238 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bdll. 39 



frozen hard. Every day the young fellows in that village played 

 ball, and the girl's husband, who was a very ])()werful fellow, kept 

 throwing the ball farther and farther up river every time they played. 

 At last they became so angry that they caught him and tore his 

 clothes off. Then they saw that his skin was covered with blotches. 

 He was really the l!al! who had appeared to the girl like a yoimg 

 man. Then they said, ''Look at his body all in blotches. The idea 

 of that girl having such a fellow after she had refused high-caste 

 people like herself." 



Now the youth continued to sit day after day where his clothes 

 had been torn off, and although people went to call him every day, 

 saying that his wife wanted him to come back, he w^ould not answer 

 a word. Finally his wife went out herself and said, "You better 

 come home," but he answered, "Tell your father to tie your house 

 down very firmly and block up every aperture even to the smoke 

 hole." 



That night the l!al! started olT up Chilkat river, and a long time 

 afterward they noticed that the river w^as going dry. They won- 

 dered what was causing it, but it was really due to the l!al!, who had 

 grown to be a monster and was lying right across the stream higher 

 up. Very early one morning, however, they heard a terrible roar, 

 for the l!al! had left the place where he had been lying and the 

 ponded water was coming down. It washed away the entire village 

 except the house belonging to his wife's, father. 



78. THE WOJVIAN WHO MARRIED A TREE 



An old spruce tree stood at the end of a certain village. In this 

 same village a high-caste girl dreamed for several nights in succes- 

 sion that she was married to a fme-looking man, and by and by she 

 gave birth to a boy baby. As she was a very virtuous girl, people 

 wondered how^ she had come by it. 



The child grew very fast, and soon l)egan to talk. One da}' it 

 began calling for its father. It would not stop, although they tried 

 to humor it in every way. Then people wondered whom it was call- 

 ing, so the boy's grandfather invited all the men of that village and 

 of the surrounding villages to come to his house to see if the child 

 would be able to recognize its father. When this proved fruitless he 

 invited the people who inhabit trees to come in, and as soon as they 

 entered and sat down, the child stopped crying antl began crawling 

 around the circle, looking at each person. Then the people said, 

 "We will see where that fatherless child is going." 



At the very end of the line toward the door sat an old man, and 

 the child crawled right past the high-caste tree people tt)ward him. 

 As it did so, the others nudged one another, saying, ' ' Look at Kasa'l !." 

 They said this because the girl had had nothing to do with the high- 



