At night she often heard crunching of bones, and thought that perhaps her father’s dog had come. In the morning, however, there was never any sign of the dog having been there. She also noticed that her husband, on his return from hunting, invariably lay down for a short time and went to sleep quickly, as dogs do. She thought much over these things, and at last made up her mind to watch one night. She saw her husband get up, change into a dog, chew the bones alongside the fire, then change back into a man and go to bed again. She made up her mind to kill him. She prepared a block of wood and had a club ready. On the following day, when he came home from hunting, she said to him, “Well, you are tired. Lie down and have a nap. Put your head on this block while I cook for you. When all is ready, I will wake you up.” While he slept, she hit him on the head. He changed into her father’s old dog, and died. Now she returned to her parents, told them how she had eloped and that now she was pregnant. They said, “If your children are human, it will be well; but if they are dogs, it will be bad.” One month afterwards she gave birth to four male and one female pups. The people were angry, and at once deserted her, leaving her without food. She would also have been without fire had not her maternal grandmother taken pity on her, hidden some fire in a pit, and secretly told her of it. The people had left in canoes.

The woman dug clams every day, and fed her children abundantly. Sometimes, when she returned home, as she approached the camp, she heard sounds of laughing and talking, as though children were playing in the lodge. She also noticed sticks lying about, as if children had been playing with them. She watched, and found that the boys had stripped off their dog-skins and had assumed the form of children. The girl, however, was ashamed to strip naked, and pulled her skin down, exposing the upper part of the body only. The boys had piled up their dog-skins while they were playing. The girl would run out from time to time to see if their mother was coming. The woman then went down to the beach to dig clams. She set up a stick, and put her hat and robe on it, to deceive the girl and make her think she was still on the beach. The mother then went back to the camp, and, creeping stealthily up behind the girl, seized her and pulled off her skin. She then seized the other skins and threw all into a hollow log that she had put on the fire before leaving.

The boys grew up to be good hunters, and always supplied the family with plenty of meat. Now the family left the coast and moved into the interior, where there was plenty of game. They hunted on the north side of the Stikine River in the Tahltan country. As they depleted the game in each place where they hunted, they often moved camp and hunted in new places. When they had finished hunting in the Level Mountain country north of Telegraph Creek, they made up their minds to move to the south side of Stikine River. They forded the river at “The Three Sisters,” a little above Glenora. The girl, who was adolescent, and therefore not supposed to look purposely at anything, wove a robe with a hood which came over her head and face. She sat down at the river’s edge to wait for her mother, who was resting herself on the edge of the bank above and had divested herself of her pack. The four boys had entered the water. Their mother was watching them, and seeing the foremost ones struggling in the current, and, as she thought, in danger of being drowned, she called out in her excitement. The girl then looked at her brothers, who at once became transformed into stone in the positions they occupied in the water. Then she and her mother and her pack also changed into stone; and all of them may now be seen as rocks at this place. These rocks are called “The Three Sister Rocks” by the whites, because of the three large rocks in the river close together. The Indians call the upper rock Aske’tleka’; the middle one, Kasketl; the one next to the lowest, Tsexhuxha’; and the lowest one, Tlkaia’uk. These rocks are the four brothers. The rocks known as the girl and mother are on the shore, and a rock which stands out at the mouth of the little creek near by is known as their pack. Because the Dog men hunted throughout the Tahltan country on the north side of the Stikine, and killed off so much game, marmots are scarce there now, while they are plentiful throughout the country on the south side of the river, where they did not hunt.

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