Two orphaned girls, shunned by their peers while playing house under a cliff, suffered when the cliff collapsed, trapping everyone. Using food to attract birds, they escaped, though one orphan became stuck. Tragically, she was split in two as the cliff closed. Her head transformed into the fern root kwalx, and her body became a groundhog, intertwining her spirit with nature’s elements.
Source:
Tlingit Myths and Texts
by John R. Swanton
[Smithsonian Institution]
Bureau of American Ethnology
Bulletin 39
Washington, 1909
► Themes of the story
Transformation: The girl’s metamorphosis into a fern root and a groundhog exemplifies a profound physical change, a common motif in myths to explain natural phenomena.
Origin of Things: This story provides an explanation for the existence of the fern root and the groundhog, attributing their origins to the tragic fate of the orphaned girl.
Sacrifice: The narrative highlights the unintended sacrifice of the girl, whose transformation leads to the creation of natural elements, underscoring themes of loss and the interconnectedness of life and nature.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Tlingit people
Myth recorded in English at Wrangell, Alaska, in January-April 1904
The girls of a certain place were playing house under a cliff back of their village, and each of them took some kind of food there. Among them were two very poor little orphans who had no food to bring, so the elder went home and brought, up the bony part of a dry salmon and the younger a fern root named kwalx.
Then the older girls took these from them and threw them away, so that they began to cry very hard. While the girls were crying, the cliff behind them fell over in front and imprisoned them all.
They began to cry from fright. After that they began to rub on the cliff the tallow and salmon they had with them, and the, little birds that had also been imprisoned began to peck it off, so that at length they began to make a hollow in the rock.
► Continue reading…
In course of time the birds pecked a hole entirely through, and, when it was large enough, the girls began to crawl out. Finally all of the girls were taken out except one poor little girl who got stuck half way. The walls had in reality closed in on her, and they continued to do so until they had cut her quite in two. Her head became the fern root (kwalx) and her body became a ground hog.
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