SWANTON] TLTNGIT MYTHS AND TEXTS 15 



not make much headway, so he became tired and threw his paddles into 

 the bow, exchiiming to his wife, ' ' Now you paddle! " Then the salmon 

 eggs shouted out, "It is very hard to be in stomachs. Hand the 

 paddles here and let me pull." So the salmon eggs did, and, when 

 they reached home, Raven took all of them and dumped them over- 

 board. But the dried salmon he carried up. That is why people 

 now use dried salmon and do not care much for salmon eggs. 



Journeying on, Raven came to a seal sitting on the edge of a rock, 

 and he wanted to get it, but the seai jumped into the ocean. Then 

 he said, " Yak!oct!A'L!," because he was so sorry about it. Farther 

 on he came to a town and went -behind it to watch. After a while a 

 man came out, took a little club from a certain place where he kept 

 it in concealment, and said to it, "My little club, do you see that 

 seal out there? Go and get it." So it went out and brought the 

 little seal ashore. The club was hanging to its neck. Then the man 

 took it up and said, "My little club, you have done well," after 

 which he put it back in its place and returned to the town. Raven 

 saw where it was kept, but first he went to the to\VTi and spoke 

 kindly to the owner of it. In the night, however, when every one was 

 asleep, he went back to the club, carried it behind a point and said to 

 it, "See here, my little club, you see that seal out in the water. Go 

 and get it." But the club would not go because it did not know him. 

 After he had tried to get it to go for some time, he became angry and 

 said to it, "Little club, don't you see that seal out there?" He kept 

 striking it against a rock until he broke it in pieces. 



C'Oming to a large bay. Raven talked to it in order to make it into 

 Nass (i. e., he wanted to make it just like the Nass), but, when the 

 tide was out great numbers of clams on the flats made so much noise 

 shooting up at him that his voice w^as drowned, and he could not 

 succeed. He tried to put all kinds of berries there but in vain. 

 After many attempts, he gave it up and went away saying, "I tried 

 to make 3^011 into Nass, but you would not let me. So you can be 

 called SkAUA'x" (the name of a place to the southward of Sitka). 



Two brothers started to cross the Stikine river, but Raven saw 

 them and said, "Be stones there." So they became stones.** 



Starting on, he came to the ground-hog people on the mainland. 

 His mother had died some time before this, and, as he had no pro- 

 visions with which to give a feast, he came to the gi'ound hogs to get 

 some. The ground-hog people know when slides descend from the 

 mountains, and they know that spring is then near at hand, so they 

 throw all of their ^\^nter food out of their burrows. Raven wanted 

 them to do this, so he said, "There is going to be a world snow slide." 

 But the ground-hog chief answered, "Well! nobody in this town 

 knows about it." Toward spring, however, the slide really took 



a Possibly the. heroes of story 3. See also story 31. 



