A chief’s daughter, desired by many, angers the Fire Spirit after cursing a spark from her fire. She disappears and later reemerges, married to the Fire Spirit, living between the mortal world and the spirit realm. An attempt to bind her to mortal life triggers her husband’s wrath, leading her to leave him forever. She remains single, marked by her mystical experience.
Source:
Tlingit Myths and Texts
by John R. Swanton
[Smithsonian Institution]
Bureau of American Ethnology
Bulletin 39
Washington, 1909
► Themes of the story
Divine Intervention: The Fire Spirit directly influences the mortal realm by taking the chief’s daughter as his wife after she disrespects the fire.
Forbidden Knowledge: The daughter’s interactions with the Fire Spirit grant her experiences beyond the mortal realm, exposing her to hidden truths and the consequences of engaging with supernatural forces.
Transformation: The daughter’s life undergoes significant changes due to her relationship with the Fire Spirit, affecting her status, relationships, and personal choices.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Tlingit people
Myth recorded in English at Wrangell, Alaska, in January-April 1904
There was a chief’s daughter whom all of the high-caste men wanted to marry. One day, as she sat close to the fire, a spark came out on her clothing and she said something bad to the fire, pointing her hand at it with fingers extended.
That night the girl was missing and couldn’t be found anywhere. They searched all of the villages and all of the houses in all of the villages where those people lived who had wanted to marry her, but in vain.
Then they employed shamans from their own and all the surrounding towns to tell where she was. Finally the chief was told of a shaman in a village a very long way off, and he went to consult him.
► Continue reading…
The shaman said to him, “How is it that my spirits talk of nothing but your fire? Your daughter might have said something to the fire that displeased the spirits of the fire. Let your fire go out as soon as you are through preparing food and have the rest of your village people extinguish theirs. Do so for a long time.” All of this time, the parents were mourning for their daughter.
Then the chief sent through all the village to ask his people to let their fires go out, and they obeyed him. This went on for some time without result, but one day the girl came up from the fireplace from between the rocks on which the logs were placed. The Fire Spirit (Ga’ntu ye’gi) had taken her as his wife. Then the girl told her parents that her husband had pitied them, and after that she stayed with them most of the time. Every now and then she would be missing, for she was very fond of her spirit husband, but she would not stay long. She went into the fire to eat, and before she went directed them to let the fire go out after a time in order to bring her back.
One day, when she had not been away for a long time, she was eating in her father’s house. For the last dish they gave her soapberries. Her father’s nephew, who was in love with her and who was encouraged by her mother in hopes that she might be kept from going away again, was stirring them. When she put her spoon into the dish he seized it. At the same moment the firewood began to whistle, as it does when the fire spirit is talking, and the girl understood what it meant. Then she seemed frightened, and said to her mother and the boy, “He wants meat once.” All that the girl had to do when she wanted to see her husband was to think of him and she would immediately be at his side. They never saw her going into the fire. Therefore, as soon as she said this she disappeared, and they did not know what had happened. Then, however, her spirit husband hurt her in some way so as to make her scream, though the people could not guess the cause, and next day she appeared in her father’s house once more, looking very sad, for she had left her husband; and now she stayed with her father all the time.
After that her father’s nephew kept trying to get her to marry him, but she would have nothing to do with him. Before she had liked him, but after she had been abused by the Fire Spirit on account of what he had done, she did not care for him and remained single all the rest of her life.
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