swANTux] TLINGIT MYTHS AND TEXTS 251 



the woods. As he went on he saw where people had been camping, 

 and from the dentaha shells left by these ])eople he made a beautiful 

 necklace. For a long time he wandered on with his head bent down, 

 and, when he looked up suddenly, he saw smoke ahead. He walked 

 toward it very fast. Wlien he came close he saw a woman tanning a 

 sldn. He showed her the necklace he had made and said, "I will give 

 you this string if you will tell me where my wife is." The woman 

 answered, "She is over there at the next camp." So he furally 

 reached her, and he remained with her for a long time, thinking that 

 he was among his brothers-in-law. 



The people of the village where this man was staying, however, 

 hated him and wanted to burn him to death. After they had kindled 

 the fire and were dragging him toward it he said, "Oh!^ how happy I 

 am. I want to die. I would rather you killed me right away than be 

 as I have been." When they heard that they stopped and began 

 pulling him toward the water instead. But he said that he was 

 afraid of water, and, as they dragged him along, he struggled hard and 

 seized everything about him. At last, when the}^ did throw him in, 

 he came up again in the middle of the lake and looked at them. Then 

 one of the peoj^le said, "See him. He is out there looking at us." 

 The man laughed at them, saying, "Don't you Iviiow that all of the 

 waters are my work? How foolish you were to ])ut me into the water 

 just where I like to be." He said this because he was a good swimmer 

 and there was a great deal of rain in his country. Afterward he 

 stayed in the water all the time he was there. 



All this while the man had really been u]) in the sk}-, and now he 

 wanted to get down. So he and his wife started back together and 

 came to a house where lived a certain woman. She was really the 

 spider and the house her web. Then tliis woman put them into a 

 web and began to lower them to the earth. Before they started she 

 said to them, "Wlien you get caught on anything jerk backward and 

 forward until the web comes loose." The tilings she thought they 

 might get stuck upon were the clouds. In tliis way the man and his 

 wife reached the earth safely, and afterward the web was drawn up. 

 Then they lived happily again as they had been living before the 

 woman was taken away. 



