410 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

“Raiders, Raiders, Raiders,” when he and his sisters were in the canoe,

A little later, Raven suggested that they move to another spot, As
they were passing the place where he had landed earlier, the sisters were
startled by a cry of:

“Raiders, Raiders, Raiders.”

Raven pretended to be greatly alarmed for his sisters’ safety and
told them to go ashore quickly and hide.

“T will remain to defend the canoe,” he said.

As soon as the women had followed his advice, Raven began to gorge
himself with berries. He ate and ate, croaking his delight, until only a
few were left. Then he smeared himself with red berry-juice, which
resembled blood, and lay down in the bottom of the canoe as if dead or
dying. After some time the sisters plucked up courage to see whether
or not their brother had been killed; they stole forward to a point of
vantage from which they could see him lying stricken. No enemies were
in sight, so they hurried down and began to weep over their brother.
Presently one of them noticed that the blood seemed peculiar and com-
mented on the fact, whereupon the seemingly dead Raven replied:

“That is the blood of a warrior.”

Then they wept again. Soon, however, one of the sisters noticed that
the berries had disappeared, and she cried out that their brother had
deceived them. When they examined him more closely, they found that
he was stained, not with blood, but with berry-juice. Raven flew away
discomfited.

RAVEN AND HIS STEP-DAUGHTER”™

Once upon a time, Raven’s wife died. Instead of being grieved, he
was so delighted that he sang:

“How lucky it is that she died, otherwise I would have divorced her
and remarried.”

Soon he took another wife, a widow with a young daughter. Raven
tried repeatedly to sleep with his step-child, but she was unwilling and
he could not seduce her. Determined to succeed at any cost, he went
into the forest to gather firewood.

“How do you burn?” he asked dead and dry Alder.

“I give great heat but no sparks,” replied Alder.

Next he went to Cottonwood with the same query, and received a
similar answer.

“I throw off many sparks which do not fly far,” said Spruce.

**For another version of this story see Boas, p. 90.