In which "Moldy Salmon" is an awful nickname but a good story

 Moldy Salmon Boy (Tlingit)

Long ago, there was a boy.  His mother thought he was very handsome, and she made him a copper neck-ring to show off how beautiful he was. 

But that boy, he was not a respectful boy.

One day he was hungry, and he asked his mother to give him some dried fish.  She gave him a good piece of dried fish, the best part of the fish.

 But that boy, he said, “this fish is no good, it’s moldy!”  He threw it on the ground.

It’s not good to throw food on the ground.  It shows no respect. 

When you eat salmon, people said that you should return all the bones of the fish to the river to show respect.  That’s the way it should be done.

But that boy, he didn’t show respect.  He threw the fish on the ground.

When he went to the river, he saw fish swimming there, and he reached down to grab one. 

In those days, the river was so full of fish that people said you could walk across the river on the backs of the fish and your feet would stay dry. 

But that boy, he fell in the water instead.  He spun around four times and sank to the bottom of the river. 

The salmon people in the river looked like human people to him there, and they said, “you must come with us now.”

The salmon people took that boy out to their village in the ocean.  There, the salmon people began to teach him. 

When he was hungry, they taught him to go to a stream and catch one of the young salmon, their children. 

He could eat that young salmon, and if he returned all the bones to the stream, that young salmon would be able to come back to life. 

But if he dropped some bones in the fire, the young salmon would be broken and unhealthy when it came back.  He learned to find all of the bones and return them all to the stream.

After a whole winter under the sea with the salmon people, it was spring and time to for them to return to the rivers. 

That boy went with them, back up the river in the shape of a salmon.  When he swam past his old village, his own mother caught him!

She recognized the copper ring on the fish’s neck, and knew it was her son. 

She took the fish home, and held it and sang to it, and in four days that fish turned back into the boy.

He was now a healer, for he had learned many things from the salmon people.  He stayed with them a whole year and taught them everything he had learned.

But the next spring, when the salmon returned to the river, he saw a huge old salmon and it was dying. 

He thrust a spear into that old salmon because that fish had his soul. 

When the fish died, the boy died too. 

His mother put his body into the river, and it circled four times and then sank down under the water. 

That was how that boy went back to the ocean where he lives still with the salmon people.