[21] Meaning “How pretty it was!” [↑]
[22] In the Masset version of the Raven story, Raven tells Woodpecker to go to the dead tree which is to be his grandfather. [↑]
Sacred-one-standing-and-moving, Stone-ribs, and Upward
[Told by John Sky of Those-born-at-Skedans]
In Sealion-town[1] one began to bathe for supernatural power. All sorts of weak things came through him [making him worthless]. He stayed with his eight younger brothers and his mother.
By and by his younger brothers disappeared. It was not known whither they had gone. Morning came and his mother wept. Again when day broke she wept. One day, when she stopped crying, she said: “My eldest boy is as if he did not exist. When morning comes my mind is always the same” (i.e., without gladness).
After she had said this to him for some time he got tired of hearing it and said to his sister: “Sister, pour salt water into the box my mother owns so that I may bathe in it.” Then she put on her belt. She laid her mother’s stone box down near the door and poured water into it.
Then her brother crept over to it and just managed to crawl into it. After he had stayed in it for a while he could not keep his buttocks under water. Then his sister pressed down on his back with the poker which lay near the fire. After she had pressed down upon him for a while she took away the stick. There was a small depth of water over his back. Now she pressed him down again, and, when she removed it from him, his back was well under the water. Then he broke the sides of the box by stretching.