Kwakiutl Legends

by James Wallas

Big figure

There were no schools in the days of which I speak, but there was a spot near the forest, a playground, where children used to play. One little boy that played there had a knife-what kind I don't know; it happened a long, long time ago.

The other children wanted to borrow that knife but the boy told them, "My mother and father won't allow me to lend it. My mother said you might cut yourself with it, then blame me. My father said you might lose it and never return it. That is what my parents told me."

Well, you know what kids are like. The children decided they would not play with the little boy with the knife. "Let him go by himself," they said to one another. They taunted the boy and teased him. Their backs were to the forest.

Suddenly the boy with the knife cried, "Hey! I see a big figure in the trees!"

The children did not turn around and look but kept their backs to the forest. "You're just saying that because we won't play with you," they shouted.

"No, I'm not," argued the boy. "There it is again! A big figure. It's watching us."

But the children would not listen. "You're just trying to fool us but it won't work," they chided. "We're not going to have anything to do with you."

"It's coming!" screamed the boy. "It's coming!"

The children saw it then. It was a big, big man, bigger than any other. He had hair all over his body and his eyes were set deep in his face. He carried a large basket on his back. The children's strength drained out of them in fear. They were helpless.

The woods giant grabbed the boy that had the knife first and threw him in his basket. Then he threw all the rest of the children on top of him. He set off through the forest while the children peeked through the cracks of the basket, trying to see where he was taking them.

The boy with the knife was right at the bottom of the basket and could hardly move with all the children on top of him. Finally he was able to cut a slit in the basket big enough to squeeze through and he dropped to the ground. The man did not notice, and the boy ran back to his village crying, "Big Figure has taken all the children!"

The men of the village gathered together. They asked the boy to lead the way that Big Figure had gone. They traveled over roots and under logs. At the place the boy had fallen through the basket the trail became harder to follow. They could see where something big had gone through the bush and followed that till eventually the trail ended at a large cave.

The men of the village could dimly see some of their children hanging by the feet in the dark cave. A huge figure of a man was tying up the other children's feet and putting pitch in their eyes. His wife and children were helping him.

"What are you doing with our children?" the villagers cried.

"We're going to smoke them," answered the giant.

"Those are our children! We want to take them home with us, said the villagers.

"We're going to smoke them and eat them," replied the big man. He and his wife finished tying the children's feet and started hanging them up, one by one, with the other children.

"Don't do that, the fathers of the children pleaded. "Let us take them home with us."

The big man started building a fire under the children. Then he said to the men, "Why are your faces so nice and smooth and not rough like mine? You have nice eyes. They don't sink way in your head like mine do."

The villagers thought fast. One of them said, "You can have a face just like ours. We can fix you up. Go outside and get a big flat rock and another smaller rock with a sharp end."

So the big man did what they asked. It was easy for him to carry the big flat rock because he was so strong. Then the men of the village said to the giant, "Lie down and use this flat rock for a pillow. We're going to fix you up just like us."

"How long will it take?" he asked as he lay down and put his head on the flat stone.

"Just four days," they answered. "Close your eyes. Close your eyes tight." Then they took the rock with the sharp end and sunk it between the big man's eyes. He was dead.

"How long is he going to lie there?" asked the giant's wife.

"Oh, about four days," answered the men. They took their children, untied their legs and removed the pitch from their eyes. Then they went home to their village where the people were very happy.

Big figure and the smoked salmon

A family was camped by a river so that they could put up salmon for the winter. The salmon they had caught were hanging in a split cedar smokehouse.

One day before he went to bed with his family in the shelter they had made, the eldest boy went into the smokehouse and noticed some gaps between the fish that were hanging there. "Some of our smoked salmon seems to be missing," he told his father.

"We're the only ones here," his father replied. "Our family is camped all alone. Just forget about it — we'll get some more."

The next morning when the boy built the fire in the smokehouse, he noticed even more of the smoked salmon was missing. "Tonight I am going to hide in the smokehouse and find out who it is that is taking the salmon," he announced. "I will have my bow and arrow with me, but if it is a man that comes I will not use it."

That night they did not bank the fire very high and it soon burned out. The boy hid in a corner of the dark smokehouse and waited. Except for the rush of the wind in the cedar trees and the voice of the river, the camp was quiet.

It was not long before the boy heard a new sound — footsteps. Heavy footsteps were approaching the camp. They came closer and closer and stopped just outside the smokehouse. The boy was frightened but he had his bow and arrow ready.

Slowly the roof of the smokehouse lifted up. The boy pulled his bowstring taut. He dimly saw a huge hairy arm reach in toward the salmon and sent his arrow where the arm was coming from.

There was a terrible cry that woke up the others. "I think I got it! I think it's the woods giant!" shouted the boy to his parents.

"Let's go after him."

"We will wait till morning," said his father. "He will be a lot easier to trail in the daylight and if you wounded him he might be dead by then."

The family rose early the next morning. The boy, his father and younger brother headed out on the trail of the giant. The trail they found it had a few drops of blood on it. It led deep into the forest and ended at a cedar bark house. A pool of fresh water was nearby with a tree leaning over it.

"You wait here," the father said to his elder son, and your brother and I will skirt around the back of the house."

While he was waiting, the elder boy climbed up the tree, as it was a good place to see from. Soon a large hairy girl came out of the cedar bark house with a bucket in her hand and walked to the pool of water that the tree leaned over.

When she stooped to scoop up some drinking water, she saw the boy's reflection in the pool. "My, I didn't know how pretty I was," she exclaimed. "I'm different from the rest of my family. Their eyes all sink in their heads and mine don't. They are hairy and I have smooth skin."

The boy above her moved in the tree, and a branch broke and fell to the water. The girl jerked her head up and saw him. "Oh, it is you that I see in the water," she cried. Then she paused and added, "My father has been terribly sick since he came home last night. Can you come and help him?"

"I'll get my father," the boy answered. This must be where the person lives who was stealing fish from us," he said when he reached his father and brother. "I think he is very sick from my arrow. His daughter wants us to help him."

"Okay," said the father, "let us go in."

They went in the cedar bark house and a big hairy man more than six feet tall lay almost dead with an arrow deep in his chest. His wife and children were standing around him.

The boy who shot the arrow walked up to the big man and tried to pull the arrow out. It would not come out straight, and he had to twist it this way and that way. Finally it pulled free.

"I feel better already," said the giant weakly. "You have helped me, so I will give my daughter to one of you to marry."

"No!" cried the elder boy. "I do not wish to marry your daughter."

"I do not wish to marry your daughter either," exclaimed the younger son.

"Have you another offer then?" asked the father of the two boys.

"Yes, my offer is this. You may use us on your totem pole and face mask. No one else can make our likeness, only you. You can make the mask just like our face."

The father and his sons accepted the giant's offer and went home. They took their arrow with them. No one else had a mask like theirs. It was a frightening mask with the eyes sunk deep in the head.

Big figure's wife

One day, Hunter was deep in the wilderness hunting for deer, elk or young he heard a noise that sounded like someone working with an adze.

"That sounds like a canoe maker," he thought, "But who would be working this far back in the woods?" He knew that it was no one from his village.

Hunter moved noiselessly toward the sound of the worker, and it led him to a clearing where a big figure was hollowing out a large cedar tree with an adze. Her back was to him, but he could see that it was a huge figure of a woman. Her baby was seated behind her in the hollowed-out tree.

Hunter did not wish to startle the giantess, so he crept up to the back of the canoe and pinched the baby's little toe. The infant cried out. Without turning around the mother said, "That could be Hunter, who pinches you — the one who hunts on water and on land."

The hunter pinched the baby's toe again and it started to cry. "It's just that hunter teasing you, don't cry," said the giantess again without turning.

Finally the hunter came around to the front of the woods giant's woman. "Yes, it is I," he said. "What are you making that canoe for?"

"We live beside a long lake," said the giantess. "We will use it there. Why have you come to me?" she asked him.

"I followed the sound of your adze," he replied, "and now I have found you I want something from you."

"What is it that you want?"

"I am a provider of food for my people and I have not had much luck lately in hunting. Can you help me?"

"I will help you," responded the lady. "I will use my power to bring elk, deer and bear to you. When you are hunting in the water, seal will come to you."

The hunter was pleased at the big woman's generosity, yet he asked her for one more favor. "I want to use your features in a dance mask," he said.

"If you use me, you must use all of me and my four children too," she replied. "This baby is the youngest of the four. You may use us all in a dance."

After that the hunter became a very successful provider of food, and a dance was created showing the huge woman with her four babies being born one by one.

Big figure and the limpets

There were four or five children laughing and having fun on a beach. Their parents had taken a canoe and gone to a good place for digging clams.

The children were playing on the sand near a pit in which they had built a fire. They put rocks in the fire and, when the rocks were red hot, they baked limpets on them and ate them. The little limpet shells fitted perfectly on the children's fingers, and they were having fun playing with them.

At first they did not notice a big figure creep slowly out of the woods and advance on one of the children. It looked like a big, big man with sunken eyes and covered with hair.

Finally one child spotted him but made no outward indication that he had noticed. He whispered to the others, "It's Big Figure. Don't scream, don't run away. Pretend you are not afraid."

All the children put limpet shells on their fingertips and circled around to the other side of the huge figure so they were between him and the forest.

The giant turned toward them, his back to the fire. The children were trembling but the eldest bravely said, "We are ones that can scare people too." They opened and closed their fingers as if they were blinking. Slowly they advanced on the giant, continuing to blink their fingers with the limpet shells on the tips.

Big Figure started backing up as the children advanced. He took several steps and suddenly tumbled backward into the pit with the red hot stones in it. The big creature was badly burned, and the jack-knife position he found himself in made it hard for him to get up.

"Cover him up! Cover him up!" screamed the children, and they quickly buried him with sand and gravel.

When the parents returned to the beach where they had left their children, the giant was dead. "We might not have been here when you came back," the eldest child cried, as all the children ran down to meet their parents' canoe. They all spoke at once. "Big Figure was here!" they said. "We buried him in the cooking pit."

From: Kwakiutl Legends by James Wallace (Blaine, Washington: Hancock House, 1981.)