SWANTON] TLINGIT MYTHS AND TEXTS 57 



Then the brant chief said to his son-in-hiw, "Your wives' friends 

 are ahnost destroyed. Coukl you do anything with your bows and 

 arrows to help them?" You coukl not see whether these were brants 

 or people. They looked just like people to him. When he ran 

 among them to help his wives' friends, he killed numbers at each shot 

 and made them flee away from him. The heron tribe was so scared 

 that they sent out word they would make peace. So messengers 

 were sent back and forth, and the heron chief was taken up among 

 the brants while the brant chief was taken up among the herons." 

 They renamed the heron with his own name and the brant with his 

 own name. In making peace they had a great deal of sjiort and all 

 sorts of dances. From that time on the heron has known how to 

 dance, ami one alwaj^s sees him dancing by the creeks. Then the birds 

 began to lay up herbs and all kinds of things that grow along the beach, 

 for their journey north. 



Meanwhile the man's people had already given a feast for him, and 

 he never returned to his father. He became as one of the l)rants. 

 That is why in olden times, when brants were flying along, the people 

 would ask them for food. 



25. STORY OF THE PUFFIN 



There is a place called GanAxa' and a creek close by called GanAxa'- 

 hln whither many people used to go to tlry salmon and do other work. 

 One day some women went out from there at low tide to a neighboring 

 island to dig shellfish. They l^rought their canoe to a place where 

 there was a hole in the side of the island, but, when they endeavored 

 to land, a breaker came in, upset the canoe, and drowned all of them 

 except one. In former times, when this woman went by in her 

 father's canoe, she used to think the birds here looked ]:)retty and 

 was in the habit of saying, *'I wish I could sit among those birds." 

 These birds were the ones that saved her. They felt so happy at 

 having gotten her that they flew about all the time. 



Meanwhile drums were beaten at the town to call ]:)eople to the 

 death feast, for they thought that she was drowned. 



One time a canoe from the village containing her father happened 

 to pass this place, and they said to him, "Look among those birds. 

 Your daughter is sitting there." 



The puffin chief had ordered the lAgwa'tc!, a bird which lives on 

 the outer islands and is the puffin's slave, to braid the woman's hair, 

 and she always sat on the edge of the clifl^. 



Her father was very rich, so he filled many canoes with sea-otter, 

 beaver, and marten skins for the birds to settle on when they flew 

 out. When they reached the place, however, he could not see his 



a See Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 451. 



