38 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bdll. 39 



rocks in it, to another place. He was going to bathe to purify himself 

 from his wife. After he had purified himself, he came home, put 

 grease into the fire and began to motion toward his face and to blow 

 with his mouth. Then he took a wooden comb and began to comb his 

 hair. The man had covered his head with the blanket but was watch- 

 ing through a hole. 



Now the man arose and said to Wolverine-man, "I am going 

 home to my children." Then Wolverine-man told him not to say 

 where he had been but to keep him in remembrance by means of the 

 trap. He had stayed with Wolverine-man more than a month, and, 

 when he went down, he had a big pack of skins. 



Then he began to distribute these to all his friends, telling them that 

 he had discovered a place where there were lots of things, and that he 

 had a trap which never failed to kill ground hogs and other animals if 

 set on the mountain over night. When he explained to the people 

 how to set up this trap, a man named Coward (QiAtxa'n) said, "I 

 will go along with you." This time they did not go way up to the 

 place where Wolverine-man had helped him but into one of the lower 

 valleys where there were many ground hogs. There they constructed 

 a house out of dry sticks and began trapping. Coward had under- 

 stood him to say that he caught ground hogs by whittling up sticks 

 near the hole. That was what he was doing every day, until finally 

 his companion said, ''Wliat do you do by the holes that you do not 

 catch anything?" He said, "Why, I have already cut up two big 

 sticks by the holes." Then the other answered, "That is not right. 

 You have to cut and make a trap with which to trap the ground hog." 



After that this man thought he would do the same thing to the tree 

 he had seen Wolverine-man do, but he fell to the ground and was 

 barely able to crawl home. A^Tien he thought he had enough skins, he 

 started to pack up and return. The trap was very valuable at that 

 time because it was new, and anyone borrowing it paid a great deal. 

 So he became wealthy by means of it. He went to every other town 

 to let people know about it. They would invite him to a place, feast 

 him, and ask him for it. He became very wealthy. 



10. THE HALIBUT PEOPLE 



There was a very long town where people were fishing for halibut. 

 One evening the daughter of the cliief , whose house was in the middle 

 of the place, went down on the beach to cut up halibut, and slipped 

 on some halibut slime. She used bad words to it. 



A few days afterward many canoe-loads of people came to get tliis 

 girl in marriage, and she started ofi^ with them. But, although they 

 appeared to her like human beings, they were really the halibut peo- 

 ple. As soon as they had left the village they went around a })oint, 

 landed, and went up into the woods after spruce gum and pitch. 



