010 Marks W - Naatsilanéi - Translation.txt

{Number = 010}
{Type = Translation}
{Title = Naatsilanéi}
{Author = Kéet Yaanaayí / Willie Marks}
{Clan = Chookaneidí, Xóots Hít; Lukaax̱.ádi yádi}
{Source = D&D 1987:109–121}
{Translator = Ḵeixwnéi / Nora Marks Dauenhauer}
{Page = 109}
1	He was married to the sister of those young men.
2	Naatsilanéi
3	was what they say his name was.
4	He wouid tell stories to his brothers-in-law
5	about how well he could use these crampon snowshoes.
6	They didn't think he could get
7	on the sea lion rock.
8	That was why they prepared.
9	“Well! Let’s let you all take me out!”
10	is maybe what that man said.
11	He already had
12	those crampon snowshoes.
13	They took him out there by boat
14	They took him by boat.
15	When the boat got there–
16	wow! there were a lot of sea lions
{Page = 111}
17	on the island!
18	The waves
19	reached high.
20	When he thought the time was right–
21	my! he leaped to the shore.
22	He stuck to the spot there.
23	They thought he would slip into the sea.
24	Maybe that’s what they wanted; if he fell into the sea they wouldn’t help him.
25	But then he outsmarted them.
26	He ran up to the top.
27	To the top, I guess.
28	He ran through the sea lions.
29	When he had speared about four or five of them
30	He said,
31	“Bring the boat over now!”
32	Just as he said that they pulled in their oars.
33	Which way was the wind blowing? Maybe it was blowing southeast.
34	The wind was taking them.
35	He could only watch them.
36	It was their very youngest brother,
37	the youngest of the brothers, his brother-in-law.
38	It was he, who while he was crying, grabbed an oar to get him.
39	Maybe he was rowing
40	to his brother-in-law.
41	But they tore it from his hands.
42	That was how they started to blow toward shore again.
43	When they were blown far enough out that’s when they sat up.
44	Then they began to row to shore.
45	But he sat at the top of the island.
{Page = 113}
46	When it began to get dark maybe he wrapped himself up, pulling his blanket over his head
47	on that sea lion rock.
48	Maybe they were saying he was swept into the sea by the waves.
49	On the mainland though
50	they couldn’t rescue him.
51	It was getting dark when he heard that thing in the roar of the waves while he was trying to sleep.
52	”I’m coming to get you!”
53	He pushed the wrap from his face.
54	It was a beaver robe he wore.
55	There was nothing there.
56	Nobody there.
57	The fourth time, the third time,
58	the fourth time.
59	The third time when he didn’t see anything he prepared for the fourth one.
60	He watched through the hole where the eyehole was.
61	Maybe his thoughts were “What’s going on?”
62	It stood up right before his eyes, at the lip-edge of the waves, this huge man.
63	Before it could speak Naatsilanéi asked it, “Where to?”
64	“Under this rock.”
65	“How am I going to get there?”
66	he said.
67	It lifted the edge of the sea like a cloth.
68	“Go under this,” it said to him.
69	He didn’t even feel the sea.
70	Oh!
71	It’s a village,
72	a house.
73	He went there, down there.
74	As he was entering the house, he saw that man lying there.
75	A harpoon point was stuck in him.
76	It was a harpoon point.
77	He had been harpooned.
{Page = 115}
78	But they, the sea lion people,
79	couldn’t see what the human had made.
80	“How will we pay you?”
81	they asked him. “How much do you want?”
82	He had only to think,
83	“Something I could reach my village with.”
84	“You've got it!”
85	they said to him.
86	“You will be paid with it.”
87	They could read his mind,
88	whatever he thought.
89	Then he probably just put on an act.
90	He went by the sick man.
91	While he was feeling around him
92	he pulled the bone spear head
93	out of him.
94	That’s where the proverb comes from
95	“he was like the man who had a spear removed.”
96	He sat up without feeling pain.
97	That's why they gave that thing to him,
98	that big balloon,
99	motorized rubber raft, I don’t know what to call it.
100	They probably took him to the surface again, to the reef.
101	“Get into this thing.
102	don’t think of this place again; think only of your village.
103	Okay,” they said to him.
104	Then he went inside of it.
105	They probably tied it shut with him.
106	One,
107	two,
108	three,
109	four,
110	they tossed it up in the air.
111	They moved over the waves the fourth time.
{Page = 117}
112	Then the wind gusted, that southeast wind.
113	The bubble was blown with him.
114	After the wind had been blowing for a while he thought, “Oops,
115	what if it blows back there with me again?”
116	He felt the waves pounding him on the shore.
117	It probably had a zipper for an opening.
118	They opened it.
119	We told you not to think like that!” they said.
120	“So now think only of that place! Don’t let your thoughts return! Go right straight to your home!”
121	He tried it again.
122	The wind began to carry him.
123	When the waves were pounding it on the beach,
124	I wonder how he got out.
125	There was probably an automatic button.
126	Well, it was on the other side of his village.
127	He recognized it.
128	He had bad feelings
129	about what they had done to him.
130	That’s why he went up right away.
131	It was probably getting dark already.
132	Maybe he was sneaking
133	toward this wife of his,
134	toward this village of his.
135	Was it like now? People don’t cry for each other any more.
136	On that little point, sitting on top of the rock was his wife.
137	She was crying over there.
138	He went up to her. “Hey, honey!”
139	“Oh, yeah,” she answered.
140	He told her what had happened to him.
141	Maybe this is how she turned against her brothers.
142	The thoughts of that woman turned against them.
143	That was why she helped her husband.
144	“Get me my adze.”
145	Probably some food, too.
146	“Be sure there's lots of rice.”
{Comment = Line 147 has the final “perhaps during the night” on the next page.}
147	That’s how she brought them to him, perhaps during the night.
{Page = 119}
148	Maybe he knew where they usually passed
149	when those brothers-in-law of his hunted.
150	He adzed out those things.
151	Those sealions had probably instructed him on what he should do.
152	That’s why he immediately worked on those things.
153	They were Killer Whales he adzed.
154	Killer Whales.
155	I don’t know what kind of wood.
156	He made them from any old wood.
157	He made them
158	just the easiest way.
159	They were ready to go.
160	He had them in the water.
161	Probably at midnight; when the night turns over all things
162	are evil.
163	Midnight.
164	Maybe that’s when he told them to go,
165	one, two, three, four.
166	Those creatures immediately ran into the sea.
167	No! They floated up out there.
168	Tere was no spirit in them.
169	There was no trace of it inside
170	the wood anymore.
171	That was why he tried a different kind; he tried all kinds of things.
172	only when he finally carved yellow cedar
173	he carved for the last time.
174	When he finally told them to go into the sea
175	they glided through the sea.
176	When they stood up out in the water they had many things in their jaws.
177	He got
178	seal,
179	halibut.
180	“Well, come over now!” he said to them.
181	“The boat will pass through here.
182	I will tell you when to go for them.”
183	That’s what he probably said to them.
{Page = 121}
184	“But you put the youngest one
185	in a safe place.
186	Throw him on a broken piece of the boat.”
187	All right, they would paddle early in the morning.
188	The boat was passing through there.
189	Okay,
190	he had them ready then.
191	He probably talked all the time to the fish
192	he had made.
193	When they were right for him he told them to go.
194	Shhhhhhhhhhhh.
195	They stood up around the boat.
196	They crunched the boat between their jaws.
197	Those things he carved were doing this.
198	But the smallest one the one who had picked up the paddle toward him,
199	fell on a piece of the boat.
200	Maybe that was what the young boy
201	paddled to shore.
202	That’s why he, that young boy,
203	was able to tell about it.
204	Probably Naatsilanéi told him too.
205	Probably he came to him, I guess; that little brother-in-law of his
206	reached shore.
207	He went home.
208	That’s when
209	Naatsilanéi talked again to those fish he had carved
210	that had crunched the boat in their jaws.
211	“Next time
212	You will not do this again,”
213	is what he told them to remernber.
214	“Whatever you'll eat is what you will kill.”
215	That’s why those things don’t do any harm to humans, however large they are.
216	That’s when Naatsilanéi went into the forest,
217	maybe to wherever he would die.