130 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY Ibull. 39 



them." After this it seemed to the boy as if a door were opened for 

 him, and he saw the canoe he had left with the boys in it. They 

 said, "What happened to you? Where have you been?" But he 

 only answered, "Did not you see me sitting on the very top of this 

 log?" He was so smart that they believed him. Then they reached 

 home safe and the grandparents were very glad to see him, but 

 only his mother knew what had happened. Like his father, the boy 

 was a great hunter and fisherman. Before he came the people of 

 that town had l)een starving, but now, especially since he had obtained 

 the club, they had })lenty to eat. His grandfather's house was 

 always full of halibut, seal, and sea-lion meat. 



Then his grandmother said to him, "Grandson, do not go over 

 in that direction. None of the village people go there, and those 

 who have done so never returned." This, however, only made the 

 boy anxious to see what was the trouble, so he went there and, kill- 

 ing some seals and halibut, put them into the water to entice the 

 creature up. Finally he saw a gigantic cral) (s!a-u) coming up in the 

 sea, so he put his club into the ocean, and it broke the crab's shell 

 and killed it. Then he and his slave pulled the big crab ashore, and he 

 took a load of its flesh home to his grandparents. His grandparents 

 had worried all the time he was away, but his mother knew that her 

 son had power over all kinds of fish, because his father is chief of the 

 sea. Everything in the sea is under him. 



Another time his grandmother said to him, "There is a place over 

 in this direction where lives a big mussel (yis!). No canoe can pass 

 it without being chewed up. " So he went to the mussel and killed 

 that. He took all of its shell home, and the people throughout the 

 village bought it of him for spears, arrow points, and knives. 



At the same time he also brought home a load of cockles, clams, 

 anil other shellfish. In the Tsimshian country the shellfish are fuie, 

 and the mussels are not poisonous as they are here. In April the 

 Alaskans do not dare to eat shellfish, especially mussels, claiming 

 that they are poisonous. It is because he killed the big mussel that 

 they are all poisonous here. Since his time, too, boys and girls have 

 done whatever their fathers used to do. 



After that the boy married and had a son who was very imlike 

 him. His name was Man-that-eats-the-leavings (Qla-I'te-cidva-qri), 

 and, when he grew uj), he was worthless. He seemed to see the 

 shellfish, however, and understood the shellfish language. 



At the same time the daughter of tlie chief in a certain village not 

 far away went out of doors and slipped on slime which had dropped 

 from a devilfish hung up in front. She said, "Oh! the dirty thing." 

 About the middle of the following night a fine-looking young man 



