Hours had passed since the shaman first came to the house, and it was now morning. The canary never ceased making a noise all that time, and at last the shaman said:
'She wants to go to the place where she has put the food and the locks of hair with which she is bewitching the chief and his daughter. Untie her wings and let her do as she will, but be careful to follow her.' So they untied her wings, and the canary flew out of the house followed by four men, and she hopped ahead of them the way she had come through the woods.
At length she stopped and began scratching at the roots of some bushes till she laid bare a skull. On the top of the skull some leaves, hair, food, and scraps of clothes were carefully arranged in a pattern. She picked up as many of them as she could carry in her beak and flew with them down to the sea, letting the wind scatter them in different directions. This she did till all had disappeared and the skull likewise, and then she returned to the house with the four men following her, and they found the chief and his daughter quite cured, for as soon as the skull and the other things had touched the sea, they recovered by magic.
'Do you hear the noise she is making?' asked the shaman, when the bird had begun to chatter as noisily as before. 'She wants to go away from here, but not to her home, because the other birds will be ashamed of her. The place she wishes to go to is a town called Close-along-the-beach. Therefore, let a canoe be got ready at once to take her there.' So the canoe was got ready, and the bird flew into it, and they pushed off from the shore, and paddled till the bird suddenly broke out into the strange speech, which no one could understand but the shaman.
'This must be the place,' they said, and paddled in towards the beach, and the canary flew out of the boat and went very fast down to the shore followed by a man who wished to see where she was going, and she stopped at a tree whose roots stuck out above the ground. For this was the bird-town of Close-along-the-beach.
That is how the ancient Indians first heard of witchcraft.
[Tlingit Myths and Texts.]