Alaska Native Story

A man named Natsalane, who belonged to the seal people tribe, was trying to create killer whales out of wood carvings. He tried different types of wood: red cedar, hemlock, and others. Each time he carved them into the shape of an orca and set them in the beach to swim, but none did. All the carvings just floated on the top of the water, except the ones the craftsman made out of yellow cedar. Those carvings came to life and could swim through the water.

Natsalane put white chalk markings around the whale’s mouth to the back of its head and he called it the white mouth killer whale. He told them that they were to hunt seal and halibut, as well as many other sea creatures. The craftsman also said that it was not allowed to hurt any human beings.

During this time killer whales were able to camp on beaches and go on land. A young man and his wife were floating down the canal to find a camping spot for there honeymoon. They noticed a camp fire on the beach so they went to go greet the people, but when they arrived they realized that they weren’t people, they were killer whales. The man and the woman jumped back in fear. The killer whales, not knowing what to do, jumped in the water and swam away.

 The couple went onto the camp site and saw a bunch of different foods, such as halibut, salmon, and seal. They decided to cook some to eat. Shortly after, the killer whales returned and kidnaped the man’s new wife because the man and woman had taken their food. The whales dragged her into the water. The man followed them along the shore line until they arrived under a cliff where they dove down out of sight. So the man followed, but was somehow knocked out and awoke at the bottom near a large town. He quickly went into a house, which belonged to the chief of the shark people. In this house he saw a slave man with a crooked mouth and a fishing hook sticking out of the corner. The hook had belonged to the man. The slave man with a crooked smile had been made a slave by the sharks. The man then asked the slave man if there was any news in that town. But there was no news except that the nearby killer whale town had captured a woman and were making her the wife of the killer whale chief. He continued to say that if you were to go to this town, there would be a slave outside chopping wood in the forest. “When you see him repeatedly say to yourself that you wish for his stone axe to break.”

Once the man reached the slave he did as he was told and the axe broke. The man rushed in and said that he would fix the axe, if in return the slave would tell him where his wife was. The slave agreed to his offer and said that after he gets wood for the fire he is supposed to go get water to put out fire. When he pours the water on the fire there will be a great multitude of steam, so the man should quickly grab his wife and hurry out.

Desperate, the man did as he was told and the two ran. They were greeted with the voice of the crooked mouth slave, who was telling him to run toward the shark people’s town. Thinking the shark people were behind this, the killer whales attacked the sharks and killed many of them. After this attack, the sharks regrouped and started to sharpen their teeth on the rocks so that any time a killer whale would attack they would run their teeth along the orcas belly, spilling their entrails all over the place. By the end of the battle there was no winner and the bay was red with the blood of sharks and killer whales.

Nobody knows what happened to the couple or even if they survived the battle.