A long time ago, a young woman of the tribe, with three companions, was
walking outside the village. They were going to a place called Tomak'cluh to
look for ah-et's'l, a small plant whose roots they use for food.
During the
journey a Wolf went trotting across their path, strong and sleek and
scarcely noticing the girls.
The young woman said: "How handsome he is! I
wish my husband, when I marry, could be as strong and as fearless."
At nighttime the women went to sleep, and the Wolf came in.
(The Wolves know
everything and read the minds of human creatures).
The girl did not know that
he had come, but the Wolf woke the sleeping girl, and told her he was going
to take her with him. Opening her eyes, she saw a fine young man standing
before her.....
The young woman went with the Wolf to his home in the mountain, and was
there a long time. Two sons were born who grew up to be half Wolf and half
man.
The old father of the girl, meanwhile, did not know where his daughter
had gone, and was greatly troubled. At her home they tried everywhere to
find her, looking in vain in all sorts of places, until they grieved for her
as dead.
In the Wolf country the oldest son, grown to be a man, asked his
mother why he looked different from the people around him (the Wolves). The
mother had told him that he came from another place, and that there, far
from where the Wolves live, dwelt her own father.
Then the son asked when
she was going home, because he wished very much to see what it was like
there.
So the woman told her husband that their son would like to see his
grandfather. He finally agreed, but before they went, as a gift to his wife,
the Wolf began to teach the woman about the Klukwana [the wolf ritual],
which they had there.
It was the Chief of Wolves that the woman have married
and all the wolves came to the Chief's house to have Klukwana.
When she had learned all about it, the Wolves came to take her away to
her own village.
They brought her to her father's house at night, and waited
behind the other houses, but did not come near. The woman went in to wake her
father, and began talking to him of a daughter he had lost, though she kept
hidden who she was.
She said she herself had a Wolf husband, and that she
had with her two sons.
The woman also told her father many things about
the Wolves, and that the villagers must not do anything when the Wolves
howled, or try to harm them. Instead they must try to learn from them.
The old father had been much grieved because his daughter was dead, but he
did not know her because it was nighttime and she was much changed after so
many years.
But at last had revealed herself to him and told him that now
she was going to have a "song" of her own as a sign that the Wolves had
brought her back and by which he might know her again.
The father gathered
his people and told them of his daughter's return. They heard the wolves
outside and began to beat on long boards and sticks. The wolves howled four
times and departed.
Then the woman taught her father all about Klukwana, and the secrets she
had learned from the Wolves as to their power and strength.
After she had
taught him all the songs and all the dances, the father began the Klukwana
and later taught the rest of the tribe all that his daughter had learned
from the Wolves.