"'Give to me a girl-child--a little girl-child--that she may grow
to be like you, and, in her turn, give to her husband children.'

"But when the tribes-people heard of his choice they arose in great
anger. They surrounded him in a deep, indignant circle. 'You are
a slave to the woman,' they declared, 'and now you desire to make
yourself a slave to a woman-baby. We want an heir--a man-child to
be our Great Tyee in years to come. When you are old and weary of
tribal affairs, when you sit wrapped in your blanket in the hot
summer sunshine, because your blood is old and thin, what can a
girl-child do to help either you or us? Who, then, will be our
Great Tyee?'

"He stood in the centre of the menacing circle, his arms folded,
his chin raised, his eyes hard as flint. His voice, cold as stone,
replied:

"'Perhaps she will give you such a man-child, and, if so, the child
is yours; he will belong to you, not to me; he will become the
possession of the people. But if the child is a girl she will
belong to me--she will be mine. You cannot take her from me as you
took me from my mother's side and forced me to forget my aged father
in my service to the tribe; she will belong to me, will be the mother
of my grandchildren, and her husband will be my son.'

"'You do not care for the good of your tribe. You care only for
your own wishes and desires,' they rebelled. 'Suppose the salmon-run
is small, we will have no food; suppose there is no man-child,
we will have no Great Tyee to show us how to get food from other