Wealth Woman

Tlingit · deity · mythic perennial · deity

The Wealth Woman, in older ethnographic literature called Property Woman, is a female counterpart to the Gonakadet among the wealth-bringing beings of the Tlingit. She haunts the forest and the beach carrying an infant, and the fortunate person who hears the baby's cry, glimpses her, or succeeds in laying hold of the child is destined to become rich. Swanton took down a Wrangell tale of the L!ê'naxî'daq in 1904, Frederica de Laguna recorded extensive beliefs about Property Woman at Yakutat, and Catharine McClellan devoted a study to Wealth Woman traditions among the neighboring Tagish and Inland Tlingit, where the good luck of the family of Skookum Jim, co-discoverer of Klondike gold, was traced to such an encounter. Under the modern spelling Tl'anaxéedáḵw, 'Wealth-Bringing Woman', she is registered as a crest of the L'eeneidí clan and appears on totem poles carrying her baby.

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