bSU TSIMSHIAN MYTHOLOGY [bth. ass. 31 



Finally he borrows Cormorant's blanket, and before daylight they go fishing, Raven 

 steering the boat. Cormorant catches many halibut, Raven none. The heads of all 

 the halibut are directed toward Cormorant. Raven asks him to go ashore. There 

 he louses him and tears.out his tongue. Then he turns all the halibut the other way 

 and explains to the people why Cormorant can not speak K 10. 



There are two versions the forms of which are presumably due to 

 misunderstanding, but which refer to the same tale. In one it is told 

 that the Sea Gull and the Cormorant quarrel. Raven tells Cormorant 

 that when fighting he presses himself against the ground with his 

 tongue. Thereupon he bites off Cormorant's tongue and transforms 

 it into an olachen. This incident takes the place of the character- 

 istic part of the tale of the origin of the olachen, when a bird pushes 

 Sea Gull's stomach and causes him to vomit an olachen or herring (see 

 p. 653). It has probably been inserted here by mistake Ska. 



In the version Ts 5 it is told that during a feast Raven gave Cor- 

 morant salmon to taste, and then tore out his tongue. While this 

 tale fits in very well with other tales of Raven's feast, during which 

 he teases the animals and gives them their present form, this is the 

 only version in which the Cormorant is introduced in this connection. 

 The version was told by a half-blood woman who had been away 

 from her home in Alaska for a great many years. 



There is a remarkable analogue of this story in the Old World. 

 W. Grube 1 translates (from P. Chimkevitch) a story of the Gold of 

 Amur River. 



A cannibal ogre visits two orphan sisters. He induces one of them to put her head 

 on his lap. He louses her, pretends to find a louse, which he wants to put on her 

 tongue. When she opens her mouth, he tears out the tongue and thus kills her. 



More distantly related is the tearing-out of the tongue of the 

 Raven by means of a thread, which occurs in Chukchee and Koryak 2 

 tales. 



Raven marries two Wolf girls. They ask him to show his tongue, which they tie 

 wit h sinews. 3 The Seals treat Raven's daughter in the same manner. 



(22) txa'msem kills grizzly bear (p. 87) 



(9 versions: Ts87; N556; Tk6; T14.265; T15.317; M6311; Neo.176; Ne9.215; Nu 

 ap 900. See also Sk/133; Sh 752; Kutenai 87 4 ) 



In a number of cases the tale of how Raven killed the Bear is con- 

 nected with the story of the Spring Salmon and of the Cormorant. 

 In these cases it would appear that Raven kills the Spring Salmon 

 in order to lie enabled to kill the Bear by deception. . 



Raven visits Bear and his two wives. Their house is full of provisions. He asks 

 Bear to go halibut fishing with him. Bear says he has no bait, and Raven maintains 

 that then they will cut bait from their own bodies. Raven goes secretly to catch a 



1 W. Grube, Das Schamanentum bei den Golden (Globus, lxxi. p. 92. 1897). 



■ W. Jochelson, The Koryak, p. 153. 



» W. Bogoras, The Folk-Lore of Northeastern \ ila '.I merican Anthropologist, X. s., vol. 1, p. 644, 1902). 



< Franz Boas, Kutenai Tales (Bulletin .59 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. ST). 



