A widower cherished his late wife’s unfinished basket, keeping it above his bed as a symbol of grief. After remarrying, the basket mysteriously fell onto his head during a playful moment with his new wife. Despite efforts to remove it, the basket spoke, reproaching him. Freed just in time, he burned it, severing its haunting connection to his sorrow and guilt.
Source:
Tlingit Myths and Texts
by John R. Swanton
[Smithsonian Institution]
Bureau of American Ethnology
Bulletin 39
Washington, 1909
► Themes of the story
Ancestral Spirits: The deceased wife’s unfinished basket embodies her lingering presence, influencing events from beyond the grave.
Forbidden Knowledge: The husband’s attachment to the basket and his subsequent remarriage lead to unforeseen consequences, suggesting that some remnants of the past are best left undisturbed.
Transformation through Love: The husband’s journey from mourning to remarriage, and the supernatural intervention, highlight the complexities of moving forward while honoring past relationships.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Tlingit people
Myth recorded in English at Wrangell, Alaska, in January-April 1904
A woman at Klawak was just finishing a basket when she died. She had not yet cut off the tops. Then her husband took the basket and put it up under the roof over his bed. He thought a great deal of it because it was his wife’s last work. Sometimes he would take it down, press it against his heart and weep as he held it there. He wept all the time. After this man had been a widower a long time he married again. One evening, when he was sitting on the bed playing with his new wife, the basket fell right over his head. He tried to pull it off, and his wife laughed, not knowing why it had been up there. When he was unable to pull it away his wife also tried, but it stuck tight around his neck. He became frightened and worked very hard at it. Suddenly the basket said to him, “Yes, pull me off of your head. Why don’t you press me against your heart again?” it last if they had not cut the strings the basket would have choked him to death. Then he put it farther back and in the morning threw it into the fire.
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Dreamtime Whispers 