Indian Legends from the land of Al-ay-ek-sa — A Reader’s Guide

The Storyteller's Framing Voice

The excerpts present a named Story Teller who addresses an audience of old men grunting assent and young men listening in silence. This framing device recurs: the storyteller points to a totem pole, describes a battle, or gestures toward the village of Saxman. His speech is direct, often beginning with “My people” and ending with a sigh or a pointed moral. The narrative voice is not omniscient but personal—he recounts wars with the Thlinget clan at Sheet-kah and the Tsimpseans, and he remembers Chief Nah-goot killed by Schook-klatch. Rossiter preserves the rhythm of oral delivery, with short declarative sentences and repeated phrases like “fight, fight, all the time fight.” The storyteller’s presence gives the legends a living context, as if the reader is sitting at the campfire.

Recurring Images of Water, Canoes, and Movement

Water is a constant presence: the flood that “blot out all the land,” canoes drifting until they “grated and came to rest on dry land,” and the Sheet-kah Indians paddling “as far south as Dixon’s Entrance.” The canoes themselves are described with material specificity—made of “rotten spruce logs, which they hollowed out with sharp stones,” some holding thirty or forty people. Movement between islands and along the coast defines the geography of conflict. The Kok-wan-tans wait on a low, sandy island “level as the palm of my hand,” where there are no springs and little wood. These images of travel, refuge, and siege create a landscape shaped by water and the constant possibility of arrival or escape.

Clan Crests, Marriage Laws, and Social Order

The opening legend establishes that a member of the Raven clan may not marry a raven, nor an eagle an eagle, because they belong to the same family. This prohibition is tied to the crest system: a stranger may enter any lodge before which stands a totem surmounted by his family crest, and he is given food and shelter. In the days when slaves were plentiful, an Indian chief would free any prisoner whose crest matched his own clan, even if their language was unknown. The crests thus function as a code of kinship and hospitality that transcends speech. Later, the storyteller identifies himself as of the Raven clan, and the Lincoln totem pole is carved by a Thlinget carver in honor of the great white chief. The crests link the legends to a living social structure.

The Shadow of the White Man and the Dream of Progress

The excerpts show a clear historical pivot: Captain Cook is the first Pale Face the people had seen, and later the “great white chief in Washington” sends soldiers to enforce peace. The storyteller describes how his people now live like white brothers, with children going to school and fine fishing boats. He points to a pier and hopes for an Indian village with canneries and sawmills, where “the Indian will no longer be a child. He will be a man.” Yet the ending is sad: “the young look not with the eyes of the old. I dream, but my dreams may not come true.” This tension between assimilation and loss runs through the collection, giving the legends an elegiac undertone.

Rossiter’s collection does not present legends as timeless artifacts but as stories told by a specific narrator at a moment of cultural change. Readers should attend to the storyteller’s asides and gestures—they reveal as much about the early twentieth-century context as about the ancient tales. The recurring images of water, crests, and the white man’s arrival form a coherent pattern that rewards careful reading across the brief text.

Rossiter’s storyteller keeps one eye on the fading fires, and I find myself holding that same ache when I set her book down—the weight of what’s remembered against what’s lost. That quiet tension lingers, too, in the older voices gathered in Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 — A Reader’s Guide. Different tribes, same hush before the telling. A small comfort, that continuity.