[33] The fire is the commonest means of communication with supernatural beings. [↑]
[34] Tia, the Killer, is the deity who presides over death by violence, and he appears or is heard by those about to be killed. When seen he is headless, and from his severed neck blood continually flows. [↑]
The one abandoned for eating the flipper of a hair seal
[Told by John Sky of Those-born-at-Skedans]
He was a chief’s son. He was always in the back part of his father’s house whittling. He did not care to eat anything. [His father] owned the town of Metlakahtla.[1] He was “town-mother.”[2]
Then someone in the town killed a hair seal. Then they cooked it and called the people in for it. And the father of the boy who sat up whittling went thither. All the town people went in for it. There they ate.
As soon as they had stopped they carried some over to the chief’s wife. When they brought it in a flipper lay upon the top. Now, he who sat up whittling looked down. Then he came down and called to his mother: “Come, give me a wash basin. Let me wash my hands.” Then he said “Come, push that over to me,” and he ate it. He ate it all and pushed [the dish] back.
Now he (the chief) came in and said to his wife “My child’s mother, come let me eat the hair-seal flipper I sent home.” “My child has eaten that,” she said to her husband. From the high place where he was whittling he heard what his mother said.
After she had said this to her husband, he did not say a word. Presently he said “Well, say that I want them to move from this place to-morrow.” At once a slave went out and said, “To-morrow the chief says he is going to abandon his son.”