The rapids are very scary. Twice the L'uknax.ádi capsized there.

This one boat traveled out of Lituya Bay when the tide had dropped. No white man knew of Alaska. The bundle of furs floated out to the face of the clouds. The intestines resembled a plastic bag. Brown Bear intestines. They are cut and sewn back together. The intestinal bag of furs floated to the face of the clouds from Lituya Bay, the ones the people drowned with. This is why the Russians searched for Alaska. That's how they found Tlingits in Alaska. They didn't have machines either they'd just sail with canvas. A Russian boat first sailed into Lituya Bay. And so the Tlingits didn't tell it like it really was. It was the Raven boat, was what they told one another, the Raven boat. That's what they were saying about the Russians. If you looked directly at it you would turn to stone. Even today the Tlingits are like that. And that devil's club. They drilled holes in them and dog droppings were sewn like bags and put into their children's clothes. You would turn to stone. That's the way the Tlingits talked about this. This blue hellebore was hollowed through though, let's see, like binoculars. As it sailed into Lituya Bay they looked at it through these. Then they wouldn't turn to stone. Dog droppings too were hung around children's necks. But the larger devil's club had holes drilled through them to. They were put on the necks of their children. That's the way things happened in the beginning when they awaited the schooner.

This story appears in a book by Richard and Nora Dauenhauer, two people who have devoted their professional lives since the 1970s to recording Tlingit elders. Nora is herself Tlingit, an Eagle of the Lukaxaadi clan. Her husband Richard has a Ph.D. in comparative literature. Together they have published a number of books of Tlingit oral tradition.

Jenny White, like Charlie White, told the story of the boat wreck of the L'uknax.ádi clan in a recording she made with Fred White in Juneau, Alaska in 1984. She originally spoke in Tlingit, and then Mr. White translated the story into English. In Mrs. White's story, the bag of furs is made not of halibut skins, but of bear gut. Either material would serve beautifully, for both are lightweight, strong, and waterproof. Mrs. White's story goes one step further than her husband's: she talks about the Tlingits actually seeing the Russians, and at first being sure that their ship was the mythical and powerful Raven - who had made the first people and brought light and fresh water to the world - had come. Devil's club is a tall plant with sharp thorns up and down its hollow stalk. But it was this stalk that the people used as a telescope or binoculars to view the incoming ship. Mrs. White tells of the extra step of protecting the children from spiritual harm by tying bags of dog excrement around their necks. This story expresses how terrifying that first sight of Europeans must have been to the Tlingits.

* Published in: Haa Shuká, Our Ancestors, Tlingit Oral Narratives, pages 298-301. Editors Nora and Richard Dauenhauer, copyright 1987 by Sealaska Heritage Foundation.