176 BUEEAIT OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY Lbull. 39 



37. ORIGIN OF THP: SCREECH OWL« 



There was a certain woman at Sitka living with her husband and 

 her husband's mother. One eveni'iig she got hemlock branches, made 

 strings out of red -cedar bark, tied them together, and put them 

 around herself. Then she went out to a flat rock, still called Herring 

 rock, where herring are very abundant, just as the tide was coming 

 over it, and, when the fish collected in the branches, she threw them 

 up on the beach. Every day during the herring season she did the 

 same thing, and after she reached the house she put her apron care- 

 fully away until next time. 



One day her old mother-in-law heard her cooking the herring and 

 said, "What is that you are cooking, my son's wife?" "Oh!" she 

 answered, "a few clams that I have collected." "Will you give me 

 some?" said the old woman, for she was hungry, but, when she 

 reached out her hand for it, her daughter-in-law dropped a hot rock 

 into it and burnt her. 



When her son came home that evening the old woman told him 

 what had happened. She said, "She was cooking something. I 

 know that it did not smell like clams. When I asked her for some she 

 gave me a hot rock and burnt my hand. I wonder where she got 

 that fish, for I am sure that it was some sort of fish. Immediately 

 after you leave she is ofi". I d(m't know what she does." 



When the man heard that, he and his brother who had been hunt- 

 ing with him started out at once before his wife saw them. They 

 pretended that they were again going hunting, but they returned 

 immediately to a place where they could watch the village. From 

 there they saw the woman put on her apron of hemlock boughs, go 

 out to the rock, and come home with the herring. As soon as she had 

 gone in they went out themselves and got a canoe load of the fish. 

 Then the woman's husband went u}) to the house and said to his wife, 

 "I have a load of herring down there." So she ran down to the canoe 

 and saw that it was loaded with them. She began shouting up to 

 them, "Bring me down my basket," for she wanted to carry up the 

 fish in it. The people heard her, but they felt ill-disposed toward her 

 on account of the way she had treated her mother-in-law, so they 

 paid no attention. She kept on shouting louder and louder, and 

 presently her voice became strange. She shouted, "Hade' wudika't, 

 wudika't, wudika't."'' She also began hooting like an owl. 



As she kept on making this noise her voice seemed to go farther 

 away fi'om the village. The people noticed it but paid no attention. 

 After she had asked for the basket right behind the village, she 

 sounded still more like an owl, and finally she ceased to ask for the 



« story 98 is another version. 



b This way with the basket (kat). 



