# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/How Selfishness Was Punished

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HOW SELFISHNESS WAS PUNISHED
BEFORE Sitka was dreamed of there lived on its site, one summer, a Thlinkeet, with his wife and mother. It was a time of suffering and hardship, for the fish stayed off the coast, the game had gone far over the mountains, and neither net, ​trap, nor arrow brought a morsel to the lodge. The Thlinkeet fished and hunted all day to no effect, and he could carry home nothing but an occasional bark pail of berries, roots, or young sprouts, to boil for soup and greens. His mother, who was nearly blind, and could not see to pick the berries, grew daily more haggard and weak, whereas the wife kept fresh and strong. Was it a dream that the younger woman was eating every night, and was cooking fish in the lodge? No, the mother's senses were still sharp. Waking and assuring herself that it was not a dream, she feebly held out her hands, crying for a single morsel.
"Your mind wanders. You were dreaming. There is no food," answered the wife.
"But I can smell it. I see the fire. I hear the crackle of its skin. Ha! Now I hear you eating."
"No, I am only chewing gum from the spruce-trees. It makes one feel less hungry."
"I know you are eating fish. Give me some, I beg."
"Then, since you will intrude yourself, take it." And, picking a tail and head out of the scalding fat, she flung them into the outheld hands and shut the withered fingers over them until the old woman's palms were badly burned.
The starving one sobbed herself to sleep. In the morning she whispered to her son what had happened. He said nothing, greeted his wife as ​usual, and resolved to watch. On the next night when the time was half-way to morning the young woman crept softly from the lodge, followed by her husband, whom she supposed to be asleep. He saw her cut an alder branch, after making curious gestures before it, take it to the shore, and wave it over the sea, repeating some words whose meaning the listener did not know, but which he immediately committed to memory. In a moment the water rippled with a thousand fins,—a shoal of herring coming up to be caught. The woman stooped and plucked out two or three of the largest, laughing quietly as she gathered them in her dress and tip-toed back to the lodge. Her husband managed to reach it before her, and was lying so still when she entered that she never thought of looking to see if she were watched. A fire was soon snapping; the fish were broiling on the coals and send-ing forth a maddening odor. The woman ate as much as she pleased, threw the rest into the shrubbery outside, and went to bed content. Our Thlinkeet was lucky on the following afternoon in catching a seal that yielded a particularly heavy fat, with which the wife was so kindly plied at supper that she slept soundly until dawn, her husband taking her place as fish-catcher at midnight, and, by copying her incantation, securing a good batch of herring. When the selfish wife awoke and saw her husband and his mother making an ample breakfast and looking at her significantly, she ​smiled good-naturedly and made an excuse for quitting the lodge. No sooner had she gained freedom than with all her speed she ran toward the mountains, fearing pursuit and punishment. Yes, her husband was following. She climbed a great boulder that lay in her path, but as she reached the top her dress divided into feathers and she shrank to a twentieth of her size. She cried in astonishment and alarm, but her voice had become a hoot. Her husband gained the rock,—her husband nevermore: her witchcraft had reached its end, and the evil forces she had commanded now commanded her. With a heavy flap of wing she arose before the face of the Thlinkeet and flew off into a wood. She was an owl.