The marmot woman

The boy gave her the young marmot, which she at once proceeded to suckle. Then the woman asked for eagle’s down. After she had received this, she said to the hunter: “You are unsuccessful in hunting because you are unclean. I will cleanse you.” She wiped the inside of his mouth and removed a vast quantity of phlegm. Now he was clean. She became his wife. Before he again went out hunting she ordered’ him to seek the solitude of the mountains, and to fast for three days. He went, and on his return the woman gave him a small stick with which to kill marmots.

The first day he went out hunting he saw numerous marmots, and killed twenty. He carried them home, and his wife at once began to skin and carve them. She hung up the meat to dry. While her husband had been away, she had gathered a vast quantity of salmon berries, and they lived on berries and on meat. On the following day the man again went hunting, and killed fifty marmots. The lodge was full of meat.

Often while he was out hunting he noticed that one marmot was following him all the time. It was tame, and played around him. Therefore he did not kill it. One day, however, when there were no’ other marmots to be seen, he killed it and carried it home. When his wife opened the pouch and pulled out the game, she began to cry and to wail: “You have killed my brother! you have killed my brother!” She put down the body, and laid all the other marmots that her husband had procured around it. Then she sang: “Brother, arise!” (qoxde kuse khek!) [this is said to be Tlingit]. When she had sung a little while, the body began to move. The dried meat began to assume shape. She threw on it the skins, and all the marmots returned to life and ran up the hills.

She followed them, crying. Her husband was frightened, but followed her, accompanied by his son. After they had gone some distance, they saw her disappearing in a fissure of the rocks, which opened and let her in. When they reached the fissure, the father told his son to stay outside while he himself tried to enter. The fissure opened, and on entering he found himself in a lodge. His brother-in-law had taken off his skin, which was hanging from the roof. He was sitting in the rear of the lodge. The women were seated in the middle of the floor, and were weaving baskets and hats. The chief spoke: “Spread a mat for my brother-in-law.” The people obeyed, and he sat down next to his wife. The chief ordered to be brought a cloak of marmot skins. When he put it on, he was transformed into a marmot. He was given a hole to live in, and a rock on which he was to sit and whistle as the marmots are in the habit of doing. The son saw all that had happened, and returned home in great distress.

Two years after these events, the brothers of the man who had been transformed into a marmot went hunting. They pitched their camp at the same place where their brother had lived. After having cleaned their bodies and fasted for four days, they set their traps. They were very successful. One day one of the brothers saw a marmot jumping into a crack of the rocks. He set his trap at the entrance of the fissure, and when he came back in the evening he found the animal in his trap. He put it into his pouch with the rest of his game, and went home. His wife began to skin the marmots, and to dress the meat. She took up this particular animal last. When she cut the skin around the forepaws she saw a bracelet under the skin, and her nephew, who was staying with them, recognized it as that of his father. Then she put the animal aside. At midnight it threw off its skin, and resumed the shape of a man. On the following morning they recognized their brother who had been lost for two years. He told them of all that had happened since the time when he had left his son at the fissure of the rock, how he had become a marmot, and how he had lived as one of their race.

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