64 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 39 



it SO that they might put this water on the rice when they ate it. As 

 he was bound for Khikwan, the village farthest up the river, he said 

 to his children, "Blow on the sail." They did so and passed right 

 up to Klukwan. Then he stood up in his canoe and began to talk. 

 They took all of his stuff up, and in the evening the drums were 

 beaten as a sign that he was going to give out property. 



He began to cry in the customary manner as he beat the drums. 

 Then he took a piece of bark and put it in front of his eyes, upon 

 which the tears ran down it in a stream. Afterward he gave out two 

 copper plates and invited the people to eat what he had brought. 

 Then the people danced for him in return, and a man came in with 

 something very shiny on top of his head." 



That is all he told when he returned. 



27. THE ALSEK KIVER PEOPLE 



Once there was a famine among the people of Alsek (Alse'x) river. 

 There were two shamans there, one of whom began singing to bring 

 up eulachon, while the other sang for strength in order to obtain 

 bears and other forest animals. 



The first shaman's spirit told him that if he would go down the 

 little rapids he would see great numbers of eulachon. So he dressed 

 up next morning and went straight down under the water in a little 

 canoe. 



That night the other shaman's spirits came to him, saying that the 

 first shaman would remain under water for four nights; that he had 

 gone into a house where were eulachon, salmon, and other fish and 

 had thrown the door open. 



At the end of four days they hunted all around and found him lying 

 dead on the beach amid piles of eulachon. As soon as they brought 

 him up, all the eulachon that were in the ocean started to run up 

 river, and everyone tried to preserve as many of them as he could. 



In the same town were two menstruant women, and the other 

 shaman told these that there would be a great many land otters about 

 the town that evening. Just as he had said, at the time when his 

 spirits came to him that evening, numbers of land-otter-mcn came 

 through the village. They could be heard whistling about the town. 

 Finally some one said, ''Why is it that it sounds as if they were all 

 where the two women are?" Sure enough, they found that the land 

 otters were talking inside of the two women. The ones that were 

 inside of them were really land-otter-men, that is, men who had been 

 taken away by the land otters and made like themselves. 



A person would often creep close up to these women to fuid out 

 what they were, but every time something spoke out inside, "Do not 



u This last was said to be " the way the story went," but otherwise was unexplained. 



