swANTON] TLINGIT MYTHS AND TEXTS 175 



refused to give her the child she handed him another. Then he gave 

 the chikl back, and she said, "That scratch I made on your back will 

 be a long time in healing. If you give a scab from it to any one of 

 your people who is poor, he will become very rich. Do not give it 

 to anybody but your very near relations." 



And so in fact it turned out. The sore did not heal for a long time, 

 not even after he had become very rich. Everything that he put his 

 hand to prospered, and the relations to whom he had given scabs 

 became the richest ones next to him. 



36. TPIE THUNDERS 



A high -caste girl who had four brothers went out of the house 

 one morning and stepped on a snail. Then she said ''Oh! this 

 nasty thing. There isn't a time when I go out but that snail is around 

 this house." The evening after a youth of about her own age came 

 to the girl, and she went off with him. 



When the people found that she had disappeared they searched for 

 her everywhere. They did not know what had l)ecome of her. Her 

 brothers also hunted everywhere, but for a long time without result. 

 Some distance behind the village was a high, perpendicular cliff 

 without a tree or a bush on it, and half way up they at last saw their 

 sister with a very large snail coiled around her. They ran about 

 vmderneath and called to her to throw herself down, but she could 

 not. She was stuck there. 



After this the four brothers tried to fmd some way of flying. They 

 tried one kind of wood after another and also bone for wings but in 

 vain. After they had flowai for a short distance they always dropped 

 down again. Finally they employed yellow cedar. The first time 

 they used it they got half way up to the place where their sister was, 

 but the second time they reached her and dragged her down, leaving 

 the snail still there. 



But the four brothers now left their own village, because they said 

 that their sister had disgraced them, and they became the Thunders. 

 When they move their wings you hear the thunder, and, when they 

 wink, you see the lightning. 



At the time when these brothers first went away the people at their 

 father's village were starving, so they flew out over the ocean, caught a 

 whale and brought it to the town that it might be found next morn- 

 ing. So nowadays people claim that the Thunder is powerful and 

 can get anything, because they know that it was powerful at that 

 time. After the famine was over they left the world below, went to 

 the sky to live, and have never been seen since. 



The Taqestina' claim the Thunder, because those brothers belonged 

 to that family. 



