boas] TSIMSHIAN MYTHS 313 



Iris guests before he distributed bis gifts, 1 "I announce that I am 

 taking all my grandfather's greatness. I shall be the greatest head 

 chief." None of the chiefs replied. He said, furthermore, "I shall 

 make my sister great among the chief tainesses. I give her the name 

 Ya°l, winch means 'eyes blinded by the sun;' and my old mother 

 shah keep her own name, Bidal." Then he gave his great gifts to 

 Ins guests — costly coppers, slaves, canoes, elk skins, boxes of grease, 

 boxes of dried berries, horn spoons, raccoon skins, and all kinds of 

 goods. 



Then his father was still more angry with his son. Before he left 

 his son's house, he said to Ins attendants that he would kill his own 

 son after the feast was over. The reason why the father was angry 

 was that he himself was the head chief among the Tsimshian at that 

 time. 



When the feast of the new chief, Asagulyaan, was over, there was 

 no trouble among the people in all the tribes of the Tsimsbian in the 

 old towns at Mctlakahtla. It was midwinter. 



Then Asagulyaan took Ins live arrow and went over to his father's 

 village secretly at night. He crept up to Ins father's house at mid- 

 night; and when he came to the smoke hole, he took up Ins live arrow, 

 and said to it, " Go through the heart of the chief who killed all my 

 relatives, then come back to me tomorrow!" Then the arrow went 

 right into the heart of the chief, who died there, and the arrow 

 remained there the whole night. 



All the people in the house of the chief were quiet. When the sun 

 rose up high in the sky, one of the chief's beloved wives went to call 

 him. She took the mat off from her husband's face, and, behold! 

 he was dead. The end of an arrow appeared over his heart. Then 

 she cried out, "Oh, dear chief! who lulled you?" Then the whole 

 chief's tribe came in, and they saw the end of the arrow in his heart. 

 So they took the arrow from the chief's heart and passed it around to 

 look at it. They saw that the head of the arrow was like that of a 

 reptile, whose eyes twinkled when any one looked at its face. They 

 saw that the teeth of the arrow were like dogs' teeth. 



After the chief's people had examined the arrow, it flew from their 

 hands through the smoke hole, and said " Guldana!" and therefore 

 the people call the living arrow " guldana." 



The chief's people went to every village and inquired who shot the 

 chief in Ids house, and all the villages answered that they had nothing 

 against the great chief. Therefore they came back home late in the 

 evening. Then the whole tribe of the chief singed their hair with 

 fire, as was the custom among the people when a great chief died; and 

 the whole tribe blackened their faces with charcoal, great and small, 



1 It is the custom to lift a costly copper above the heaJ of a great chief to confirm his words. 



