Ten'a texts and tales from Anvik, Alaska / by John W. Chapman, with vocabulary by Pliny Earle Goddard.

Chapman, John W. (John Wight), 1858-1939.

Date:: 1914

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ten'a texts and tales from Anvik, Alaska / by John W. Chapman, with vocabulary by Pliny Earle Goddard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

35/248 (page 23)

very beautiful woman. Her father, they say, was very wealthy, — he whose daughter it was who did not wish to marry. All the young men of the village tried hard to get her. Some of them brought wood and put it on top of the house (near the smoke-hole). That enemy of Cupid ran out. “ What are they getting it for ?” says she. She throws it over the bank and ofoes in a^ain. All the men do the I’ll-try-to-get-rm-the-one-that-will-try-to-get act, but it is of no use. Some of them set her father’s fish- trap for him, and then they went back and sat down. “Enough of her!” said those village boys. “We just can’t get her,” said they. At length they took other women, ugly or not. Men came to see her from other villages, too; but they got nothing but “No.” Some went to get deer.^ “No,” it was. Then the people of those villages quit her. “Enough!” said they. People from villages everywhere came to see her, north and south, saying, “Let me try!” but “No,” it was. Then they gave it up, too. Down in the kashime was a Raven man. Now, he began to think, that Raven, there in the dark. All night long he lay awake, thinking. “I think I had better tr^q too,” thought he. Now, it was dark while they had been doing all these things. So he went out; and he travelled, and he travelled. Dusk or darkness, no sun no moon, only darkness, yet he travelled. When he was tired (of walk- ing), then he would fly ; and then again he would change into a man. When his winors hurt him, he would change into a man ; and when his legs hurt him, he would fly. By and by it became light with him, as if dawn were approaching, and at length it was as bright as day. Then, as he flew, he saw a village where there were many people (walking around in the) daylight. Then, near the village, he changed himself into a man, and kept on toward the village. The local term “deer” has been used throughout for “caribou.”