swANTON] TLINGIT MYTHS AND TEXTS 59 



This man led him throuo-h a tloor into what he at first thousht was 

 a house, but it was really the inside of the mountain. All at once it 

 looked very strange to him. Piles of horns lay about everywhere. 



Meanwhile all of his frientls had missed him and were hunting about, 

 but had to go home without him. They thought he was gone for- 

 ever. They hunted for him every day and found his horn spear 

 stuck into the ground at a certain place near the top of the mountain, 

 but nothing more. After searching everywhere in vain the\^ became 

 discouraged and beat the drums for him. 



Meanwhile the mountain sheep tried to fit a pair of horns on the 

 young man's head. They heated these first in the fire, and tried to 

 put them on, when it seemed to him as if the insides of his head were 

 all coming out. 



The people kept up their search for him, however, and about a year 

 afterward a man climbed up on the same mountain to hunt sheep. 

 Above him he saw a big flock, and he heard a noise as though some 

 one were shouting or talking there. Then he went straight down, for 

 he knew that it was the person who had been lost, and he knew that 

 the mountain sheep had captured him. Pointing this mountain out 

 to the people, he said to them, "It is he, for I know his voice." So 

 all the people started up. 



Now the sheep could see whenever the Indians set out to hunt for 

 the person they had taken, and the^T^ said to him, "There come your 

 friends. If you will tell them to throw away their weapons, we will 

 let you go to them." So he said to his friends, "If you will lay down 

 your hunting weapons, I will tell you what these mountain sheep say 

 to me." Afterward he said, "They say that I am being punished 

 because you are destroying them too much, and, wdien you have 

 killed them, you take the heads and put them on sticks." Although 

 he was among the mountain sheep he retained his own language. lie 

 said besides, "The mountain-sheep chief tells me to say to you that 

 you must hang up the sheep skins with their heads toward the moun- 

 tain and the rising sun and put eagle feathers upon them. They tell 

 me to say, 'Do not put our heads on sticks. Grizzly-bears' heads 

 are the only ones you should treat that way — not ours.'" One 

 could not see or hear this man unless he were specially purified by 

 bathing in urine. Afterward the sheep went right into the mountain 

 with him to the place where they have their homes. 



Now they tried in every way to recover him, and finally came out 

 with dogs. Then the mountain sheep said to him, ' ' You can go among 

 your friends after a wdiile, but now you may talk to them from the top 

 of a little cliff." So his friends came up underneath this, and he 

 talked down to them. By and by the sheep again changed their 

 minds regarding him, and one day he said to his friends, "This is the 

 last time I shall come to see you. If you are going to begin a war on 



