When Cries-for-salmon was restless as a little child, and cried, no doubt her mother called out to her, “Lia! the Evil One! Keep quiet!” to scare her. (To abuse any one, people will say, Li dená! Blood of the Evil One.) And when Cries-for-salmon was able to walk, she was watched all the time by her father or mother, for she had to be taught from the very beginning not to step on anything pertaining to the welfare of the family that might be lying on the floor. Should a stick be lying there, for example, that was being worked for an arrow or fish trap, the little girl would have to walk around it, not over it. The spirit of the boy is stronger than the spirit of the girl, so a boy may step where he pleases.
And the girl, as she grows a little older, has to be taught to be extremely careful about whatever she finds on the floor, of bits of food, of bone or feather or hair or skin. It is a rule that all such waste bits be put separately into baskets by the women, and carried to the haunts, in forest or on river, of the creatures to which the bits belonged. Cries-for-salmon would go along with her mother to see how she dumped into the river from her canoe the feathers of duck or goose or swan, that they might change back into birds such as they had come from—as the feathers drifted down the current, although invisible to her, Cries-for-salmon was told, they became birds again to return to feed in their old haunts of mud and goose grass. Similarly she saw her mother empty out fish bones to become fish, and she saw her take to the forest the bones of game animals. Were such bones left on the floor and stepped on, it would be othlang.
Sometimes, as men sit on the floor with their heels drawn back to the buttocks, or as they sit cross-legged, left leg over right, with a bowl of food propped on their legs, a bone may snap out on the floor instead of back from their fingers into the bowl. It is a spirit of the family, a hungry spirit, who is after the food. The spirit of the food goes to feed the family spirit, and although the particle is picked up and taken to the forest, it has lost its power, it will not become animal again.
When we men kill willow or ruffed grouse (ptarmigan), we take out some of the tail feathers and throw them on the ground, giving them back to the forest to become birds again. I remember that the first time I shot a grouse I took out some feathers above the tail. The fellow with me laughed. “That is not right,” said he. “It is the tail feathers you must take.” In selling grouse to the Mission, people will first skin them, just as they will first pluck the geese or ducks they sell, and remove the entrails. Similarly, they skin and clean the rabbits they sell. (Before a ceremonial the men engage in a rabbit drive. They pick out an island or a point of land, and spread out, each man in sight of another. Each yells and beats on the trees to scare out the rabbits, and then they form the arc of a circle and close down to the water. They keep the rabbits for the feast, but a few they may sell.) Bear meat and lynx meat they would not sell at all to white people.
We do not eat rabbit meat in summer and no doubt Cries-for-salmon was told, as are other children, that it was wormy. She was told, too, never to eat in the dark, lest she swallow the eye of the Evil One, which in going back to the Evil One, would choke her. Nor in eating meat should she cut off a piece in her teeth. In pouring out tea or liquids, Cries-for-salmon was taught to be very careful to pour only to well below the brim, almost an inch below, not to risk spilling. If the cup ran over it would be othlang to the person served—he would fail to run down his game, to catch fish, or to do well in leadership—and to overcome the othlang he would have to go to the shaman for a song.
In all these particulars a girl has to learn how to behave, how to carry herself. A young man is rated by his ability in making snowshoes and in running down game, fox, deer and, before the portaging of the whites drove them out, caribou. A girl is rated by her ability in handicrafts and in providing food, but she is also esteemed for her household behavior. If she is gifted with strength, with virtue, as she grows old she is likely to have given into her keeping an old wooden bowl which has been passed down from generation to generation of women, within the same rank, to be used in ceremonies to honor hunters of distinction. Moreover, the presents of a careful woman are welcome. People hate to see a young man as he grows up wear things made by any or everybody. Were he to wear mittens or boots or parki (shirt) made by a careless woman, his own ability might be reduced and his spirits weakened.
Cries-for-salmon was taught, like other little girls and boys, never to sing or whistle when eating, and never to imitate at any time in the winter the birds of summer—that would prolong the winter, perhaps making it run into two winters (a frequent expression of the narrator meaning that the already short summer is further shortened), and so causing famine. Nor was Cries-for-salmon ever to make snowballs or snow images. There is but one time a snow man may be made—when people want a freezing spell in the spring. Travelers are afraid of being caught away from home by the spring floods. One early spring I remember that there were many traders at Anvik when it turned warm. The men had to get home to make their fish camps and set their fish nets. Some of them had a portage of twenty miles to make through tundra and woods. The soft snow in the woods and the slush would tire out their dogs. So they went to the shaman and got permission to make a snow man to face the north, and draw from it the cold winds. As image maker they chose an unmarried man who had been born in a month of changing weather.
Snow fights the children may not play, but they play at war in another way. Almost anything will start a sham fight. Perhaps a child will call the family of another child dirty or say, “My father has more skins than yours.” Then they gather fireweed, strip the stalks and use them for spears and darts. These weapons take the skin off your forehead, but the more you bleed the better you like it, and you never cry, no matter how hard hit. Two or three boys will pretend to be killed, the girls will set up a wail, they have a big feast, and they make friends again.
The boys play, too, at duck-hunting and deer-stalking. They will make a duck of grass and fasten it to a long, slender stick. Then they put it into a muddy place and throw short wooden spears at it. The game should be played only in the spring, for if it is played later it will cause famine. It is a very exciting game, and often, out of season, we boys would carry cans of water into the woods to make a duck pond out of sight of the old people.
To play deer-stalking, boys take a bunch of grass and make it into the figure of a deer. For the belly they insert strips of salmon. They set the figure up on sticks and then go off into a cover of stumps and grass. One boy says to the other, “I see a deer.” “Where?” “Over there.” They creep up on it. They shoot, and the boy who sends his arrow nearest to the heart is deemed the killer. They skin the deer, talking all the while—“How fat it is, how limber.”—“It was hard to get.” They take out the dried fish, the killer cuts it up and, as would an adult, he sees to it that the food is divided up among the hunters. When a man returns from a long and successful hunt he goes to the kadjim, while his wife prepares the food and invites all the people to come and partake of it. She goes from house to house, saying, “Come and drink tea and eat meat.” (By “meat” she would always mean bear meat, as that being the most powerful meat, is called just meat. Other flesh she would call deer meat, porcupine meat, etc.) Similarly when a woman gets a full trap of fish all the people are invited to eat.