116 THE BIG CANOE

house on the hill could contain anything that the
chief did not already possess. Rich was the Quasset
chief now, rich as Chief Edenshaw, who had been
for a long time the richest of all the Haida chief-
tains,

As Lana stared down through the smoke hole at
the riches within, her glance returned again and again
to the thing that, in her mind, excelled all the others
—the big iron pot hanging over the flames below.
No longer must hot stones be dropped, one by one,
hour after hour, into the wooden vessels in which
the Haidas had always cooked their food. Now it
was only necessary to watch the fire beneath the iron
kettle, which would not burn up, not even in the
hottest flame. No longer were her hands scalded by
the hot stones or the splashing, boiling liquid! The
magic pot had done away with all that patient, pain-
ful labor.

It had been very different in that Northern vil-
lage where Lana, a Tlingit chief’s daughter, had been
taken captive after a fierce battle between her people
and the attacking Haidas. In that wretched village
with its ramshackle houses and its shiftless, sickly
people, food was always scarce and comforts few.

Strong and rich and very clever were the Haidas.
Their houses were large and well built and com-
fortable, even in winter when blizzards came shriek-
ing down out of the Northland. They were very in-