TLINGIT MYTHS AND TEXTS
Recorded by JOHN R. SWANTON
INTRODUCTION
The following myths and texts were collected at Sitka and Wrangell, Alaska, in January, February, March, and April, 1904, at the same time as the material contained in the writer's paper on the Social Condition, Beliefs, and Linguistic Relationship of the Tlingit Indians published in the Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau. For further information regarding these people the reader is referred to that paper, to Krause's Tlinkit Indianer (Jena, 1885), Emmons' Basketry of the Tlingit Indians, Niblack's Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia, Dall's Alaska and its Resources, Boas's Indianische Sagen von der Nord Pacifischen Küste Amerikas (Berlin, 1895), and the same writer in the Fifth Report of the Committee Appointed by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, to Investigate the Northwestern Tribes of Canada, and the two special reports on Alaska for the censuses of 1880 and 1890. Most of the ethnologic information contained in the works of Veniaminoff and other early writers is incorporated into the work of Krause.
Stories 7, 19, 94, 101, 102, and 103 were related by the writer's Sitka interpreter, Don Cameron, of the Chilkat Kâ'gwAntân; stories 96 and 97 by Katlian, chief of the KîksA'dî; story 105 by a Yakutat man, Q!â'dAstin; and all the other Sitka stories, including the texts numbered 89-93, 95, 98, 99, and 104--by an old man of the Box-house people, named Dekinâ'k!u. From Katishan, chief of the Kasq!ague'dî of Wrangell, were obtained stories 31, 32, 33, 38, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 100, 106, and the potlatch speeches. Stories 34, 35, 42, 502 52, 53, 54, 57, 64, and 75 were related by an old Kake man named KASâ'nk!, and the remaining Wrangell tales by, Katishan's mother. The last-mentioned has lived for a considerable time among the whites at Victoria, but with one exception her stories appear to have been influenced little by the fact. Her son has been a church member and shows a moralizing tendency; at the same time he was considered the best speaker at feasts in past times, and is supposed to have a better knowledge of the myths than anyone else in Wrangell. Dekinâ'k!u of Sitka is also a church member but his stories appear to be entirely after the ancient patterns.
