23. Fisher's Wife; or Marten and Fisher.
(Lower Uta’mqt.)
(cont.)When Fisher came home, his wife was not there; so he asked 'Marten where she was, and, receiving an evasive answer, he at once repaired to the watering-place, where he found the boy crying beside the buckets and clothes of his mother. He took the boy home, and told Marten that the salmon had taken the woman. Then Fisher changed the boy into a horse-fly,1 and sent him to find out where his mother was.
The boy arrived at the country of the Fishes2 down below, where there were many people and many canoes. In one place he saw four underground houses, and entered them one after another. In the last one he found his mother. The people in the house watched him as he buzzed around, and said, "That fly acts strangely." He passed by his mother's ear, and whispered to her that her husband would come for her; then he flew out of the house, and back to his father, who after the boy had told him all he had seen changed him into a boy again.
Then Fisher caught a fawn, and took it to the boy to play with-, he also made miniature bow and arrows for him to shoot the fawn with. They went outside and watched the boy one day until evening playing at shooting the fawn until he got tired and fell asleep. Fisher said, "We will leave the boy. He is all right, and will not cry when he misses us." So they left food and water with him in the house, and, entering their canoe, they paddled away to the country of the Fishes. When they got near to the four houses, they hid their canoe in the bushes, and travelled on foot. They met the sisters of King-Salmon carrying loads of wild crab-apples3 (kwoa'p), and singing as they went along, the words of their song being "Our elder brother possesses the wife of Tcintu' pus.4 They stopped them, and questioned them regarding their brother's house, - in what part of it they slept and sat, how they acted when they entered, and what they usually did when at home. Having gained all the desired information from the sisters, they took hold of them by their noses, and, shaking them violently, their bones fell out. Then they put on the women's skins, and, taking the loads of crab-apples on their backs, they went down to the water's edge, where they found the women's canoe, in which they embarked. As they paddled along, they sang the same song that the sisters had been singing.
Before long they came to a beach where many canoes were hauled up, and, seeing Rat and Mouse near by, they told them who they were, and offered to pay them if they would make holes in all the people's canoes that night. They agreed to do this, and after dark the Rats and Mice made holes in the bottoms of all the canoes excepting the women's canoe that Marten and Fisher had been using.
1 Some say into a bluebottle-fly.
2 Some say in the S'a'tcink country (Upper Fraser River)
3 Wild crab-apples are plentiful in the S'a'tcinko country, and some also grow in the Lower Uta'mqt country.
4 Meaning doubtful, but supposed to be a personal name or a nickname for Fisher.