When it was evening he saw his mother with pitch on her face[10] weeping. He also saw his father walking about. After they had gone along for a while they said they had built a fort for them. Two went up to see it and said it was not quite finished. After that they went up again to see it. They said it was not quite finished; but the next time they went up to see it they said it was finished.
Then it was fine weather, and they pulled off a pole from inside the edges of the canoe and shook the sky with it. At once rain began to fall. Those in the canoe were happy. They prepared themselves. They shook their insides with anger, because they were going to fight the fort. That [the fort] was a fish trap, they say. At once they started up in a crowd.
He recognized his mother and swam ashore in front of her. Then his mother tried to club him, and he escaped into the creek. And when he did the same thing again he let his mother club him to death.
And when his mother started to cut off his head for immediate cooking the knife clicked upon something on his neck, and she looked. She recognized the copper necklace her son used to have around his neck.[11] [[13]]Then she put him upon a clean board. And his father stayed in the house [instead of going fishing]. She put him on the top of the house.
After four nights had passed over him a slight noise began in his throat. The top of his head came out. As the nights passed, he continued to come out. By and by the salmon skin was washed off him by the rain,[12] and he entered the house. Then he became a shaman. They sang for him.
They moved away, and the next year they came to the same place to get salmon. When the salmon came again and ran up a shining one was on top. Then he told them not to spear it, but it was the very one they tried to spear. By and by he made a spear for himself and speared it. When he had pulled it ashore, and the salmon died, he, too, died. He did not know that it was his own soul.
Then they made him sit up and sat above his head. They dressed some one to look like him, who went round the fire while they sang.[13] They also beat his drum. At the same time they sang for him. After four nights were passed they put him into a pool where salt and fresh [[14]]water mingled, where he had directed that he should be placed. They laid him upon the plank on which he used to lie. Then they put him there (in the pool). They also put his drum there. After this had turned around to the right for a while it vanished into a deep hole in the bottom. And now, when there is going to be plenty of salmon, they hear his drum sound in the deep place.
Here the story ends.
As might have been expected, this story was a very popular one along the salmon-frequented North Pacific coast, and several different versions of it have been already recorded. An excellent one was obtained by myself in English from an old Kaigani, derived from the Tlingit, among whom it appears to have originated. This will be found in volume V of the Memoirs of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, part I, pages 243 to 245. Apart from linguistics, the story is interesting from the point of view of Indian psychology. It was related by the present chief of Those-born-at-House-point (Na-iku′n qe′ig̣awa-i), once the leading family of Rose Spit and Cape Ball, on the eastern coast of Graham island.