A man from the Kiksa’di survived a canoe accident and was captured by land otters, who took him on a journey around the Queen Charlotte Islands, eventually reaching Rainy-village. There, he reunited with his drowned aunt, now married to land otters. After being returned near Sitka, he became a disruptive land-otter-man until captured and partially restored to humanity using dog bones. Ultimately, he died after consuming cooked halibut.
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 protagonist undergoes significant changes, both physically and mentally, during his captivity with the land otters, reflecting the theme of transformation.
Supernatural Beings: The land otters in the story possess supernatural qualities, capturing humans and influencing their destinies, which aligns with this theme.
Underworld Journey: The man’s voyage with the land otters to various mystical places, including Rainy-village, symbolizes a journey into unknown or otherworldly realms, fitting this theme.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Tlingit people
Myth recorded in English at Wrangell, Alaska, in January-April 1904
Several persons once went out from Sitka together, when their canoe upset and all were drowned except a man of the Kiksa’di. A canoe came to this man, and he thought that it contained his friends, but they were really land otters. They started southward with him and kept going farther and farther, until they had passed clear round the Queen Charlotte islands. At every place where they stopped they took in a female land otter. All this time they kept a mat made out of the broad part of a piece of kelp over the man they had captured until they arrived at a place they called Rainy-village (Si’wu-a’ni). At this place the man met an aunt who had drowned years before and had become the wife of two land otters. She was dressed in a ground-hog robe. She said to him, “Your aunt’s husbands will save you. You must come to see me this evening.” When he came, his aunt said, “I can’t leave these people, for I have learned to think a great deal of them.”
► Continue reading…
Afterward his aunt’s husbands started back with him. They did not camp until midnight. Their canoe was a skate, and, as soon as they came ashore, they would turn it over on top of him so that, no matter how hard he tried to get out, he could not. In making the passage across to Cape Ommaney they worked very hard, and shortly after they landed they heard the raven. [Supernatural beings who heard the raven call before they came to land, died.] They could go only a short distance for food.
When they first started back the woman had said to her husbands, “Don’t leave him where he can be captured again. Take him to a good place.” So they left him close to Sitka. Then he walked around in the neighborhood of the town and made the people suffer so much every night that they could not sleep, and determined to capture him. They fixed a rope in such a way as to ensnare him, but at first they were unsuccessful. Finally, however, they placed dog bones in the rope so that they would stick into his hands, dog bones being the greatest enemies of the land otters.
Late that night the land-otter-man tore his hands so with these bones that he sat down and began to scream, and, while he was doing this, they got the rope around him and captured him. When they got him home he was at first very wild, but they restored his reason by cutting his head with dog bones. He was probably not so far gone as most victims. Then they learned what had happened to him.
After this time, however, he would always eat his meat and fish raw. Once, when he was among the halibut fishers, they wanted very much to have him eat some cooked halibut. He was a good halibut fisher, probably having learned the art from the land otters, though he did not say so. For a long time the man refused to take any, but at last consented and the food killed him.
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