38. Local Winter in G·it-q!ā’°da

Before the Deluge the Tsimshian lived on the upper course of Skeena River. There was the great village of the G·it-q!ā’°da, and in it were many people. They had only one great chief who commanded his people and made laws for them in regard to everything.”[2]

The son of that chief of the G·it-q!ā’°da had married according to their custom, in winter. He was a young man of very good mind. Shortly after he had married, there was a great famine all along the coast. In the spring a man cut a hole in the ice on Skeena River and put down his bag net. He caught a spring salmon. His wife steamed it in a box and put small sticks through the spring salmon the width of a finger apart. Then he invited all his tribe, and the people were very glad to have a fresh spring salmon. The starvation was almost forgotten; and after they had eaten, they went to their own houses, taking part of the boiled salmon to their wives and children.

While they were on their way home, a snowstorm came up; and one man named G:augun took off the cover from his salmon, stretched both his hands toward Heaven, and said, “How is it?) Do you think winter is coming back again? Look at the fresh boiled spring salmon that I [have in my hand! Shame on you for letting it snow every day!” Then he went home and gave his boiled salmon to his wife and his children. After they had eaten, they felt satisfied.

Then all the people of the village were ready to go fishing the next morning on the ice. In the same night a heavy snowstorm set in, and it continued until the food of all the people was gone, and there was a very bad famine among the people. Many died of starvation. No one was able to work and to get food, on account of the snowstorms.

The wife of the newly married prince had given birth to a child; and while it was snowing every day, the whole tribe died. Only the prince and his wife remained alive. They ate very little food once a day. The young woman would boil a little piece of dried salmon, and would take the soup for the child that she was nursing, while the prince ate a piece of the salmon.

Soon their food was gone. Then the child died, for the mother had no milk for it. On the day after the child had died, a blue-

jay was sitting in the smoke hole with a large cluster of ripe elderberries in its bill. The bird opened its mouth, erying, ‘Qwash, quash, qwash! When the elderberries dropped down, the young woman. arose and took them and showed them to her starving husband. Their hearts felt relieved. Then the woman said to her husband, ‘Be of good cheer, my dear! Let us try to leave this desolate place, and we shall find summer, for the supernatural power sends a large cluster of elderberries to show us that summer has come.”

Now, they made ready to go to another place while it was still snowing heavily. On the following day they put on their snowshoes and went down river, leaving their old home. They struggled along in the snow. The prince was very weak because he was starving, and his wife suckled him twice a day. They traveled for one day from the old village site, and they passed out of the snow and reached a place where it was summer. When they looked behind, black clouds were still hanging over the village. They went farther down the river and made a camp. The prince was still very weak, and the young woman suckled him. Then she went down to the river to fetch water, and brought it to her husband, and she would always see small trout among the stones in the shallow water. On the following day she told her husband that she had seen many trout among the stones in the shallow water. Therefore the weak prince took his knife and split a small piece of red cedar, and made out of it a fish trap. The young woman took it down to the river and placed it among the stones where the small trout were. There she left it over night. On the following morning she went down, and, behold! the trap was full of small trout. She took them to her sick husband. She boiled them in a root basket and took them to her husband. She gave him a wooden spoon, but the prince declined it. He said, “You shall eat it, and you shall go on suckling me.” The young woman did so every day until the prince was a little stronger. Then he made a larger trap, for larger trout; and every night they caught many trout, and also eels. They dried some of the trout and eels, and the prince made a still larger trap for salmon. Then he caught many spring salmon.

Next he made two large traps, and he also built a weir on one side of the Skeena River, and put two large salmon traps in the deep water at the end of the bridge. He built a house for smoking salmon. Then they had plenty to eat. There was no longer any famine. In midsummer they dried all kinds of berries, and at the end of the summer the prince built a large canoe; and after the canoe was finished, they loaded it with all kinds of dried salmon and boxes of dried berries. They went down river, and camped at Fall Camp.

On the following day they went up to Ksdâl. They reached the mouth of the river; and as they camped there, they unloaded their canoe, and built a house in the strange country, which was unknown to them. In the autumn he often went up the mountains to hunt goats while his wife staid at home with her unborn child, and the prince killed many mountain goats. He took their meat and their fat.

At the head of the brook he saw a large lake. One day he was thinking of it, and in winter he went up to the large lake and walked on the ice on his snowshoes. Then he went up the mountain at the end of the great lake. When he reached the top, he looked down on the other side, and there he saw smoke ascending in the valley. It was toward evening, and he went back to his camp. Late in the night he came home. His wife was crying, thinking that she had lost him. Then he told her that he had seen smoke on the other side of the mountain which he had climbed. They lived there all winter, and their provisions lasted until the following summer. Toward the end of a hard winter they went across the lake in their canoe. They carried enough food with them, and their new child. They walked up the mountain, and soon they reached the foot of the mountain on the other side. Then they walked down over a large plain, and a brook ran through the plain. They walked down alongside the brook; and when they arrived at its mouth, they saw a house on the other side of it. Therefore they called for some one to take them over. Then a small canoe came across. They crossed the brook, and they met four young men who were encamped there in a small hut, and who gave them food. They were very friendly to these four young men. The eldest of them was in love with the girl, and the girl also loved him dearly. At last the father of the girl became sick and died, and a few days after, her mother also was taken sick and died. Then the girl lived alone with these four young men.

(These four young men were the offspring of a wild duck who was sent by the daughter of the South Wind while she was in the house of Chief North Wind, where she was almost frozen.)

The eldest of the young men wanted to marry the girl, and she agreed, so they were married. Then the girl gave birth to four children at one time, as ducks lay eggs in the spring; and the next spring four other children were born. They grew up to be men and women, Every time she would give birth to four children at a time, and they began to build a village there; and when their mother died, they had begun to be a large and powerful people; and wherever these people moved, there was a heavy snowdrift on the ground.

Therefore it is told among these people that no one should throw stones at wild ducks in winter, lest a heavy snowstorm should set in,