He came to his father’s town long after they had ceased to think of him. Hu hu hu hu hu, his father’s town moved at once. Then they carried the things up into his father’s house. And then they sliced up the things he brought in sacks. He traded with this property. He became a great chief. It consisted in food of all kinds such as is found at low tide.
At that time his children, who had grown large, came in to him. Then he took a slice of food, cut it in two, and handed it to them, and they went out with it, the woman also. Her husband lived more years among human beings than he had among the devilfish people. With what he got by trading with the food her husband potlatched five times. [[293]]
After he had lived there for some time he one day came to feel badly over something. Right where he sat, in the back part of his father’s house, with his wife he began to melt. She stretched her arms down between the planks. She pulled her head in after them. Her husband was left sitting there. Afterward her husband also went in between the planks. She went back to her father’s town. And they never saw them again.
The hero of this story was a shaman. [[294]]
[1] That is, sarcastic or insulting expressions or insinuations. The use of “bad words” is constantly referred to in the stories as a cause of trouble. [↑]
Those who were fasting to become shamans
[Told by Tom Stevens, chief of Those-born-at-House-point.]
At the town of Skedans two own brothers fasted to become shamans. After they had fasted for many years, the elder went out when the time came for them to go to bed. And, when he entered, he said he had come in from lying with a woman. He was telling a lie. He let him feel between his legs. It was wet [as if washed]. That was how he fooled him. Then his younger brother also went out, but he really lay with a woman. When day came, he lay dead.