A man, longing for his lost wife, wanders through the woods, finding a necklace and encountering helpful strangers. Reaching her in a mysterious village, he faces hostility but reveals his mastery over water to escape harm. Later, he and his wife discover they are in the sky, lowered to Earth by a spider’s web. Safely returned, they resume their happy life together.
Source:
Tlingit Myths and Texts
by John R. Swanton
[Smithsonian Institution]
Bureau of American Ethnology
Bulletin 39
Washington, 1909
► Themes of the story
Underworld Journey: The protagonist’s venture into the sky realm parallels a journey to an otherworldly domain, seeking his lost wife.
Supernatural Beings: The narrative features a spider woman who assists the couple’s descent to Earth, highlighting interactions with mystical entities.
Transformation: The protagonist’s experiences—from losing his wife, journeying through the sky, to reuniting and returning home—depict significant personal and situational changes.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Tlingit people
Myth recorded in English at Wrangell, Alaska, in January-April 1904
A certain man’s wife was taken away from him, and he longed so much for her that he thought he would follow her along the beach. He was half crazy. When he went out and thought he was walking along the beach, he was in reality in a wide trail which ran through the woods. As he went on he saw where people had been camping, and from the dentalia shells left by these people he made a beautiful necklace. For a long time he wandered on with his head bent down, and, when he looked up suddenly, he saw smoke ahead. He walked toward it very fast. When he came close he saw a woman tanning a skin. He showed her the necklace he had made and said, “I will give you this string if you will tell me where my wife is.” The woman answered, “She is over there at the next camp.” So he finally reached her, and he remained with her for a long time, thinking that he was among his brothers-in-law.
► Continue reading…
The people of the village where this man was staying, however, hated him and wanted to burn him to death. After they had kindled the fire and were dragging him toward it he said, “Oh! how happy I am. I want to die. I would rather you killed me right away than be as I have been.” When they heard that they stopped and began pulling him toward the water instead. But he said that he was afraid of water, and, as they dragged him along, he struggled hard and seized everything about him. At last, when they did throw him in, he came up again in the middle of the lake and looked at them. Then one of the people said, “See him. He is out there looking at us.” The man laughed at them, saying, “Don’t you know that all of the waters are my work? How foolish you were to put me into the water just where I like to be.” He said this because he was a good swimmer and there was a great deal of rain in his country. Afterward he stayed in the water all the time he was there.
All this while the man had really been up in the sky, and now he wanted to get down. So he and his wife started back together and came to a house where lived a certain woman. She was really the spider and the house her web. Then this woman put them into a web and began to lower them to the earth. Before they started she said to them, “When you get caught on anything jerk backward and forward until the web comes loose.” The things she thought they might get stuck upon were the clouds. In this way the man and his wife reached the earth safely, and afterward the web was drawn up. Then they lived happily again as they had been living before the woman was taken away.
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Dreamtime Whispers 