All the people of the town then went into the house where she was, and she began to dance before them. Her dances and her songs were strange. Nevertheless she made them desire to come in and look at her.
Whenever she danced her former husband and her child came and looked on with them. When she ceased her dancing she pointed her finger at her child and said something. Her husband then explained her words. She said, [he explained], that she had a child like him in her own country. She then called her child, and she cried.
When she first danced her former husband recognized the motions that she used to make, and her voice. Although he recalled the one who was dead, he did not believe that it was she. That was why he continually went to look. Because she kept them up all night to see her dance they were all asleep in the morning. They learned her songs.
After a while, having positively identified his wife, he climbed up to where she had been put and untied the box cover. Only rotten wood was there. Some time after he had seen this, very early one morning after she had danced, while they still slept, he went thither. Then, after he had pulled from her face the thing that she wore as a hat as she slept, he saw it was his wife. And while they slept he killed them both.
Then they discovered it, but the woman’s friends were ashamed. The man’s friends were also ashamed. Nothing happened.[2]
A similar story from the Alaskan Haida will be found in Memoirs of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Volume V, part 1, page 263. [[354]]
[1] Tcꜝa′ogus, the word used here, is identical with “Stick Indians” of the Chinook jargon and is applied to all interior Indians, such as the Athapascan tribes and the interior Salish. In this case it would refer either to the Athapascans or to the Kitksan of the upper Skeena. [↑]
[2] Both parties were so ashamed that no fight resulted and no blood money was exacted. [↑]