Vol. 3 No. 2 (2024): Warfare and Peacemaking Among Matricultures
Research Articles

Tlingit Sacred Peace Dance: (reprint)

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  • John R. Swanton
Cover of the Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 39, 1909, featuring John R. Swanton's Tlingit Myths.

Published 2024-05-09

Keywords

  • dance,
  • peacemaking,
  • oral culture,
  • Indigenous tradition

Copyright (c) 2024 John R. Swanton (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Tlingit Sacred Peace Dance: (reprint). (2024). Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies, 3(2), 101-104. https://doi.org/10.60676/0wxd2802

Abstract

The man that first learned about dancing was upset in a canoe and became a land-otter-man called Tûts!îdîgû'L, who has very great power. Some time afterwards four boys were drawn out to sea after some black ducks, upset there, and taken into the land-otters' dens. A shaman told the people where they were, and they burned out the dens, killing many otters, but Tûts!îdîgû'L escaped with the boys. Now the land otters made war on human beings, and the bodies of the latter broke out in pimples and sores which were really caused by the spider-crab-shell arrows. At last some people came upon two white land otters, which they carried home and treated as if they were deer (peace ambassadors). Then the land otters came to the town and danced to make peace.

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References

  1. John R. Swanton’s ‘Tlingit Sacred Peace Dance’ in Tlingit Myths and Texts, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 39, 1909.