Haida texts and myths

by Unknown

And, after they had gone along for a while, they came to where a certain person lived. He gave them food, as was usual, and they slept there that night. Then Sawałī′xa remained awake. The one to whom they had come in lay in a corner. He got up, tied fine cedar bark upon the end of a stick which hung above him, and let them breathe on it. Then he went out with it, and Sawałī′xa went out after him. Near a rill of water was a piece of cedar full of holes, out of one of which he pulled a plug. Into it he pushed the cedar bark. Sawałī′xa was looking at him. And before him he came in, and he pretended to be asleep. Presently he also came in. [[259]]

Then he, in turn, put the cedar bark to his breath. And he went out, and Sawałī′xa pulled out the thing that had been stuck in and pushed his in. Then he went to bed. The next day, after he had given them some food, he took a bath. Afterward he became sick. He said that his back and his head were sick. “I must have done it to myself.” Presently he was dead. That was Greatest Wizard, they say. Then they went off. They came to their house.

By and by they started traveling again. They hunted birds. Then one disappeared. It went on that way until all were gone. He who had medicine in his mouth let himself be last. He followed the footprints of his elder brothers. When he saw his elder brothers sitting upon a broad stump he did not feel how he got there, but he was sitting among them.

Then they broke their bows and arrows in pieces on top of it, and they built a fire. And, after they had put them into it, they lay at once on the level ground below. Then they also put themselves into it and stood below.[15] It was North who did this to them. Then they went home. They came to their house.

When they had traveled about a while after that they found a mountain of ground hogs. They built a house there and made dead falls[16] for them. When cold weather began to come on they came out. They made trousers out of ground-hog skins.

And, after they got back there, the next to the youngest could not catch any ground hogs in his dead falls. He did not kill even one. And, when they went home, he refused to go. Each gave him two. He refused them. Each offered to give him five. He also refused those. Then they left him.

After he had lived there for a while a woman came to him one night and lay down, and he married her. Then she asked him why he did not succeed in taking them in dead falls, and he said to her: “I could in no way get them.” “To-morrow make ten” [she said]. And next day he did as he was directed. The day after he went out to look at them. Ten ground hogs were in them.

And, after he had done this for a while, he had many, and early one morning he went to see them. Then a whitish one went in before him. His wife told him not to put a dead fall near it. Then he longed for it and set one in front of it. The very next day it fell on it. And he feared his wife and hung it on the outside of the house.

But, even from where his wife sat, [she said]: “My mother says, ‘Alas! my child.’ ” At once she started off. He tried to hold his wife. He could not. When she got to the door she said: “Come to life again.” Immediately they began running off in a crowd. He tried to club them, and he tried to stop them at the door. He could not accomplish that, either. Then he went along among them. After [[260]]he had followed his wife along he went in at the same place where she went in.

Then he stayed with his wife there again. They brought in all kinds of things, among them łkꜝiê′nkunᴀn.[17] And, after it began to snow, they went to bed. After they had lain in bed for a long time day came. He stood at the door outside and shouted “Daylight⁺.” They jumped up without the things they used for blankets. “What is it daylight from? Is it daylight from the łkꜝiê′nkunᴀn?”[18] they asked each other. They looked at the snow and went to bed again. After he had said this twice he gave it up and went to bed also.