82. The Crying-for Medicine

82. THE CRYING-FOR MEDICINE

One of the Kâsq!ague'dî named Floating (NAlxâ'c), living at Wrangell, had a wife called Axtcî'k! who kept running away from him. He was a great hunter and hunted continually among the mountains of Bradfield canal accompanied by his slave. One day, as they were pulling along in a canoe while the dogs ran on shore, they heard the dogs barking at a certain place. They landed and ran thither. Then they saw the dogs lying on the ground with saliva dropping from their mouths, while a small bear ran along some distance off. The hunter saw this bear climb up the side of a cliff and was about to pursue it when he suddenly lost all of his strength and lay there just like his dogs. He watched the bear, however, and saw it go into a hole in the very middle of the cliff. Then he said, "That is not a bear. It could not have climbed up there and have gone into that cliff had it been one. It must be something else."

Floating thought a great deal of his wife and was suffering much because she had now been gone from him for eight months.

When he saw this bear go into the inaccessible hole in the cliff, he went back to town and made a very large, strong rope out of roots and a cedar-bark basket large enough to hold one person. With these he went back again to the cliff and climbed to a position above the hole the bear had entered. Then he tied a rope around his slave's waist, and another to the basket and put the slave inside. He was going to lower him down to the hole.

Now the man said to his slave, "When I get you to the mouth of the hole, shake this basket very hard so that I may know it." He gave him a little wooden dipper and said, "Dip that into the hole and see what you get out." Then he lowered the slave. When the latter put his dipper into the hole it came out filled with ants. Then the slave screamed, but his master said, "I will let you drop if you don't hold up. Put that dipper in again and see what you bring out. The slave

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did so and brought out little frogs. All these were to be used with the medicine he was to get out last. The third time he put the dipper in he got blue flies. Then he put it in the fourth time to get the medicine, and sure enough on the end of it, when it came out, there was some stuff that looked like tallow and had a pleasant odor.

After that Floating pulled up his slave, and when he reached the top he had fainted and looked as though he were dead, but he soon came to. Then Floating took one of each kind of creature, mashed them up along with the white stuff, and put all into the shaft of an eagle feather. The medicine he thus made is called Crying-for medicine. When Floating wanted to kill any bear, mountain goat, or other animal, all he had to do was to shake it in the air and whatever he wanted would come down to him.

After this Floating went back to his village, where his wife also was, and the news of his return spread everywhere. It was early in winter. Then his wife was entirely unable to stay away from him, and ran to his door very early in the morning. They let her inside, but her husband would not allow her to come any nearer to him. She begged very hard to be allowed to come back, but he had already suffered so much on her account that he was determined that she should suffer in her turn. The harder she begged the more determined he was that she should not come back. He never took her back, and she suffered a great deal, especially when she found that he had become very rich and could have any woman in the village that he wanted. It was because of this medicine that she was so anxious to get back to him, and it was because he wanted to make her suffer that he was so anxious to get it. None except people of the Raven clan use this medicine. Even now, when a girl is so much in love as to be crazy over it, it is said, "They must have used the Crying-for medicine on her."