Blackskin

Blackskin, Dukt'ootl', is the hero of the most famous Tlingit strong-man legend. Regarded as a lazy orphan who slept in the ashes by the fire, he went down to the water at night while others slept, bathed in the freezing sea, and wrestled until his strength surpassed that of every man in the village; when the men went out to the sea-lion rock he seized the great bull sea lion and tore it in half with his bare hands, in most tellings avenging an uncle the animal had killed. Swanton printed both an English version of the Strong Man story and a Sitka Tlingit text in which the hero is named Kâhâ's!î, and the Dauenhauers published Frank G. Johnson's Tlingit telling of Dukt'ootl'. The feat is a favorite subject of Tlingit monumental art, carved on house posts and totem poles, including the great pole at Kake.

Domains

• strength

Powers

• to twist trees from the ground and tear a full-grown sea lion in half with his bare hands
• to gain power through secret nightly bathing in the freezing winter sea

Sources

• Swanton, John R., Tlingit Myths and Texts, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 39 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909)
• Dauenhauer, Nora Marks, and Richard Dauenhauer (eds.), Haa Shuká, Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives, Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature 1 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987)
• Beck, Mary Giraudo, Heroes and Heroines: Tlingit-Haida Legend (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Books, 1989)