him through a door into what he at first thought was a house, but it was really the inside of the mountain. All at once it looked very strange to him. Piles of horns lay about everywhere. Meanwhile all of his friends had missed him and were hunting about, but had to go home without him. They thought he was gone for- ever. They hunted for him every day and found his horn spear stuck into the ground at a certain place near the top of the mountain, but nothing more. After searching everywhere in vain they became discouraged and beat the drums for him. Meanwhile the mountain sheep tried to fit a pair of horns on the young man’s head. They heated these first in the fire, and tiied to put them on, when it seemed to him as if the insides of his head were all coming out. The people kept up their search for him, however, and about a year afterward a man climbed up on the same mountain to hunt sheep. Above him he saw a big flock, and he heard a noise as though some one were shouting or talking there. Then he went straight down, for he knew that it was the person who had been lost, and he knew that the mountain sheep had captured him. Pointing this mountain -out to the people, he said to them, “It is he, for I know his voice. So all the people started up. Now the sheep could see whenever the Indians set out to hunt for the person they had taken, and they said to him, “There come your friends. If you will tell them to tlirow away their weapons, we will let you go to them.” So he said to his friends, “If you will lay down your hunting weapons, I will tell you what these mountain sheep say to me.” Afterward he said, “They say that I am being punished because you are destroying them too much, and, when you have killed them, you take the heads and put them on sticks.” Although he was among the mountain sheep he retained his own language. He said besides, “The mountain-sheep chief tells me to say to you that you must hang up the sheep skins with their heads toward the moun- tain and the rising sun and put eagle feathers upon them. They tell me to say, ‘Do not put our heads on sticks. Grizzly-bears’ heads are the only ones you should treat that way—not ours.’” One could not see or hear this man unless he were specially purified by bathing in urine. Afterward the sheep went right into the mountain with him to the place where they have their homes. Now they tried in every way to recover him, and finally came out with dogs. Then the mountain sheep said to him, “You can go among your friends after awhile, but now you may talk to them from the top of a little cliff.” So his friends came up underneath this, and he talked down to them. By and by the sheep again changed their minds regarding him, and one day he said to his friends, “This is the last time I shall come to see you. If you are going to begin a war on
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