28 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 56 



would laugh. Her husband did whatever she said, and he died. The boy died 

 too. Her husband and son died because she wished them to die. She wished 

 this, so she could get the man she wanted. 



The native still chants the words in his own language, meaning, "I wish my 

 husband and son would die," to the tune of a robin whistling. The laugh • 

 referred to is the clattering noise which a robin makes when excited. 



THE MARTEN 



The marten has a white or reddish bridge across his breast. Whenever he 

 was in an Indian camp and they were sitting around the fire eating he always 

 looked hungry and watched every one eat, looking greedily for something for 

 himself. One Indian didn't like being ogled, and threw a chunk of king salmon 

 grease which struck him on the breast and made this bridge-mark. 



THE WOLVERENE AND THE TRAVELER 



The wolverene is supposed to be the marten's "uncle and the wolf's brother- 

 in-law. 



One time a man was walking down along a creek. It was winter. He met a 

 wolverene coming up. The wolverene had no sled nor toboggan nor anything 

 except a caribou-skin blanket on him. As soon as the man saw him, the 

 wolverene went into the woods and filled his blanket with brush from spruce 

 trees and made believe he had a load of utensils. His family was following a 

 few miles back. The wolverene sat on his load and made the spruce sticks 

 break. Then he told the man that he had broken his utensils. The man sat 

 on his snow-shoes. The wolverene was bad and reached a long copper hook 

 \mder the snow to catch hold of the lower snow-shoe and trip him. The 

 wolverene would eat men. The man watched the wolverene because he knew 

 what the wolverene would do. The wolverene, after tripping the man, would 

 kill him with his copper ax. The man put his rabit-skin cap under himself, 

 so when the hook came under him it caught the cap and pulled it out instead 

 of catching his leg. Immediately then the man jumped on the wolverene, 

 grabbed the wolverene's ax, and killed him with his own ax. The man built a 

 camp. He cut off the wolverene's right leg at the shoulder and hung it over 

 the fire to cook. Then he laid the wolverene on his right side to conceal the 

 cut-off shoulder. He put the hook in the wolverene's left hand, giving him the 

 appearance of poking up the fire. This was to deceive the wolverene's family 

 that, coming soon, would think he had something and was cooking it. Then 

 the man hid in the snow about fifty yards away and watched. When the 

 wolverene's family came the young ones tried to wake him up to tell him that 

 the shoulder was cooked, but they could not wake him up. Then they ate up 

 the shoulder, not knowing it was their father's. Then they tried to wake him 

 up more, and found out that he was dead and his shoulcjer off. Then they 

 knew that they had eaten their father's shoulder. They took their spears and 

 hunted all around for the man. They knew he had come down the river to the 

 camp by his snow-shoe tracks, but he concealed his last tracks. They went 

 about stabbing their spears into the snow to find him. When they came near 

 him he jumped up on his snow-shoes and they all ran after, trying to catch 

 him. The man could not run fast enough, so he wished for a warm wind to 

 come so that the young wolverenes would get overheated and have to throw 

 their coats away. The mother wolverene followed them, and every time one 



