boas] TSIMSHIAN MYTHS 207 



28. The Town of Chief Peace ' 



In a village at Metlakahtla lived a great chief. His chieftainess 

 was a great noblewoman; and although the cliief had many wives, 

 he loved her most, for she was a princess, the daughter of the cliief 

 of another village. Therefore her husband loved her and honored 

 her. 



Many years had passed since they were married, and still she had 

 no children; but when she was getting old, she conceived and bore 

 him a son. They loved him very much. Soon he grew up; and when 

 he was a young man, everybody loved him. 



The father wished his son to marry, and therefore the young man 

 was married to a princess. His father gave away much property to 

 the relatives of the princess; and the princess's relatives — her uncle 

 and also her father — gave him four costly coppers, elk sldns, boxes 

 of crabapples, boxes of cranberries mixed with grease, and all kinds 

 of food. The young man loved his wife, and all his people loved her. 



The princess, however, was downcast because her husband was a 

 great gambler. Every day he would go to the gambling-house, and 

 he would join the gamblers. Sometimes he lost much. At other 

 times he won. His wife would stay at home. Soon the princess gave 

 birth to a child. 



One day the prince went, as he was used to doing, to the gambling- 

 house, and he gambled and lost all his property, and he lost all his 

 father's property — his costly coppers, his large canoes, and his 

 slaves — and he lost also his father and his mother and his wife and 

 his little boy. Late in the evening he came home. He was very 

 sorry on account of what he had done to his good family. 



As soon as his wife saw him enter, she arose and took a dried 

 salmon; but the young man was silent. He stared into the fire like 

 one dumb. His wife roasted the salmon, cut it, and put it in a large 

 dish and placed it before her husband; but the prince did not take 

 any notice of it, for he felt distressed because he had lost all his 

 property and his family. Therefore he kept silent. The dish 

 remained untouched in front of him. When it was late in the evening, 

 the woman scolded because her husband did not eat the salmon 

 which she had prepared for him. Therefore she took the dish away, 

 and said, "You ought to eat the salmon of the daughter of Cliief 

 Peace." She was angry, and threw the dish with the salmon into 

 the fire. 



Then the young man's heart was full of sorrow. He arose and 

 went to bed and lay down there. He thought that he would not be 



' The people have a little story about a village on an island way out in the ocean, in which a great chief 

 is said to live, Chief Peace. He is said to have a very beautiful daughter called Peace Woman, a very 

 beautiful girl; and many princes tried to marry her, but they could not reach her town, because it is too 

 far away from the mainland. They could not find their way back from her home, and they all perished on 

 their way out on the ocean— Henky W. Tate.— Notes, p. 779. 



