United States or Paraguay ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Killer Whale was often used as a family emblem or crest and as a source from which personal names were derived. Klootsmah or Kloots-a-mah plural Klootsmuk the Indian word for "married woman" but used in the legends for girls as well as women.
In time they reached the beach, and entered their canoe, when just as they pushed off, with giant springs and angry howl leapt the great mother wolf from the woods, but the klootsmuk were safe with their strange prizes, and soon their canoe cut gleefully through the waves, while their songs were wafted landward by the western breeze. Upon an isle not far from home they hid the young wolf pups.
Across the river there were houses in which more klootsmuk lived, but at this time they were employed in gathering Kwanis in the land behind, and when the young men sought them out they were afraid and all but one took flight escaping to the woods.
He told of the Tsomass land, and the salmon stream which far eclipsed their own Po-po-moh-ah, and then described the great and wondrous house, where the klootsmuk dwelt, and how they sang to him "Yah-hin-in-ay." He told him also of Kla-kla-as-suks, the klootsmah who had left her home to be his rightful wife.
The Indians are a superstitious race, and one of the old fetishes was this: that if by chance they could secure the young of a wolf from which to take some precious inner part, to rub upon the outer side of their canoes, it gave great luck in whaling, and thus it came to pass that when the klootsmuk found the she wolf's lair, they formed the plan of taking to their brother the four wolf pups, in order that he might become the chief of all whale hunters.
Word Of The Day