TLTNGIT MYTHS AND TEXTS 



Recorded by 

 John R. S wanton 



INTRODUCTION 



The following myths and texts were collected at Sitka and Wran- 

 gell, Alaska, in January, February, March, and April, 1904, at the 

 same time as the material contained in the writer's ])aper on the 

 Social Condition, Beliefs, and Linguistic Relationship of the Tlingit 

 Indians published in the Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau. 

 For further information regarding these ])eople the reader is referred 

 to that paper, to Krause's Tlinkit Indianer (Jena, 1885), Emmons' 

 Basketry of the Tlingit Indians, Niblack's Coast Indians of Southern 

 Alaska and Northern British Columbia, Ball's Alaska and its Resources, 

 Boas's Indianische Sagen von der Nord Pacifischen Kiiste Amerikas 

 (Berlin, 1895), and the same writer in the Fifth Report of the Com- 

 mittee Appointed by the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, to Investigate the Northwestern Tribes of Canada, and the 

 two special reports on Alaska for the censuses of 188X) and 1890. 

 Most of the ethnologic information contained in the works of Venia- 

 minoff and other early writers is incorporated into the work of Krause. 



Stories 7, 19, 94, 101, 102, and 103 were related by the writer's Sitka 

 interpreter, Don Cameron, of theChilkat Ka'gwAntan; stories 96 and 97 

 by Katlian, chief of the KiksA'di; story 105 by a Yakutat man, 

 Q!a'dAstin; and all the other Sitka stories, including the texts num- 

 bered 89-93, 95, 98, 99, and 104— by an old man of the Box-house 

 people, named Dekina'k!". From Katishan, chief of the Kasq!ague'di 

 of Wrangell, were obtained stories 31, 32, 33, 38, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 

 71, 72, 73, 74, 100, 106, and the potlatch speeches. Stories 34, 35, 

 42, 50, 52, 53, 54, 57, 64, and 75 were related by an old Kake man 

 named KAsa'nk!, and the remaining Wrangell tales by Katishan's 

 mother. The last-mentioned has lived for a considerable time among the 

 whites at Victoria, but with one exception her stories appear to have 

 been influenced little by the fact. Her son has been a church mem- 

 ber and shows a moralizing tendency; at the same time he was con- 

 sidered the best speaker at feasts in past times, and is supposed to 

 have a better knowledge of the myths than anyone else in Wrangell. 

 Dekina'k!" of Sitka is also a church member but his stories appear 

 to be entirely after the ancient patterns. 

 49438— Bull. 39—09 1 



