SWANTON] TLINGIT MYTHS AND TEXTS 419 



the sea, let it float ashore, and threw it upon a bush where it became 

 Reins hracteosum (cax). Drinking water he called cfitlk!. He placed 

 a woman at the head of a creek and said that the salmon should go up 

 to see her. He made the quills of the porcupine out of 3'ellow cedar 

 bark. He made the west wind, which he placed in a house on top of a 

 mountain, and decreed that it should hurt nobody. He also told a 

 person how to obtain strength enough to paddle home by taking up a 

 piece of red salmon and blowing behind him. Raven made also 

 the south wind and the north wind. He made all the other native races 

 of people. The dog was at first a human being, but Raven altered him 

 because he was too quick. One time Raven came to a thing called 

 fat-on-the-sea. He made it go under water and come up again, and 

 every time it came up he cut somc^ of it off with his paddle. The 

 eighth time it went under for good. At one place a person came out 

 and spoke angrily to Raven, whereupon he turned him into a wild 

 celery plant. He tied something around the head of a clam and gave 

 it the same name as a man's privates. 



After having tried every sort of contrivance for supporting- the 

 earth. Raven drained a sea-water pond when the tide was out, killed a 

 beaver living at the bottom of it, and used its foreleg. Old-woman- 

 under-the-earth has charge of it. Afterward Raven killed a big whale 

 and tried to have it towed into the pond where the beaver had been. 

 Finally he got tired out and turned it into stone along with the four 

 canoes that were towing it. He gave names to several other places in 

 this neighborhood. 



2. The Bkj Clam 



In Tenakee inlet is a place named after a person who was swallowed 

 by a halibut in attempting to wade over to some girls picking ])erries 

 at a strawberry patch on the other side. In the same neighborhood is 

 a big clam which used to swallow canoes. Raven, however, directed 

 a little mink to call to it to stick its head out, and after it had done so the 

 people plunged sticks into it and cut in two the ligament for closing 

 its valves. 



3. English Version of the Story of the Four Brothers 



Four brothers owned a dog which pursued a cloud up into the sky, 

 and they followed it, coming out at the edge of a very steep place on 

 the other side of the world. Descending this with difficulty they came 

 upon a one-legged man spearing salmon, and one of them stole his 

 spear point by concealing himself in a salmon and cutting it off". Next 

 day the man discovered them and killed three, but the fourth, who 

 had red paint and a rattle, assisted by his dog, killed him and i'<^stored 

 his brothers to life. After that they killed the bear chief, whose slave 

 they had already destroyed, and went down to his house, where the 



