not make much headway, so he became tired and threw his paddles into the bow, exclaiming to his wife / Now you paddle! Then the salmon eggs shouted out, "It is very hard to be in stomachs. Hand the paddles here and let me pull." So the salmon eggs did, and, when they reached home, Raven took all of them and dumped them over board. But the dried salmon he carried up. That is why people now use dried salmon and do not care much for salmon eggs.
Journeying on, Raven came to a seal sitting on the edge of a rock, and he wanted to get it, but the seal jumped into the ocean. Then he said, "Y&kloGtU/Lf," because he was so sorry about it. Farther on he came to a town and went behind it to watch. After a while a man came out, took a little club from a certain place where he kept it in concealment, and said to it, "My little club, do you see that seal out there? Go and get it." So it went out and brought the little seal ashore. The club was hanging to its neck. Then the man took it up and said, "My little club, you have done well," after which he put it back in its place and returned to the town. Raven saw where it was kept, but first he went to the town and spoke kindly to the owner of it. In the night, however, when every one was asleep, he went back to the club, carried it behind a point and said to it, "See here, my little club, you see that seal out in the water. Go and get it." But the club would not go because it did not know him. After he had tried to get it to go for some time, he became angry and said to it, "Little club, don t you see that seal out there?" He kept striking it against a rock until he broke it in pieces.
Coming to a large bay, Raven talked to it in order to make it into Nass (i. e., he wanted to make it just like the Nass), but, when the tide was out great numbers of clams on the flats made so much noise shooting up at him that his voice was drowned, and he could not succeed. He tried to put all kinds of berries there but in vain. After many attempts, he gave it up and went away saying, "I tried to make you into Nass, but you would not let me. So you can be called SkAnA x" (the name of a place to the southward of Sitka).
Two brothers started to cross the Stikine river, but Raven saw them and said, "Be stones there." So they became stones.[1]
Starting on, he came to the ground-hog, people o.n the mainland. His mother had died some time before this, and, as he had no pro visions with which to give a feast, he came to the ground hogs to get some. The ground-hog people know when slides descend from the mountains, and they know that spring is then near at hand, so they throw all of their winter food out of their burrows. Raven wanted them to do this, so he said, "There is going to be a world snow slide." But the ground-hog chief answered, "Well! nobody in this town knows about it." Toward spring, however, the slide really took
- ↑ Possibly the heroes of story 3. See also story 31.
