[21] They not only “became rocks,” but also continued to live under them. [↑]
He who hunted birds in his father’s village
[Told by Walter McGregor of the Sealion-town people]
He was a chief’s son. He wore two marten-skin blankets, one over the other.[1] After he had shot birds for some time he went along among some bull pines, which stood in an open space behind the town and presently heard geese[2] calling. Then he went thither. Two women were bathing in a lake. On the shore opposite two goose skins hung over a stick. The roots of their tails were spotted with white.
After he had looked a while he ran quickly [to them]. He sat down on the two skins. Then they asked him for their [skins]. He asked the best looking to marry him. The other said to him: “Do not marry my younger sister. I am smarter. Marry me.” “No; I am going to marry your younger sister.” Now she agreed. “Even so, marry my younger sister. You caught us swimming in the lake our father owns. Come, give me my skin.” Then he gave it to her. She put her head into it as she swam in the lake. Lo, a goose swam about in the lake. It swam about in it making a noise.
Then she flew. She was unwilling to fly away from her younger sister. After she had flown about above her for a while, she flew up. She vanished through the sky. Then he gave her (the other) one marten-skin blanket and went home with her. He put his wife’s skin between the two heads of a cedar standing at one end of the town. He entered his father’s house with her.
The chief’s son had a wife. So his father called the people together for the marriage feast. They gave her food. Instead [of eating it] she merely smelled it. She ate no kind of human food.
By and by her mother-in-law steamed some tcꜝāl.[3] But she liked that. While her mother-in-law was yet cooking them she told her husband to tell her to hurry. They put some before her. She ate it all. Then they began giving her that only to eat.
One day, when he was asleep, he was surprised to find that his wife’s skin, after she came in and lay down, was cold. And, when the same thing happened again, he began watching her. He lay as if asleep. He felt her get up quietly. Then she went out, and he also went out just after her. She passed in front of the town. She went to the place where her skin was kept. Thence she flew away. She alighted on the farther side of a point at one end of the town.