After she had given them food they went to bed. When he awoke in the night [he found] he was pressed in by something. He could in no way stretch out. Those were the roots of a large tree. When it was day, a good house again stood there. [[270]]
Now, he lived there for a long time. All the while he worked on his canoe. Every night the earth changed for him. In the morning the house stood there just as it ought to appear.
By and by four persons went out by canoe to hunt coots. They called bullheads coots. After they had been gone for a while only three came back. He (the fourth) was killed because he forgot the mat to cover his knees. When they forgot this they never escaped.[5]
When his canoe was finished he steamed and spread it. At that time his brothers-in-law helped him. After that he started to go out in it. All that time she (his sister) made the child dance. Already it began to have a tail. Then she gave them directions. She said that when they went outward they should not look back. She said that the child, who was just able to talk, must not speak about that country. And she also gave the same directions to him.
One time, after that, they started off. When they were some distance away the child remembered the town. And, when he said “How [well] we lived among them,” they were back again in front of the town. When they again started and had passed beyond the place where the boy first spoke he repeated the same thing, and again they were back in front of the town. When they went away again they kept straight on. Then they came to [their own] town.
Here it draws to an end.[6]
This is one of the numerous and popular land-otter stories and the only type of story in which that animal appears in a rôle at all benevolent. Usually he is represented as trying to steal away some human being and make a slave of him, to deprive one of his senses or turn him into a gā′gix̣īt (see story of [Supernatural-being-who-went-naked], note [19]). Nevertheless, his peculiar nature brought him into intimate relations with the shamans, especially among the Tlingit. [[271]]
[1] Pitch wood supplied the place of a lantern. [↑]
[2] That is, by the land otters. One had looked at her while she was drinking water. When this happened one was seized with fits, soon died, and went to live among the Land-otter people. [↑]