General Editors: Helen Jaskoski and Robert M. Nelson
Poetry/Fiction: Joseph W. Bruchac III
Bibliographer: Jack W. Marken
Editor Emeritus: Karl Kroeber
Assistant to the Editor: Sharon M. Dilloway

SAIL - Studies in American Indian Literatures is the only scholarly journal in the United States that focuses exclusively on American Indian literatures. The journal publishes reviews, interviews, bibliographies, creative work including transcriptions of performances, and scholarly and theoretical articles on any aspect of American Indian literature including traditional oral material in dual-language format or translation, written works, and live and media performances of verbal art.

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Copyright SAIL. After first printing in SAIL copyright reverts to the author.
ISSN: 0730-3238

Production of this issue supported by the University of Richmond.

THE TEXTS ARE COMPELLING: INTRODUCTION TO THIS ISSUE
        Toby C. S. Langen and Bonnie Barthold         .                   .         1

AWL AND HER SON'S SON
        Victoria Howard        .                  .                  .                  .          8

GRIZZLY WOMAN KILLED PEOPLE
        Victoria Howard        .                  .                   .                 .          13

GENDER REPRESENTATION IN TWO CLACKAMAS MYTHS
        Craig Thompson         .                  .                  .                 .          19

THE FIGURE OF SPEECH IS AMATORY

APPARENT DIFFERENCES: A STUDY OF THE SURFACE TEXTURE IN "THE MARRIAGE OF CROW" AS NARRATED BY LUSHOOTSEED STORYTELLER MARTHA LAMONT
        Crisca Bierwert  .                   .                  .                  .         40

THE MARRIAGE OF CROW
        Martha Lamont. With Thom Hess, Levi Lamont, and Crisca Bierwert                    .                   .                  .                  .         48

GLOSSOLALIA REPLAYED: CONCORDANCE/REFERENTIALITY/CONCORDANCE
        Crisca Bierwert .                  .                  .                   .         66

COMMENTARY
        From the ASAIL President             .                  .                  .          80
        From the Editors        .                   .                  .                  .          81
        1992        .                  .                  .                  .                  .          83

REVIEWS
Word and Image in Maya Culture. Ed. William F. Hanks and Don S. Rice.
        Omar S. Castaneda      .                   .                  .                  .         84

Ugiuvangmiut Quliapyuit / King Island Tales: Eskimo History and Legends from Bering Strait. Ed. Laurence D. Kaplan.
        Cortland Pell Auser       .                  .                  .                  .         87

{ii}
Seneca Myths and Folk Tales. Arthur C. Parker.
        Paul G. Zolbrod             .                  .                   .                  .         89

Wintu Texts. Ed. Alice Shepherd.
Mirror and Pattern: George Laird's World of Chemehuevi Mythology. Carobeth Laird.
        Helen Jaskoski                .                  .                  .                  .         92

CONTRIBUTORS .                .                 .                  .                   .        98

STATEMENT OF COPYRIGHT
      Permission to reprint "Grizzly Woman Killed People" and "Awl and Her Son's Son" has been granted by University of Chicago Press. Both stories are reprinted from Melville Jacobs, The Content and Style of an Oral Literature: Clackamas Chinook Myths and Tales, The University of Chicago Press, 1959, ©1959 by Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc. The same volume was also issued by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research as Viking Foundation Publications in Anthropology Number 26.
      Martha Lamont gave her stories to Thom Hess without attaching any stipulations. She understood that they would be discussed by university professors and students and would be published eventually. Levi Lamont in fact tailored his translations to such an audience. We asked Hess' permission to publish his transcription, and at that time he made it clear that he wishes his work to be accessible to the audience that is interested in Martha's stories. All rights to Crisca Bierwert's translation of "The Marriage of Crow" are reserved by Lushootseed Research, Inc., a non-profit educational and research organization created by Vi Hilbert to promote the teachings of her elders. The translation will appear in a volume, Lushootseed Texts, prepared under the auspices of that organization.

      Although her name is not exactly a household word (it does not figure, for example, in a list of entries for a proposed directory of Native American women that recently reached us), a case can be made for Victoria Howard's being a major figure in American literature. The narratives that Mrs. Howard gave to Melville Jacobs constitute the remaining corpus of Clackamas Chinook literature and are the basis for four books (Jacobs 1958, 1959a, 1959b, 1960) and part of a monograph (Jacobs 1936). In order to find her work, however, one has to look under "J" for Jacobs: in those days (1930s to 1960s) the collector routinely became the "author." The consequences of this transformation have always been more than bibliographical.
      One can see in Jacobs' commentaries a failure to recognize Mrs. Howard either as author (though it must be said that we do not yet know to what extent she may have been a bearer, rather than a shaper, of traditional narrative) or as narrator. Jacobs evidently did not converse with her much about her telling of the stories (he states that his interpretations suggest "what I judge may have been the intent of the raconteur" [1959b:3-4]); indeed, much of his commentary suggests that he thought of the stories as composed in a predominantly male tradition and passed on, as through a straw, by Mrs. Howard. Her female dimension is never consulted in his analyses of the stories: in his remarks on "Grizzly and Black Bear Ran Away with the Two Girls" (1959b:57-69), for example, Jacobs confesses himself at a loss to see how the initial scene, which he considers to "concretize a most pleasant wish fulfillment" (the rape of two women), can lead to a brutal, cannibalistic sequel (the daughter of one of the women develops misanthropic tendencies). This blindness in his approach to the literature is all the more puzzling in that Jacobs made an effort in certain areas of his own life to promote the professional success of women, consulting female physicians and attorneys long before it became politically correct to do so. As well, Jacobs' interest in the psychoanalytic interpretation of literature, which comes across to us today as reductionist and male-biased, was probably initiated and certainly nurtured by his interest in the career and concerns of his wife, Elizabeth Derr Jacobs, who was a psychiatric social worker as well as his collaborator in the field. In addition, though his literary criticism strikes us as rudimentary today, Jacobs was the first (and a lifelong) champion of the literary quality of Native American "texts."
      At any rate, when in the course of putting together this special issue of SAIL devoted to traditional literatures we received Craig Thompson's article "Gender Representation in Two Clackamas Myths," one of us said to the other, "It's about time."
      Thompson is working with two examples of the kind of text promulgated by linguistic anthropologists in a previous era, the kind that Leslie Silko is on record as saying that she is glad not to have to {2} depend on. The texts, from Jacobs' Content and Style of an Oral Literature (1959b), are presented without much narrative of the circumstances and process of collection, translation or editing--very much on a take-it-or-leave-it basis; but in those days, we have to remember, professors of linguistic anthropology were telling their students, "Don't invite the guests into the kitchen." In anthropology today, this frame of mind has changed, though too late to affect the important collections of yesteryear, of which Mrs. Howard's oeuvre is one. The change does affect us as readers of these collections, though, because we no longer attribute to them and to the commentary that often accompanies them an authority that we now recognize they never had. We know that when Jacobs says, "Clackamas did such-and-such," he means, "One person of Clackamas heritage told me that in her family this is what they did."
      Articles such as Thompson's are the welcome product of our liberation; but at the same time, in issuing his challenge to Jacobs, Thompson confesses himself handicapped by a lack of information about Clackamas society, a lack of that very authority-from-the-field that anthropologists still seem to claim. There is (a little) unpublished information about Clackamas culture in the fieldnotes of Melville Jacobs and of Philip Drucker in the Jacobs Collection at the University of Washington Library; in addition, as Jacobs himself suggests, ethnographies of tribes neighboring the Clackamas can provide suggestions; settlers' memoirs may also contain information; and dissertations can contain unexpected data (in Henry Zenk's "Chinook Jargon and Native Cultural Persistence in the Grand Ronde Indian Community 1856-1907," for example, we find a portrait of the language community in which Mrs. Howard grew up and some information about her personal history). Federal archives may contain something, but this is unlikely: the treaty with the Clackamas was negotiated in secret by a solitary federal agent and no record-keeping was done. No one has as yet gone to the enormous trouble of consulting all these sources in order to construct for himself the kind of authority that Thompson wishes he had: the prospect of meagre reward for prodigious effort is sufficiently intimidating.
      But it has occurred to us to wonder whether it is not the lingering aura of insider privilege around Jacobs' Clackamas publications as much as it is his own sense of information lacking that occasions Thompson's unease, for we must recognize that at this point he is doing criticism on Jacobs' work, not Mrs. Howard's. The effect of his article is to free Mrs. Howard's stories from a construction that has made them unattractive to a present-day audience and that was never her own. But we have not yet gained access to Mrs. Howard's stories: we do not even know the extent to which Jacobs' text represents Mrs. Howard's performance. The authenticity of the text is a matter Thompson does not raise, nor does he consider questions of translation. Prying into these matters may well be fruitless in this case, however, for even consulting the Clackamas language version of a {3} story is no guarantee of an encounter with Mrs. Howard's very words. "Dictation" is Jacobs' favored term for what his storytellers did: he wrote down what they said, and no doubt they stopped and started to keep pace with his pencil. It is quite possible that under these circumstances there never was any performance of these stories. (Under these circumstances, what happens to the dictum that every text carries within itself the directions for its own reading?)
      We are thrown very much, then, upon our own uninformed encounter with these compelling "texts" that may or may not represent Mrs. Howard's intentions. But the texts are compelling, and it is the effect of Thompson's article to increase both their accessibility to us and, it is to be hoped, our willingness to take a chance on them.
      During the past year, each of the editors of this issue of SAIL has taught a course in Native American literatures in which a little over half the time was spent on traditional narrative. We had both read and admired Haa Shuka', Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives, a volume of historical and non-historical narratives presented in the Tlingit language with facing-page English translations, along with an introduction, notes and storytellers' biographies. One of the things we liked most about the volume is the fact that it is meant to be of use to Tlingit people, especially those studying their ancestral language, as well as to non-Tlingits. The reader from outside the culture is invited to share the Tlingit heritage by means of the book: in making such an invitation, the editors, Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, have laid to rest any idea that the stories they present need to be accommodated to non-Tlingit literary expectations, and they have given their non-Tlingit readers a chance to encounter a poetics that will be new to them. We each decided to use Haa Shuka' in our classes, along with a series of Lushootseed (Puget Salish) stories in a format similar to Haa Shuka' but as yet unpublished.
      As it turned out, many of our non-Indian students did not have a good time reading the traditional stories. They expressed their unhappiness in one of two ways: they spoke about feeling incompetent in the face of the Indian stories' difference from what they were used to, or they said that the tradition itself was incompetent: "These people are still telling stories this way in the 20th century? Why haven't they evolved up to our level of stories?" The fact that an ability to deal with traditional stories accumulates precisely as one encounters more and more of them was cold comfort in the face of students' need to appropriate, rather than to share, what is not their own tradition.
      These problems of reception, as well as the problem of the linguistic anthropologist's kitchen door, are addressed in Crisca Bierwert's contributions to this issue of SAIL, an introduction to and glossary for her translation of Snohomish storyteller Martha Lamont's "The Marriage of Crow." As it happens, "The Marriage of Crow" was among the Lushootseed stories that the editors of this issue asked our students to read, and in the course of our discussion of the introductory portion of Bierwert's article it became evident to us that in relying {4} on her post-story glossary in the way that she does, she may be assuming in the introduction an access to figurative levels of the story that her term "polyphony" does not provide. We offer this commentary on a short passage from the story by way of illustration:

             hay gwel 7ululhexw tsi7e7 ka7ka7
             So then Crow travels on the water.
                    cickw ha7lh s./lexil
                    The day is very bright.
                    7es./ha7leb
                    It is calm.
                     put (h)a7lh s./lexil
                    The day is intensely bright.
             huy 7ululhexw
             Thus she travels. (lines 9-13)

      On the tape recording of this performance, one can hear that Mrs. Lamont delivers the passage in a slow and measured way very different from her regular narrative voice. In Bierwert's lineation we can see chiasmus doubling as inclusio (abcba). Both rhetorical and acoustic values signal the operation here of what Bierwert calls "polyphony." It is a Lushootseed literary convention (though not invariably adhered to) that a journey begun in fair weather will be successful. By saying three times that the weather is fine, Mrs. Lamont signals to us that the convention is operative here. In the old days that are the setting for this story, though not necessarily only then, certain people had the ability to change the weather. This kind of ability goes along with being si7ab, a person of distinction, and is, like "si7ab-ness" itself, rooted in the spiritual life. Chantlike delivery, another Lushootseed literary convention, signals the presence of a supernatural context for the passage. At some level, also, whether one wants to see it as deep-structural or as figurative, the story of Crow's journey reflects the genre of stories told about encounters between spirit powers and human beings, encounters that are the result of searches.
      It is possible, then, to see at least three levels of discourse moving along in this passage: the "joke" level, in which Crow goes looking for a husband, something no si7ab young lady of that era would do; the level of what we might call "cultural recollectedness," which recalls and restates what it is to be Indian; and a level to which the statement "Crow goes looking for a husband" does not refer at all. Bierwert rejects the term "allegory" for this level as inappropriate for Native American literature. Specifically for this story, too, it is inappropriate, for, as Bierwert points out, Mrs. Lamont's narrative never leaves the everyday behind; the literal is never less valid than the figurative. "Polyphony," if we understand Bierwert correctly, is the interaction of all levels in dialogue. It is closer to a typological mode than to an allegorical one, but interweaves more strands than either.
      (It seems to us that Thompson's discussion of whether Awl in Victoria Howard's "Awl and Her Son's Son" is a woman, an awl or {5} a phallic symbol needs to be seen in the light of Bierwert's "polyphony." Though Jacobs reports universal agreement among his consultants that myth-era people called "Coyote," for example, looked at all times like people, other writers report differing opinions. Our appreciation of the richness of "The Marriage of Crow" depends in part upon our being willing not to make such distinctions between "person" and "other kind of being." To consider examples from other stories: what are we to make of a scene in which Slug, out getting bark for kindling, can't run fast enough to escape being crushed by the bark as it falls from the tree after he has loosened it with a pole? Or a scene in which Magpie is playing with her grandson but scares him as she suddenly takes a peck at a ball of tallow that he is rolling on the ground? To posit that Awl must be or look like either an awl or a woman is to preclude the possibility of this kind of joke, which is found everywhere in Northwest Coast stories, including, we think, "Awl and Her Son's Son.")
      It seemed to be our students' experience that the impression made by the language of a translation was more formative of their opinion about the quality of a story than was their reaction to its narrative content. The Dauenhauers translate into a sort of interlanguage in which the Tlingit syntax is allowed to influence the English, and in which their lineation, reflective of Tlingit speech rhythms, disrupts the expected contours of English. Their decision-making in these matters is governed by a desire to "recreate on the written page as much as we can of the original performance" (8). Their rejection of full translation (that is, not only into the language of another culture, but into a literary mode that already exists in the other culture) is made in order to provide access to an extra-literary feature of the original. Bierwert, too, translates into an interlanguage, but her reason is different: "Telling what sounds smooth in English would exceed the limits of translation and move into appropriation." She seems to be attempting a redefinition of literary translation in what may well be political terms: as an instrument of the English-speaking dominant culture, she will go only so far in operating on the Lushootseed text. One cannot imagine a translator of Proust or Calvino rejecting "what sounds smooth in English" as an unacceptable appropriation of the French or Italian text. Though they seem to approach their decisions from opposite directions--the Dauenhauers from within the source culture and Bierwert from outside it--both sets of translators have settled on a medium, interlanguage, that refers as much to what is withheld in translation as to what is conveyed.
       In the sound of interlanguage it seems to us that we hear the collaboration of glamor and authority. Interlanguage is not the voice of a culture (cultures speak their actual languages), but the voice of an authority about the culture. We may hear echoes of Tlingit and Lushootseed in the English because someone more knowledgeable than we has let us experience a little of what it is like to confront the actual sounds, syntax, and lexicon of the source language. {6} Interlanguage makes us aware of the process of translation and of the translator's authority; at the same time, it glamorizes the source by inviting us to hear the siren call of the untameable text. Our incompetence as readers may make the interlanguage text seem to us either full of things waiting to be found out, or frustratingly inaccessible. Each of these effects of interlanguage has value: functionally monolingual Americans need to stop reading translations as though they were complete transfers of their sources. Both the Dauenhauers and Bierwert take pains to defuse this kind of reading: they invite collaboration from their readers, insisting by the very format of their works that readers revisit and not merely gaze at the stories. They spend time laying bare the process of their translating activity so as to avoid giving the impression of omniscience and omnipotence that past translators like Jacobs have cultivated. Bierwert struggles to decide whether she will address the reader as collaborator ("you") or merely refer to an audience ("the reader") for her work; in the annotations they provide, the Dauenhauers allow themselves to be seen as caught between cultural reticence and ecumenical fervor. But it seems to us noteworthy that in their very struggles to avoid assuming either the mantle of authority or the veil of glamor, both sets of translators have settled on a medium of translation that winds most closely about itself both veil and mantle.
      As it happens, one of the editors of this issue of SAIL is working on a translation of another of Mrs. Lamont's tellings of "The Marriage of Crow," this time with the goal of finding a voice in English for Mrs. Lamont that reflects her competency in Lushootseed as well as the register of her narration, as far as that can be recovered. The result has been an English text void of the magic of the Lushootseed, a result even more puzzling than disappointing.
      One question the translator can ask herself at this point is, "Is the magic I perceive really a property of Mrs. Lamont's telling or only a facet of my response, a side-effect of the amount of effort I have spent?" The English for each word and sentence is sought after in grammars and lexicons, with elders and colleagues, and the resulting understanding of the possibilities of the story--this understanding being, after all, the thing that can be translated--seems precious because hard-won. Bierwert's translation, for this editor at least, reflects the translator's experience of the Lushootseed: it leaves some mysteries unsolved. But in so doing, it cannot pretend to reflect Mrs. Lamont's own voice, her own narrative personality. It may be impossible to do this--as some schools of critical theory are ready to tell us. But the search for a way to demystify Mrs. Lamont's utterance without "reducing" it in translation remains a worthwhile endeavor, at least for a certain audience.
      Something else, however, must be said. Supposing someone ever does deal in a satisfactory manner with the question of glamor as it affects--and adheres to--the decisions translators make: the problem is still not solved. For as one works with these traditional tellings of stories with a group of elders nowadays, or with an elder and her {7} family, it becomes evident that for them these tellings are not simply "Lushootseed literature," but now have become a degree more special, more like scripture. If you ask an elder, "Which is the better translation of `7eslhalhlil': "living there" or "dwelling"?--as Thom Hess recently did (he collected much of Martha Lamont's oeuvre in the 1960s and remains engaged in the process of bringing it back home to her relatives and friends)--the elder may well respond: "`dwelling': it sounds `higher'"--even though "7eslhalhlil" in that elder's own speech gets translated (by the elder) as "living." How is this elder going to feel about a translator's plausible, competent English for Martha Lamont--betrayed?

      This issue of SAIL is longer than usual, as any issue of any journal will be once the editors agree to publish otherwise unavailable Native American texts along with the articles people write about them. We wish to thank Helen Jaskoski and Robert Nelson for being not only willing but eager to cope with this task and to make SAIL a home for this kind of work in the future. We also thank William Seaburg for answering our questions about the Jacobs Collection of Native American materials in the University of Washington Library. (Any errors in our discussion of Jacobs' life and work are of course our own.) Those interested in Jacobs' work will find Seaburg's Guide (1982) to the Collection invaluable.

Dauenhauer, Nora Marks and Richard Dauenhauer. 1987. Haa Shuka', Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives. Seattle: U of Washington P and Juneau: Sealaska Heritage Foundation.

Jacobs, Melville. 1936. Texts in Chinook Jargon. University of Washington Publications in Anthropology 7 (1): 1-27.

------. 1958. Clackamas Chinook Texts, Part I. IJAL 24 (2, Pt. 2): 1-293.

------. 1959a. Clackamas Chinook Texts, Part II. IJAL 25 (2, Pt. 2): 301-663.

------. 1959b. The Content and Style of an Oral Literature. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Reprint of Viking Foundation Publications in Anthropology 26.

------. 1960. The People Are Coming Soon: Analyses of Clackamas Chinook Myths and Tales. Seattle: U of Washington P.

Seaburg, William R. 1982. Guide to Pacific Northwest Native American Materials in the Melville Jacobs Collection and in Other Archival Collections in the University of Washington Libraries. U Washington Libraries Communications in Librarianship 2. Seattle: U Washington Libraries.

Zenk, Henry. 1984. "Chinook Jargon and Native Cultural Persistence in the Grand Ronde Indian Community 1856-1907: A Special Case of Creolization." Diss. U of Oregon.

      A man lived (alone) there. He hunted all the time. The following day he would go again. That is the way he was. I do not know how long a time he lived there. One day he thought, "I will not go today. I will stay and patch my moccasins." And so he did. He sewed all day long. After a while then he broke his (bone) awl. He thought, "Oh me oh my! my poor awl!" He took it, he threw it underneath his bed-platform. "I wish you would turn into a person!" Now he continued to live there. The next day then he went to hunt again. That is what he did.
      I do not know how long after, he got back, his (hearth) fire was burning, he saw footprints of small feet (inside his house). He thought, "Where could a person have come from to me?" The next day then he made a bow (and) arrows, he laid them close by the fire. He thought "If it is a male, then he will take hold of it" (and I will see that it has been moved).
      Now he went away, he hunted. He returned in the evening. Again his fire was burning. Someone had fixed his things nicely indeed for him. The arrows (and) the bow just lay there (untouched). He thought, "Oh it is no male. Apparently it is a female."
      So the next day he made a camas root-digger. He stood it in the ground close by the fire. Now he went away again. He got back at night. The root-digger was gone, it was standing far over there. He thought, "Indeed that must be a female." And again that was how she had covered (put away) nicely all his things.
      So again the next day he went. And he went along, he hunted. He got back in the evening. Now she had swept his house quite clean, his fire was burning. He thought, "Maybe she just went somewhere a short while ago." He went to bed, and then he began to think it over. "Wonder where this person has been coming from? Now tomorrow I shall hide from her."
      It became the next day. He finished eating, he got ready, he went outside, he forthwith went around the house. He went up above, he lay on his stomach on the roof, he looked down inside. Pretty soon then someone ran out (from hiding). She said, "Now I guess that my son's son has gone. Suppose I go look." She ran outside. "Oh yes now my son's son has long since gone on." She went inside. "Very well. Now I shall wash and clean up everything." And so she did.
      But he himself descended (from the roof) slowly and cautiously now, he went all around the house, he entered, he spoke harshly to her. "Who are you? What people are you from?" She merely sat there. She said absolutely nothing to him. "Why have you come here and disturbed everything?" Now she replied to him, "Yes, but that was what you thought in your heart. You yourself said, I wish that you would turn into a person. That's me here." "Oh oh, I merely said that (unseriously) to you."
{9}
      Now they lived there, he and his father's mother. She would say to him, "Son's son!" And so they lived on there. He served food to her, and then she said, "No! my son's son! Had you not broken me (the point at the tip of the bone awl), then I would be able to eat. But because you broke me, I cannot eat now." She did not ever eat. He would bring a deer, she would merely assist him. They would smoke-dry it.
      Now it became summertime, and some blackberries became ripe. He had gotten there (to a blackberry patch), he got back, he told his father's mother, "Father's mother! Perhaps you can pick berries. Some are commencing to ripen now." "Yes. I shall go tomorrow." He showed her the place where. And to be sure the following day then she went, she went to pick berries. She picked both green ones and red ones, with their stems on. She brought them back. He returned in the evening. She placed it (the basket of berries) before him. "Indeed," he said to her. "You found it (the berry patch)." "Yes," she replied to him. He selected ripe ones, he ate them.
      Now they (people at a nearby village) were gossiping, they were discussing Awl and her son's son. "They live luxuriously." At once one unmarried girl said, "I am going to go tomorrow (to them)." So the next day the girl got ready (she dressed in her finest and carried all her valuables with her), she went away, she sought them. She went along, she reached a spring. She thought, "I shall wash my face right here." She sat, and she washed her face, she combed her hair, she put on her face paint. All done. Then she proceeded.
      Presently while she was going along, she now reached the (patch of) blackberries. "Oh dear me, they are mixed red and black now (they are already ripening)." So then she picked them. Pretty soon now it became dark (because Awl made a storm with her spirit-power). She (the girl) thought, "Oh too bad! It will rain, I shall get wet."
      Shortly after that then she heard someone hallooing, "Whooooo went through my patch? they have been pulled unripe! they have been trampled! Hm!" she sounded (angry). She (Awl) commenced stabbing at the woods. At the place where she (the girl) was hiding (to escape the stabs of the awl), right close by there she stabbed at her (in order to frighten, not to kill her). She (the girl) said to her, "Hey! old woman! You nearly picked at (stabbed) me." "Indeed. Is that you? my son's son's wife?" Now she (the girl) began to help her, they picked blackberries. She (Awl) said to her, "Don't pick the ones that are too black (overripe), pick all kinds." "All right." They filled her (Awl's) berry basket. Then they went home, she took her with her. They went along.
      She (Awl) said to her, "Sit here. This is the bed of my son's son." She served her food, she ate, she finished eating all of it. Then she said to her, "Wash your head, son's son's wife. (Then) I shall look and see how you are." So then she washed her head. When all done she said to her, "Comb your hair. Stand over there. Let your hair down (over your eyes)." So that is what she did. Now Awl stood there, she {10} said,

      "I am going to stab you, son's son's wife!
      Put your hair down! son's son's wife!
      I am going to stab you.
      Put your hair down! son's son's wife!"

Now she pierced her right to her heart. Her heart burst, she fell, and then she died. Now she dragged her to the rear of the house, she laid her down, she piled things on top of her.
      Pretty soon afterward then he returned. He went inside. His father's mother (Awl) just sat there. "So you are sitting here!" "Yes indeed! son's son!" Whereupon she set food before him, he ate it. Then she set blackberries in front of him, he ate them. He said to her, "Oh dear me! father's mother! You are learning now." "Yes," she said to him. She thought, "I said to her, Do not pick the ones that are too black."
      Then another one (the second oldest of the five girls) also said, "Our older sister perhaps found them. I shall go also." She got ready, and she went. She was going along, she got to a spring. She saw her (older sister's) tracks. Face paint was scattered around (on the ground). "Indeed," she thought. "Right here is where she must have been." She sat there too (and prepared herself as the older girl had done. The second girl's experience duplicates the first in almost identical words. A third girl then journeys, and the act is again the same, except that in the woods the girl almost weeps because of a premonition of danger. The day after her murder the fourth girl departs, and in the woods she weeps profusely in her anticipation of an unknown peril--she knows that her involuntary tears are a bad omen. The fifth and last girl's experience after the murders of her four older sisters, and the remainder of the myth, are in the following words).
      Over yonder now there was only one (girl remaining). She thought, "I shall go too." She said to their (the five girls') parents, "I am going to go too. I am going to try to find where my older sisters went." "Very well." She got ready, and then she went away. As she was going along she wept (involuntarily). She thought, "Why am I doing like that?" She quit doing it. She kept on, she got to a spring. She saw their footprints where her older sisters had sat. She wept. In vain did she stop it. Now she wept still more. She thought, "Why am I weeping like that?" She did not wash her face, she did not comb her hair. Now she went on.
      Presently as she was going along, now she heard, "Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch my leg! and that is not my name, (nor) have I been killing your older sisters. You broke my leg." "Really," she said to her (to the injured Meadow Lark Woman). "Indeed tell me the truth. I am carrying along everything (that I possess that is valuable and I shall give you these valuables in return for information)." She took her valuables. She wrapped her (Lark's broken) leg, she chewed up a money-dentalium, she chewed it, she spit it over her (Lark's) leg. All done (the leg was repaired and the payment made).
{11}
        Now she (Lark) gave her the information. She said to her, "To be sure, when the first of your older sisters came, she got to the place where Awl's berry patch is. At that place she (your older sister) assisted her. They filled up her berry basket. She (Awl) took her along with her to her house. She said to her, Wash your head! Comb your hair! Stand over there! That is what she (your older sister) did. She said (chanted) to her,

      Undo your hair! son's son's wife!
      I am going to stab you! son's son's wife!

She pierced her. Her heart burst. She killed her. She dragged her around to the rear of the house. She did like that to all (four) of them. Your older sisters are lying behind the house."
      She (Lark) said to her, "Let us go together. Take me with you. Let us go together. When we get to where her berry patch is, she will come to us at that place. You will help her. You will pick blackberries. You should fill it (the berry basket). Then she will say to you, "Let us go now. I shall take you to my son's son's and my house. You will say to her, Yes. Go along. She will take you to there, she will give you food. All done (eating), and then she will say to you, Wash your head! Comb your hair! She will say to you, Stand over there! Put your hair down over your face. You will stand there. Then when she says to you (and chants),

      Put your hair down over your face!

Then turn and move your hair, look (peering through it) at her. Then when she says to you,

      I am going to stab you!

Watch out! Then she might pierce you. Turn and move (aside)! She will miss you, and then you will kill her. Let us be going! Take me along with you!"
      They went along, and she placed her upon her shoulder. As they were going along, they got to blackberries. Now she (Lark) said to her, "This place is where she picks berries." Soon now it became dark (because of Awl's spirit-power to make it so). She (Lark) told her, "She is coming now. She is coming now. It will not rain, it is merely her doing that." Soon then they heard someone hallooing. She said, "Whooo has gone through my berry patch? They are being picked there! It is being trampled there!" She (Lark) said to her, "That is her now." Then she started to stab at the woods. She nearly stabbed them. She (Lark) said to her, "Speak to her!" When she (Lark) sat there (on the girl's shoulder), whatever she might have to say to her, she would nudge her, she would pinch her (with her beak).
     She (the girl) stood, she said to her (to Awl), "Hey! old woman! You almost pierced me." "Indeed! son's son's wife! is that actually you?" "Yes," she replied to her. She assisted her (picking blackberries). They picked blackberries. They filled her berry basket. She {12}(Awl) said to her, "Let us go now. I shall take you along to my son's son's and my house."
      So they went, they got there, she (Awl) served food to her. She (Awl) did not eat. She got through (eating). She (Awl) said to her, "Wash your head now." She finished doing it. "Comb your hair! Stand over there! Put your hair down!" She went, she stood there. She did the very way that she (Awl) told her. The old woman did (chanted),

      "Put down your hair! son's son's wife!
      I am going to stab you!"

She saw her, she moved and looked at her, she (Awl) stabbed at her. She missed her. She pierced the house (wall). There (stuck in the wall and howling in pain) "Ouch ouch ouch! ouch ouch ouch! ouch ouch ouch!"

      Meadow Lark came out from there (because she had hid somewhere), she said to her, "You have killed her now. Now I shall take you to where your older sisters are." They went outside, they went around the house, they opened (uncovered) them where they were lying. She sat there, she wept and wept. She (Lark) said to her, "The man will get back pretty soon."
      Presently he himself, while he was hunting, now he broke his bow. He thought, "Oh dear! my poor poor father's mother! Something (bad) has happened to my father's mother!" He went back, he saw his house, smoke was rising (as always) from it. He went on, he entered, he saw the (young) woman seated there. He said nothing. No father's mother (was present). He sat down.
      She told him, "Probably what is missing in your heart (is your grandmother), (but the fact is that) I killed your father's mother. Look over there!" He turned and looked, he saw his awl stuck there (in the wall). "Oh," he thought. "Indeed now," he said to her.
      She told him, "The first of my older sisters came, another one of them came, all four of them. Then I myself came here too. I found all of them dead. She had killed them. Had I not found her here (my Lark helper), she would have killed me too." "Yes," he replied to her. Then they went, they uncovered them. They were becoming black now. "Indeed," he said to her.
      (He proceeded to explain,) "To be sure, she was not actually my father's mother. I was merely sewing my moccasins. I broke my awl. I liked it. I threw it under my bed. Then it became this person (Awl) here." "Indeed."
      The next day then they buried them. They worked all day long, they buried them. They wrapped them up in everything (of monetary value which) he had. And as for her she put her very own valuables on her older sisters (too).
      Story story.

      They lived there in their village. Their headman's house was in the center (of the village). After a while then a woman came to him. They (the village residents) said, "Some woman has come to our headman (to be his wife)." Now they lived there (and she remained as his wife). When it got toward springtime she went to I do not know where. She returned in the evening. Oh dear, she brought back camas with her. She shared it about. They said to her, "Where did you get them?" She replied to them, "Indeed I got to a burned-over place. The camas were just standing thickly there." They replied to her, "Goodness, whenever you go again let us follow you." "Yes," she said to them, "perhaps tomorrow." "Indeed. Let us follow you." "All right," she replied to them.
      The next day then they (only women) went. I do not know how many canoes went. They got to there, they went ashore. They dug (camas). It became evening, and they camped overnight. They said, "It will be tomorrow before (we return to the village, because the camas digging is so good here)." In the evening they went to sleep. Toward dawn she got an arrow-like spear, she went through the camp, she broke (pierced) their hearts. She killed them all. Now it became morning, and then she carried them away, she laid them down, she hid the paddles. She thought, "I shall go now. I shall go back home." She took along those camas of the (murdered) people. She reached the village. She said to them (to women at the village), "They (the women who accompanied me to the root patch) sent this (the camas) to you." At another house (to which) she went, she took along their camas to them (to the women at that house). She told them, "It will be till tomorrow before I go fetch them (the women who have remained overnight at the root patch)." They said to her, "Let us follow you too." "All right," she replied to them.
      The next day then they (the second group of women) got ready, and then they went, three canoes. They went along, they arrived, they (their murdered predecessors) had tied up the canoes there, so they too tied up their canoes at the place. They went ashore. She told them, "Dear me, I guess they went yonder. There are even lots more camas over there. But stay here first. Let it be tomorrow before we go in that direction (where the first group of women went)." "Very well," they replied to her. They dug. It became evening. They turned away from there, they made fires. Shortly then Grizzly Woman got to them, she said to them "Goodness, now they (the women of the first group) have lots of camas. They said to me, Perhaps we will cook them right here." "Indeed," they replied to her. Then they ate. They finished (their camp meal). Grizzly was gone.
      Shortly now they heard singing. They said, "Goodness! singing! Listen!" They listened. Shortly afterward she got back. She said to them, "Why are you so silent? They are singing yonder." "To be {14} sure!" they replied to her. "We heard them." They said, "Let us sing too." So then they began to sing. They quit (singing, after a while), they went to sleep. Toward sunrise then she again went through the camp, she caused them (with her spirit-power) to sleep. Then she again took her arrow-spear, she broke (pierced) their hearts. She killed all of them. The next day then she again carried them away, she laid them there where she had laid those first ones. She collected their camas, she put it in (her camas bag), and she went back. She got there. Now again she informed them in the same way, "They are not going to come, it will be a while (tomorrow) before they will come back," she said to them. "Indeed," they replied.
      Now others (of the remaining women at the village) said, "Let us go too." The next day then they got ready, they went. She took them along (to the root patch) also. They arrived, they went ashore. They became somehow or other (they felt something was amiss). She said to them, "This is the place where they (first) stopped. Possibly they moved yonder to where there are much more camas." "To be sure," they replied. They dug (camas). One (of this group of women) said, "What do you think? Looks like a long, long time since they were digging (at this site)." "Yes," they replied, "we noticed that." They stopped (digging). In the evening they made their camp there. They said, "It is not good. Something is some way or other (wrong)."
      Shortly afterward then Grizzly arrived. She said to them, "Why are you silent? Yonder they are singing, they are giggling, they are laughing--those who came first. And they baked their camas over there." "Indeed," they replied to her. "We merely got to feeling queer." "Oh dear, oh dear!" she said to them, "why? Soon they will be dancing again (yonder). Suppose I go see them again." She went. Soon afterward as they sat there they heard singing. They said, "It is indeed so. They are singing now. Listen." "Yes," they said. They sat there. Now she got back to them, she said to them, "You sing too!" "All right," they replied to her. They tried to sing, but no, they quit, they lay down to sleep. Now Grizzly arose, she caused sleep in them. She got her arrow-spear, and she went among them, she broke their hearts (with the dart), she killed all of them. The next day then she again carried them to the place where she had laid those earlier ones. All done. Then she loaded up (her canoe) with their camas, and she went back (to the village). She arrived. Now she told them the same way again, "They sent these (roots) to you." "Very good," they replied. "The first ones who went (to the root patch), now they are baking them (the camas they dug) there." "Goodness! Let us go tomorrow too." "All right," she replied.
      They got ready then the next day, they went, they got there, they went ashore. They got to the place where their fire had been. One of them began crying. They said to her, "Why are you making a bad sign for yourself?" She replied, "No. Something is amiss. It (must have) happened to our people at the place where you see." "Why no! Their fire is from a very long time ago, and now it is gone there," they said {15} to her. "Never mind! say nothing to her (to Grizzly)!" They went to dig, they dug. That one (woman) attempted to quit (digging), for then she would be crying again (involuntarily). In the evening they stopped (digging roots), they went to their camp there, they sat. They said, "We will not build a fire (because we are uneasy about the danger we sense)." Shortly afterward then Grizzly came too. She said to them, "What is the matter with you?" They replied to her, "This one here is ill." "Indeed. She will quit (feeling like that) soon." Now they also lay down to sleep.
      She got back to them, she said to them, "Goodness! Have you already laid down to sleep?" They replied, "Yes. It will be tomorrow when we (rise and) dig." "To be sure," she replied to them. "I will go inform them (the earlier arrivals whom Grizzly had indicated as camped at a distance)." They paid no attention to her there. She went away, pretty soon they heard, "Goodness! they (the women yonder) are singing." They said, "Listen! they are singing." One of them said, she said, "Do you suppose that it is really so?" They quit (discussing their doubts). Now she came to them again, she said to them, "They were going to come but I told them that they (you women) had long ago lain down to sleep. So let it be. Now I shall lie down too." Then she lay down. They went to sleep.
      Now she again made sleep sleep sleep for them. Then she arose, she got her arrow-spear, and again she went among them, she broke (pierced) their hearts. Again then in the morning she carried them away. All done. She quit (carrying away corpses and hiding evidence). She loaded up with their camas, (only) a very few (had been dug by them). Now she went home. She got there. She shared their camas around. She told them (at the village), "They became lazy. They dug only a few. They said, It will be tomorrow before (we dig plenty)." "Very well," they (the remaining village women) replied.
      Now the others (the remaining women) also said, "We will go too in the morning." Her (Grizzly's) sister-in-law also said, "I will go tomorrow too." At once her (that woman's) little younger sister said, "I will go too, older sister!" She (Grizzly) said to her (to the girl), "So you too already! Now really why should you accompany us!" She (the girl) said, "I will merely follow my older sister." "No!" she (Grizzly) replied to her. "You must not go." She (the girl) said, "I will go!" She (Grizzly) said to her, "No!" "I will go." Her older sister said to her (to Grizzly), "Oh she is merely saying that to you (and so you need not be concerned about her presence). We will go in the morning."
      The following day then they got ready. The very first one was (the little girl named) Water Bug. She went, she hid in the canoe. They went to the river, they got into their canoes, they went along. Grizzly turned and looked, she saw her (the girl). She said to her, "Goodness! I told you not to come." She (Water Bug) paid no attention to her there. They went along, they arrived. They went ashore. Grizzly forgot (about Water Bug). She forgot, she did not take the older sister's paddles. Water Bug took them, she went, she hid them. She ran about, {16} she got (discovered) all those paddles (which Grizzly had hidden), she moved them away.
      Then she went ashore, she got to her older sister, she said to her, "All the dead people are lying right here. Let us go (see them)!" So the two of them sat, they wept. She said to her older sister, "Wash your face. She (Grizzly) might get suspicious." They got (back) there, they told them (the other women) about it. They wept. They quit (crying). They washed their faces. Water Bug said to them, "Say nothing. If she should tell us, Sing, do that. But be very careful! She will be coming soon now." (When Grizzly arrived) she nudged her older sister, she nudged her, she said, "She will be talking (lying) to us now!"
      She (Grizzly) said to them, "What are you being quiet about? You have lied to the people about something or other, Water Bug!" She (the girl) paid no heed. She (Grizzly) said to them, "Goodness! Now they (the women who are yonder) are drying their cooked camas." She (Water Bug) nudged her older sister. She (Grizzly) quit, and then she left them.
      Again then Water Bug informed them, she said, "Watch carefully!" "Yes," they replied, (Water Bug continued,) "You will not be first. I will be first. She plans to kill me (first)." She told them everything (that they had to do to survive). She said to them, "When she has fallen asleep, then we will leave her." "All right," they said to her. She went to the river, she picked up shells, she brought them to her older sister. Now it became nighttime, they went to bed (as if they were going to sleep).
      She (Grizzly) got to them. "Humph!" she said (to Water Bug). "Now you lied about something to them." She paid no heed, she said nothing whatever. They had gone to bed. Grizzly said, "Now I shall go to bed too then." Water Bug picked up a lot of firewood. She (Grizzly) said to her, "Why are you going to build up the fire? So that is why you came (only in order to be a nuisance). You are supposing some youth may get to your older sister (during the night)!" She (Water Bug) ignored her. (Grizzly observed,) "They are sleepy. They will be getting up (very early) in the morning to dig (and so you should let the fire die down)." She paid no attention to her. She (the girl) lay down. She put those shells over her eyes.
      Shortly afterward the fire went down. Grizzly arose slowly and silently. She (the girl) noticed her, she nudged her older sister, they saw her. She (Grizzly) went to them, she looked at Water Bug. She (the girl) was watching her. "Oh dear me!" she (Grizzly) said to her, "Are you not going to go to sleep? (You are very likely supposing that) youths are going about." "Aha!" Water Bug responded (pretending fright at being awakened). She (the girl) got up, she fixed the fire, she put large pieces of firewood on the fire. "Ah," she (Grizzly) said to her, "indeed why are you building the fire?" She did not reply at all, she lay down again.
      Shortly afterward the fire became low. Now Grizzly got up again, {17} she approached stealthily, she (the girl) heard (Grizzly saying) sleep sleep sleep. "Aha!" retorted Water Bug (as if she had been awakened). "Oh dear me! Have you not been asleep?" (Grizzly asked her). (The girl replied,) "Oh I was dreaming. I saw an arrow-spear with blood on it." "Goodness! Now she is lying to them. Leave them alone. They are sleeping." Then she (Grizzly) lay down again. Water Bug got up, again she put additional wood on the fire. She (Grizzly) said to her "So that is why you came (in order to be a pest)! so you might awaken the people all through the night." Water Bug lay down.
      Now it was getting close to dawn, and Grizzly became sleepy, she nodded off to sleep. She woke up, she arose stealthily so as to look at Water Bug. She (the girl) was keeping watch on her. Then she (Grizzly) lay down again. Soon afterward then it dawned, and Grizzly fell asleep. Water Bug arose, and she made sleep sleep sleep for her (for Grizzly). She slept.
      She (Water Bug) said to them, "Hurry! get up!" They arose, they hurried, they went down to their canoes, they got onto them. She went, she fetched the paddles, she put all of them in (the canoes). Her older sister's paddles had holes in them (in the blades). Now they went away. They were going (paddling) along, they turned and looked, and now she (Grizzly) was already following them (in her canoe). She was pursuing Water Bug. "So that is why you came! You lied to the people." She got close to them. She took her nasal mucus, she hurled it at them. It broke their paddles. She followed them, she got close to them. She blew her nose, she threw her nasal mucus at them. Their (reserve) paddles became broken, all those paddles that they had taken along with them, they were all broken. Now they had gotten close (to their village), and she (the girl) took out her (older sister's) paddles (which were the only ones remaining unbroken). She (Grizzly now) threw her nasal mucus to no avail at them, it went right through them there (through the holes in the blades of the unique paddles). (Now) they went along.
      The people (the men at the village) said, "Something is amiss. A canoe is approaching in a hurry." They (the men) went out (from their houses), they said, "Looks like our headman's wife is following (pursuing) them." They took hold of their bows and arrows. They (the women who were fleeing Grizzly) arrived. Water Bug went, she told their older brother (the headman), "She murdered the people. She took along so many of them, she killed all of them. She is pursuing us." Now they waited for her (for Grizzly). Pretty soon she came ashore, and then they shot at her. She (was unhurt and) said to him (to her headman husband), "Oh dear, oh dear! Why does Water Bug just lie and lie to you?" They shot at her as she went (from the shore up the trail to the houses on the bluff). Her husband sat on top of the house, he shot at her. When she got close to their house, now he had only one arrow (left). He thought, "Oh well, let it be! (she will kill us all)." He threw it at her (he shot his last arrow despairingly), he shot her small finger, it split, she fell there. He had killed her. It was just right there {18} that she had put her heart, on her small finger. Now they burned her, they took (and) completely ground up her bones, they blew her (ashes) away.
      Then they went, they went to gather up the dead persons. They got to there, they went ashore at that place. They took Water Bug along with them, she showed them the place there. They got to there where the first ones (who had been murdered) where now black (and) rotting. They took them all to the canoes, and they took them with them to their graveyard. They buried them all. They finished. All done. Story story.
      When they were finished with everything (and had completed a myth recital), then they (raconteurs) would say, "Now let us (the Myth Age actors) separate (and go our respective ways to the rivers, mountains, or into the air)." And they would do just that then. Some of them would become birds, some of them animals of the forests, some of them (became the creatures) in the river, some of them (especially the larger animals) in the mountains, all sorts of things (they would metamorphose into).

THE FIGURE OF SPEECH IS AMATORY

As in Greek Poetry, as with Theocritus or Vergil, the biblical love in the Song of Songs is stated in metaphorical discourse. The figure of speech is amatory: as condensation and displacement of semantic features it points to an uncertainty, not concerning the object of love . . . but an uncertainty concerning the bond, the attitude of the loving subject toward the other. It is the very enunciatory pact . . . that disturbs the normal, univocal exchange of information. . . . [E]ach bit of information is loaded with semantic polyvalence and thus becomes undecidable connotation. . . . Let me point out, nevertheless, that with the very dawn of lyrical poetry [in the West] . . . the transfer of meaning (metapherein = to transport) sums up the transference of the subject to the other.

Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love             

APPARENT DIFFERENCES: A STUDY OF SURFACE
TEXTURE IN "THE MARRIAGE OF CROW" AS NARRATED
BY LUSHOOTSEED STORYTELLER MARTHA LAMONT
Crisca Bierwert

A Theoretical Introduction
      The texture of voicing in oral tradition perplexes the translator doubly: first comes the effort to grasp and convey suitable resonance of vocabulary, and second comes the motivation to recapitulate a convincing thematic rendition. Lyrics of the storyteller, then, become as elusive and beguiling as those of a love song in the mind. Somehow, in the process of translation, the writer becomes convinced of the appropriateness of her retelling, her rendition. This is a kind of reconciliation, if you will, between the teller and herself, and (like reconciliation in love) its history can become lost in its emergence.
      Although translations seem to be quite active, slippery creatures, this essay presents a translation as something stopped in motion. The Lushootseed language creates nominals by adding an "s-" prefix to verbal forms, a process short of nominalizing which is sometimes called "freezing" by Salishanists. Of Martha Lamont's "The Marriage of Crow" I present a transcription of the Lushootseed-language tape-recording and then an English translation-in-the-works, explicating in a manner once reserved for archivists a translation which I admit is incomplete. Although I do interpret the story, fanning its variety of signification, I try to leave the story primarily "on the ground," in the mundane context of its telling, in order to distinguish it from fable or allegory of other traditions.
{41}
      In lieu of an extended interpretation, I offer a glossary in which my intent is to charge the English words I use as glosses with the potential they need to carry the meaning of the Lushootseed words they replace in the text.
      My glossary-discussion format mimics the works of Quine and Barthes, whose deconstructive responses to the crying relativism of language keep company with the reconstructive iterations of Foucault and Kristeva in Euro-American criticism today. Certainly, the translation problem has laid much groundwork for our attempted grappling with various "others."
      Those of us who translate Native American texts contend constantly with the importance of the surface in "grappling." Whether language is skin or shroud (hide living or preserved), whether sexuality obscures or reveals, whether knowledge is intrinsic or extrinsic to what is lived in ordinary terms, these questions diminish within the larger context of translation. Here the differences in presumptions become grappling places. Our English adjusts in response to the teachings of Native American stories and experiences, and in response to the efforts to translate. We begin to speak differently when we think of Native American texts. Rather than trying to hold onto the distinctions of language, we create meeting grounds with newly used words, words we come to have in common with others. Thus, the glossary is such a meeting ground, a gathering place, an intercultural dictionary, an exchange network.
      The ground of translation cannot possibly be as smooth as that of storytelling, and I stop short of trying to make it so. To my mind, telling what sounds "smooth" in English would exceed the limits of translation and move into appropriation. But this position is questionable: shouldn't what is beautiful in Lushootseed sound beautiful in English? If the English text is beautiful but not smooth, then am I adding a "strangeness" effect, an appeal doomed to relate even unintentionally to stereotype? Here, the second motive for the glossary reveals itself: the glossary allows me to present a "good" translation (a sound one with recognizable beauty) and then explain its deficiencies. My efforts here are very much like those of Toelken and Scott in rendering the "pretty words" of Yellowman, a Navajo storyteller (1976). They chose to tell about confusions and clarifications, their story replete with insights gained in awkward and funny moments as the companion to what else they said. "Now that's Indian," I say to myself.

Historical Context
      "The Marriage of Crow" is part of an oral tradition that is barely alive in a language spoken today only by a few elders, though the story {42} continues to be told in English among Puget Sound Indian people. Mrs. Lamont seems to have enjoyed this story; she tape-recorded it twice. She made her first recording of it in 1953 for Leon Metcalf, who had worked as a logger with Indian men, including Mrs. Lamont's husband Levi, and was moved to record Lushootseed stories and information as a dedicated amateur. In 1962, when linguistics graduate student Thom Hess began work with Mrs. Lamont, she told the story somewhat differently. This time the recording project was viewed by Hess as a means to document the grammatical structure of the moribund language. After taping stories, he worked with Levi Lamont to translate them.
      Martha's and Levi's use of language must, however, have reflected the differences in their lives: Martha did not use English very much, while Levi had lived in closer contact with English-speaking others, both Indian and non-Indian, and was proficient in the work and the language of the off-reservation world. Whether Martha had any comment to make about Levi's English translation of her work we do not know; unknown also is her point of view regarding the process and goals of the tape-recording project. Hess's notes on Levi Lamont's remarks and glosses are the only available commentary contemporary with the recording. The evocative story that Martha Lamont has left us, then, leaves us also with questions about her, as well as about the narrative. Is the story intrinsically evocative or did she make it so? If she made it so, did she tell it this way for this occasion? Is this moment of retelling part of what Martha Lamont intended to speak to?
      In approaching this story, thinking about the lives that the Lamonts lived and about the Hess-Lamont collaboration, I find my way to an extent already prepared by others. In Coast Salish winter gatherings of western Washington and southern British Columbia, individual dancing is preceded by the dances of distinguished visitors called "floor openers" in Indian English. These people and their songs clear the way for the others who follow. Among those whose teachings have cleared the way for me to speak about Coast Salish stories and understandings are Vi Hilbert, Hank and Maggie Pennier, Frank Malloway, Sweetie Malloway, and Beatrice Silver and their friends and families. Many others have helped clear the way to publishing interpretive translations; I think now of Andrew Peynetsa (Tedlock 1972), Madeline De Sautel (Mattina 1985), Andres Xiloj (Tedlock 1985, 1987), and Felipe Molina (Evers and Molina). Contemporary Native American fiction and poetry provide other sources of inspiration.
      The translation I provide draws on my own fieldwork as an anthropologist, work which allows and encourages me to see reference to traditional Puget Sound ritual practice in the text. My interest {43} in interpretation differs from Hess's work partly as a reflection of my field, partly as a response to the present historical moment, and partly as a possibility derived from his previous work. My understandings of ritual reference (hence my interpretation and translation) are based on observations not contemporary with the 1962 text, but on the combination of involvement, research, and oral history I have participated in since 1977. Published scholarship also affords some basis for insight, but there exists some controversy about the appropriateness of having put some of that published information into writing at all. I have been guided by contemporary standards in making reference to ritual, speaking only of information that is "common knowledge" (neither particularly esoteric nor personal) or outside the sensitive area of initiation. My translation also benefits from work with materials prepared by Hess, consultation with him, and ongoing work with Vi Hilbert, the native speaker of Lushootseed who has worked with Hess and with her elders over the past 25 years to transcribe and interpret the archival tapes of the 1950s and 1960s, and who more recently has worked to video- and tape-record texts from contemporary elders.
      This article is part of a larger effort to publish texts from the Lushootseed traditions, an effort guided by Vi Hilbert, who wants to present the texts in a manner as open to interpretation as possible. My translation is one of a collection to be published by the University of Nebraska Press in a series that also draws on the work of linguist Dawn Bates. It is the third translation of this story that has been done, so far as I know, following the Hess-Lamont English version, and a second one by Thom Hess and Vi Hilbert.

The Storytelling--Poetic Diction
      What I particularly like about "The Marriage of Crow" is that Martha Lamont tells a story which is "about" surface texture, thus giving me a chance to play recursively with the idea of surface even as I translate it.
      Lamont's words and the story form are polyphonic, and her ability to speak of many things at once is the essence of the beauty of her telling. I use the word "essence" guardedly but intentionally here. For my understanding of the Salish culture is that it rests on essentialist premises--but not those that deny the material. Indeed it is the substantial nature of the story I will talk most about: longing and rejection, dressing up, sexuality, accumulated riches. For background, we have class division, modes of production, social graces, and even the weather. What could be more fun?
      The story is a journey, a straightforward one with a definite conclusion (unlike so many Puget Sound and other Native American traditions in which the narrative structure loops about and predict-{44}ability is routinely upset). Crow sets out by canoe to find the man she wants to marry, a man whose name she knows (Whyalliwa, an iridescent shell), but whom it seems she has not yet seen. As she goes along singing her anticipation of her mate, various men come down to the shore in hopes of being her choice, but she rejects each suitor. Finally, she arrives at the place where she is to be married. The people there gather together, Crow joins her husband to sit on a pile of ceremonial blankets, and the people feast and dance.
      It could be that this very straightforwardness is upset by the nature of Crow herself. Customarily in Lushootseed literature, Crow is a rascal rather like the more widely familiar tricksters Raven and Coyote (though less ubiquitous and successfully avaricious than these). In this story, she acts her usual self, somewhat subdued, but still at times raucous, clever, and unconventional. Despite this behavior, she is described as si7ab (that is, honorable and of high status) and she is looking for a partner of unquestioned quality. Is she really si7ab? Her mate appears the straight man; is he really meeting his match--or is he taken in? On this level of questioning, the story retains the unsettled quality of other trickster tales, a quality which must be borne in mind throughout the rest of my (rather more serious-minded) discussion. It is not that this dimension impugns the interpretation I offer, by the way, but that it acts as a perpetually humorous (possible) counterpoint. It does not unsettle, for example, the argument that the substantive reference of the story is Lushootseed ritual, for human nature in that tradition is seen in its entirety, which includes the laughable as well as what Westerners would see as more abstractly sacrosanct.
      Within this larger orchestration of ambiguities, Mrs. Lamont livens her story with subtle reference to varied dimensions of experience. Crow is engaged in more than courtship here. Certainly, this is a mythic marriage which carries allusion from story to the immediate world and out again.
      In the social context, in the "old days" a marriage of those who were si7ab created an alliance between people remote from one another, involving families of considerable wealth and power. Such a marriage ostensibly brought together people of apparently different natures. Historically, of course, reciprocal intermarriage tended to re-create its own patterns and limit some of that kind of difference. And in any event, marriage of those of the "same" (si7ab) nature played for that kind of sameness over the paradigm of difference.
      In the context of the sacred, "partnership" also has another particularly Lushootseed frame of reference: the relationship between the Lushootseed person and a spirit familiar. This reference may seem to lie beyond the surface texture of the story as a shadow story, paralleling the literal one. But it is not only, I argue, an allegorical or {45} analogical reference, for it lies also specifically within the surface texture, the (exquisitely minimal) descriptive detail of the story. Each of the suitors has an appealing physical feature, a distinctive characteristic which he has enhanced. Each of the features signifies a specific part of the costume worn by a dancer in Lushootseed ritual. When we interlace these images (weaving together the indexical referents implied in everyday language), we see a stronger and detailed description of the suitors as possible spiritual partners. In short, what makes them physically "attractive" is indicative of their "otherworldly" appeal. Furthermore, Mrs. Lamont's use of descriptive detailing is cumulative, so the details stand not only as distinctive emblematic indices, but also --taken together--as a diagrammatic set or series. Thus, Mrs. Lamont evokes simultaneously the human, the animal, and the spirit-human forms of the story's characters.
      The idea that Crow's journey is (or is an allusion to) a spirit quest is somewhat obscured by the point of view of the story. Unlike most stories which are clearly mythic versions of spirit quests, there is no movement here into a definitely "other" world. Although the suitors are clearly "other" (the seagulls squawk that each one is "wrong/different/wrongly different"), there is no life-challenging struggle, illness and healing, no unconsciousness and waking, as in the transition and transformation episodes of a spirit quest story. There is no otherworldly threshold here.
      It is possible that Crow is seeking her muse; like Orpheus she carries the song and makes her journey. But it is more likely that Crow is the muse here, moving toward the one who is--in a more limited way--questing. Within the terms of the culture and the story, this dynamic would make sense of the apparent conflict between the presence of vision-quest allusion and the absence of an experienced threshold of transformation. If Crow is the familiar, then the "other" world is permeable to her.

Narrative and Dramatic Voices
      Mrs. Lamont uses a wide variety of contrastive voices in her storytelling. Not only does she voice the characters differently, she uses various voices for commentary on them. Most obvious is the development of the seagulls: she describes them in a patterned manner, mimics their speech, and provides metacommentary on the representation of seagulls in the story. The appearances of the men in the story are fairly conventional (I hear a common voice used for all of them until Shell is reached and perhaps even then), but this character/action-(i.e., episode-) narrative voice differs from a scene-setting narrative voice. Crow is described with various languages: most notable, of course (given that this is a culturally specific mode of {46} identification), is her song. Equally remarkable are her insults to others: her rude mockery of the men and her commands to her slaves. The voice which describes her social context is different from the character voices, however, in using more elaborate syntax and more specific details (which also include a complexly formed vocabulary).
      The scene-setting narrative voice is not only a complex and detailed voice, however. The voice used for weather-setting (the propitious context which Crow experiences) is simple and patterned, as is the voice used for setting travel. This voice is formal; in the story these motifs are used for bridging from location to location, for moving the story along, for reminding the audience of the metaphorical drift which this story carries. In addition to the travel motifs, other elements of the story seem to have their own stylized language patterns.
      However, these "types" of voice seem to be less important than the particular ones for each type of "-setting" which Martha Lamont is voicing at a given time. That is, the particular words for what is happening at the moment contribute to the voice and must be considered part of the contexture. Although it is analytically possible to think of the character-setting voices as intersecting as a set with the scene-setting voices, we just don't find everyone everywhere in this story. Crow is the bridge; she appears almost everywhere. However, she figures more in more formal scenes and less in less formal scenes. Her relatives, her slaves, the animals who come down to the shore, her in-laws, her guests, all appear more in less formal scenes, less in more formal scenes. These others are a backdrop, in a way. As for the gentlemen, they don't really have a setting. This is significant to the story: we don't know "who they are"; they have no social background. They present themselves dramatically, actors out of context.
      With this overture, then, I offer Mrs. Lamont's story and my translation, following with a glossary.

*               *               *               *

{46}
Note on Pronunciation and Orthography

Lushootseed vowels are pronounced as follows:

a        ah as in "father"
e       schwa
i        ee as in "machine" or ay as in "may"
u       oo as in "tool," o as in "hole" or oo as in "foot" (Pronunciation of Lushootseed i and u varies from dialect to dialect and speaker to speaker.)
7        glottal stop
With the exception of the following, Lushootseed consonants unless glottalized sound similar to English ones:
c        ts as in "mats"
lh        unvoiced l
K        glottalized tl
x        ch as in German ach
xw     rounded version of x (above) or of a sound similar to ch in German ich
q        like k, but uvular instead of velar (a "back" k)
The transcription omits diacritics, so glottalizing of consonants is not indicated. "./" is used to separate roots from affixes and is not significant for pronunciation. Carons (^v . . . ^v) enclose false starts.

The original IPA-based orthography of the transcription has been modified for this publication.

{48}

1.         7es./lhalhlil ^vti7ilh . . . ,^v ti7ilh 7acilhtalbixw.
2. hi.kw 7es./lhalhlil.
3. qa 7al ti7acec s./watixwted 7e ti7e7 gwelh dibelh
   7al kwedi7 tu./ha7kw.

4. tsi7e7 ka7ka7 ^v7i ti7e7 . . . ,^v 7i ti7e7 ^vs . . . ,^v kiyuuqws.
5. kiyuuqws ti7e7 ^vs . . . ,^v s./tudeq 7e tsi7e7 ka7ka7.
6. ^vti7e7 . . . ,^v ti7e7 kiyuuqws ste./tudeqs.

7a. cickw xelh ti si7ab tsi7e7 ka7ka7             ^vti ses./huys 7al
                                                                             ti7e7 . . . ,^v
7b.       7al     kwi c[ed]ilh teses./huys 7acilhtalbixw
                     7al ti7ilh tu./dzixwbid 7e ti7e7 dibelhexw
                                                           7al ti7e7 s./watixwted
            7al kwedi7 tebeses./bech 7e kwedi7 tebe./leli7
                                                           s./watixwted tu./dzixw.

8. dzixwbidexw
            7al kwedi7 tus./qwibitebsexw ti -> s./watixwted.

9. hay gwel   7ululhexw tsi7e7 ka7ka7.
10.                cickw ha7lh s./lexil.
11.                7es./ha7leb.
12.                pu.t (h)a7lh s./lexil.
13. huy         7ululhexw.

14.          cuucexw ti7e7 ^v7i . . . ,^v ste./tudeqs kiyuuqws.
15.          qa. ti7ilh kiyuuqws ste./tudeqs.
16.          xelh ti K(u)u./cut ti7ilh kiyuuqws.
17.                           "qweni qweni qweni qweni qweni."
18. huy   xelh ti 7ugwe./cutad.

19. huy   gwel gwe./qwibidexw ti7ilh kiyuuqws.
20. huy                  qwibidexw elgwe7 ti7ilh ^vcanoes elgwe7 . . . ,^v
                                                                                    qilbids elgwe7.

{49}

1. People are living.
2.                                    Many of them.
    They are living.
3.                                    Lots of them
    in this world of ours a long time ago.

4. Crow and these--,
                       these seagulls are there.
5.                        The seagulls are Crow's slaves.
6.                              Her slaves are seagulls.

7. Crow was rather si7ab
                  when she was a person, --that's how she is then--
in the first time of ours
           in the world,
when a different world was yet laid out, at first.

8. It is the first time now,
        when the world was created.

9. So then Crow travels on the water.
10.         The day is very bright.
11.         It is calm.
12.         The day is intensely bright.
13. Thus she travels.

14. The slaves are talking, the seagulls.
15. Lots of them.
                       Her slaves are the seagulls.
16.            Just like seagulls always talking,
17.                                                "q^weni, q^weni, q^weni, q_weni, q^weni";
18. Thus just like that they "talked."

19. And   then those seagulls prepared.
20.           Thus they prepare their "qilbid"--
                                                      their canoes.

{50}
21. huy    gwel huyutebexw ti7ilh s./lhagwid, ci./celshaad xelh ti,
        ^vgwe . . . ,^v                gwedexw./7ibesh 7e tsi7e7 ka7ka7
                         lhudexw./qilagwil dxw./7al ti7ilh qilbid.
22.                    7es./lhe.x dxw./7al tudi7 qilbid.
23. ^vlhi . . . ,^v    yaw les./cil ti7ilh 7iisheds 7al ti7ilh se./7ibeshs
                                                                                   tsi7ilh ka7ka7
24. huy ->        si7ab, cickw si7ab tsi ka7ka7 7al kwi cedilh
                                                                                         teses./huys
                         7acilhtalbixw.

25. huy             7u./qilitebexw 7e ti7e7 ste./tudeqs.

26. huy     7ululhtubexw.
27.            7ululhtubexw.
28.                              qa ti7ilh 7iisheds elgwe7.
29.            xwul 7e(s)./shulh ti7e7 7iisheds 7es./kwitalgwilh.
30.            7ululhtubexw.
31.            7ululhtubexw tsi7e7 ka7ka7.
32. 7i.,      7es./liqwil.

33. cut./cut      tsi7ilh ka7ka7. ^vdxw7al ti . . . , 7al ti7ilh . . . ,^v
34. "dxw./7al   kwi beda7 7e kwi xweyaliwa
                       kwi lhus./7uxwtubshlep.
35. dxw./7a     kwi lhus./7uxwtubshlep."

36. "xweyaliwa ti7ilh s./da7 7e ti7ilh lhedexw./7uxws,
                                                                 dexw./7uxws,
                                                                dexw./7uxws hawe7."

37. huy   7uxwtubexw 7e ti7e7 ste./tudeq.
38.          qa kiyuuqws.
39.          xelh ti le./cut ti7e7 kiyuuqws le./7ululhtub
                                                                 tsi7e7 s./7ushebabdxw ka7ka7.
40.          xelh ti le./cut.

41. ludubexw 7e ti7e7 bekw s./tab titchulbixw. ^vlhu . . . ,^v
42.          lhu./7ibesh kwsi ka7ka7 l(e)abschis./chistxw.

{51}
21. And    then    they laid a mat, a sort of long long rug,
                            they made a woven path,
                                                     a place for Crow to walk
                                                           in order to get into the canoe.
22.                       It is spread out all the way to the canoe.
23.                       There must be a covering where she walks, that Crow.
24. Thus she is si7ab.
                 Crow is very si7ab
                                               when she was            a person.

25. Thus              her slaves put her on board.

26. Thus they take her.
27.            They take her.
28.                  Her relatives are there.
                                         Lots of them.
29.                  Her relatives are down at the shore just seeing her off.
30.            They take her.
31.            They take Crow.
32. Ye-s,   it is perfectly still.

33. Crow says,                                     --"there . . . to . . .--
34.                   I want you guys to take me,
                                            to the son of Whyalliwa.
35.                   I want you guys to take me there."

36. "Whyalliwa is the name of the one, why she'll go,
                                                      why she goes,
                                                      why she goes, aha!"

37. Thus   the slaves take her.
38.            There are lots of seagulls.
39.            The seagulls are going along sort of talking.
                 They are taking dear Crow.
40.                        They are going along sort of talking.

41.            All kinds of little animals hear about it.
42.            Crow plans to travel to get a husband.

{52}
43.           xaKtxwexw kwi gwesebs./chistxwils.
44.           "gwat kwi ^vlhus7ilh . . . ,^v lhus7ilh./huygwass."
45. gwel  "dilh 7u tsi si7ab."

46. huy,    qwi7adexw ti7e7 chagwexw.
47.            xwu7ele7 7al kwi dzixw ti7ilh ^vxelh ti,^v aa./KaK
48.                             7al -> dzixw ti7e7 ^vsteb . . . ,^v xa7xalus.

49.            qwibicutexw ti7e7 xa7xalus.
50. huy     7es./ludxw l(e)abschis./chistxw tsi7e7 ka7ka7 dxw./7al
                 kwi lhudexw__________.
51.            gwat kwi dexwbes./chistxwil 7e tsi7ilh ka7ka7.
52.            cickw si7ab ka7ka7 tsi7ilh.
53.            7es./Kubil.
54. huy gwel      qwibicutexw ti7e7 xa7xalus.

55.                  [dxw]./liqwusbexw.
56.                  [dxw]./xalusbexw ti7ilh ^vti7ilh steb . . . ,^v xa7xalus.
57.                  [dxw]./xalusebexw.
58. gwel         7exid.
59.                  7e[xw]./xalusexw 7e ti7ilh xwi./qweqw 7i ti7ilh
                                                                                               xi./bech
                       7al kwedi7 s./7acus(s).
60. gwel         7es./qwib.
61.                  putexw ha7lh ti7ilh xa7xalus.
62.                  putexw xelh ti gwat.

63. huy,          kwitexw.
64.                  kwitexw 7al ti7ilh cedilh se./7eK 7e tsi7ilh ka7ka7.

65. le./tilib 7al kwedi7 s./7ilgwilh,
                       7al ti7e7 s./7ilgwilh
                                 7al ti7e7 s./watixwted
                                         7al kwedi7 tu./dzixw.
66. dzixwbidexw 7e kwi tedexw./qwibitebsexw ti7e7 s./watixwted
                         [7al kwi] teses./huys elgwe7 tu./7acilhtalbixw ti7e7
                                                                                       bekw s./tab.

67. huy           le./tilib tsi7e7 ka7ka7 [7al] ti7ilh se./7ululhs.
68.                  le./tilib.
69. ^vl . . . ,^v      le./tilib.
70.                                "lebekixw./kixw kayeye
                                     lebekixw./kixw kayeye
                                     dxw./7al kwi beda7 7e xweyaliwa,
                                                                          xweyaliwa."

{53}
43.            Now she wants to have a husband.
44.                                         "Who will become-- become her partner?"
45.                                    and "Is this the one?"

46. Thus they announce to come down to the shore.
47.            Just like the riff-raff to be first, I guess.
48.            Ah-- Raccoon is first.

49.            Raccoon has prepared himself.
50. Since  he has heard that Crow is going to get a husband
                                                                                        --to . . . .
51.            who will become Crow's husband?
52.            That Crow is very si7ab.
53.            She is good.
54. And so Raccoon has prepared himself.

55. He paints up.
56. Raccoon paints his face.
57.            He paints his face.
58.            And how!
59.            He paints his face with white and black
                                               there on his face.
60. And    he is ready.
61.            Raccoon is very fine!
62.            He really looks like somebody!

63. Thus   he goes down to the water.
64.            He goes down to the water as that Crow is coming.

65. She is going along singing, along by the shore,
                                                     along the shore
                                                                 in the world
                                                                       in the first time.
66. It is the first time now when the world was created
                       when everything was a person.

67. Thus   Crow is going along singing as she travels on the water.
68.            She is going along singing.
69.            She is going along singing.
70.                                               "Kayaya's going to marry,
                                                      Kayaya's going to marry,