28 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 39 



5. KAKA'« 



When IvAka' was taken south, eitlier to Cape Ommaney or farther, 

 a woman came to him and said, "I am in the same fix as you. We are 

 both saved '' by the hind otters." That is how he found out what had 

 happened to him. The woman also said, ''I am your friend, and I 

 have two land-otter husbands who will take you to your home." Then 

 she called him to her and began to look over his hair. Finally she 

 said, ''Your wife has put the sinew from a land-otter's tail through 

 your ear. That is what has caused you to become a land otter." 



Then they took down what looked to him like a canoe, but really it 

 was a skate. The skate is the land-otter's canoe. When they set 

 out, they put him into the canoe, laid a woven mat over him and 

 said, ''You must not look up again." He did look up, however, after 

 a time and found himself tangled among the kelp stems. These land 

 otters were going to become his spirits. 



On their journey they started to cross a bay called Ken to an 

 island called Tehiu', and, as daylight was coming on, they began to be 

 afraid that the raven would call and kill them before they reac-hed 

 the other side. It was almost daylight when they came to land, so 

 they ran off at once among the bushes and rocks, leaving KAka' to 

 pull uj) the canoe. This was hard work, and while he was at it the 

 skin was all worn from his lower arm, so he knew that it was a skate. 



Some people traveling in a canoe saw his shadow there and tried 

 hard to make him out clearly, but in vain. They did not want to have 

 him turn into a land otter, so they said, "IvAka', you have already 

 turned into a ground hog." 



By antl by one of his friends heard him singing in the midst of a 

 thick fog at a place near the southern end of BaranolT island on the 

 outside. Each time he ended his song with the words, "Let the log 

 drift landward with me." Then it would drift shoreward with him. 

 Meanwhile he ^^'as lying on the log head down with blood running oul. 

 of his nose and mouth and all kinds of sea birds were feeding on him. 

 It was his spirits that made him that way. The real land otters had 

 left him, but they had come to him again as spirits. 



Now the people sang a song on shore that could be heard where 

 IvAka' was floating, but, although they heard the noise of a shaman's 

 beating sticks, they could not get at him. Then the friend who had 

 first found him went ashore and fasted two days, after which he went 

 out and saw IvAka' lying on his back on the log. lie was as well as 

 when he had left Sitka. Then his friend brought him ashore, but the 

 land-otter spirits remained with him, and he became a great shaman. 



a See story 31, pp. 87-88. 



6 So interpreters persist in speaking of the capture of a liunian lieinir liy anthropomorphic animals 

 or other supernatural beings. 



