22 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 30 



3. ENGLISH VERSION OF THE STORY OF THE FOUR 



BROTHERS « 



There were foiir brothers who owned a dog of an Athapascan 

 variety called dzl.* They had one sister. One day the dog began 

 barking at sometliing. Then KacIvIa^lIv!, the eldest brother, piit red 

 paint inside of his blanket, took his rattle, and followed. The other 

 brothers went with him. They pursued it up, up, up, into the sky. 

 The dog kept on barking, and they did not know what it was going 

 to do. It was chasing a cloud. 



When they got to the other side of the world they came out on the 

 edge of a very steep cliff. They did not know what to do. The dog, 

 however, went right down the cliff", and they saw the cloud still going 

 on ahead. Now these brothers had had nothing to eat and were very 

 hungry. Presently they saw the dog coming up from far below 

 bringing the tail of a salmon. After a while they saw it run back. 



Then they said to one another, "What shall we do? We might as 

 well go down also." But, when Lqlaya'k!, the youngest brother, 

 started he was smashed in pieces. The two next fared in the same 

 way. IvAcklA'Lk!, however, braced his stick against the wall behind 

 him and reached the bottom in safety. Then he put the bones of 

 each of his brothers together, rubbed red paint on them, and shook 

 his rattle over them, and they came to life. 



Starting on again around this world, they came to a creek full of 

 salmon. This was where the dog had been before. Wlien they got 

 down to it they saw a man coming up the creek. He was a large 

 man with but one leg and had a kind of spear in his hand with which 

 he was spearing all the salmon. They watched him from between 

 the limbs of a large, dead tree. When he got through hooking the 

 salmon, he put all on two strings, one of which hung out of each cor- 

 ner of his mouth. Then he carried them down. 



Then Lqlaya'k! said to his brothers, "Let us devise some plan for 

 getting the salmon spear." So he seized a salmon, brought it ashore 

 and skinned it. First IvAcklA'bk! tried to get inside of it but failed. 

 When Lq!aya'k! made the attempt, however, he swam off at once, 

 and, if one of his brothers came near him, he swam away. Then the 

 other brothers sat up in the dead tree, IvAcklA'Lk! at the top. 



When the big man came up again after salmon, Lqlaya'k! swam 

 close up to him, and he said, "Oh! my salmon. It is a fine salmon." 

 But, when he made a motion toward it with his spear, it swam back 

 into deep water. Finally it swam up close, and the big num si)eared 

 it easily. Then Lqlaya'k! went to the tail of the fish, cut the string 



a This story was told by Dekina'k!". Accordiug to some, the story begins with tlie birth of five chil- 

 dren from a dog lather. See stories 97 and 31 (pp. 99-103). 



b LAkitcAne', the father of these boys, is said to have lived near the site of the Presbyterian school at 

 Sitka and to have used the "blarney stone,'' so called, as a grindstone. 



