This story was told to my great grandmother, my grandmother and my mother, and was passed down to me.

A long time ago there was a young woman named Maruss who lived in the village of Takchak. This little Yupilc vrnage was located 150 miles upstream from the mouth of the Yukon River.

Maruss once had a daughter named Alexandra. Alexandra was her first baby, but she died of a terrible accident while picking berries on the tundra.

It all began one evening when she went out to pick some wild rhubarbs for her family's evening snack and she saw this young boy in the tall grasses doing something. She was wondering what he was doing and she went to look for him. But he hid in the tall grasses until she found him. After she found him she had to go back to the village. She laughed as she was walking away. The boy knew she liked him.

When she got to the village, her mother asked why she didn't pick enough rhubarbs. She told her mother that she ended up playing with someone from the village. Her mother was the wife of the chief in the village. So, the boys that liked her in the village couldn't ask her out. Her parents would have to pick her husband. She didn't like that way of living. But it was the custom that she had to get married.

Her parents were talking about who the boy in the village might be who would marry her. When her mother walked away from the conversation, Maruss asked her who her husband would be. She told Maruss she didn't know because it was mostly up to her father. Then Maruss told her mother who she liked in the village. But Maruss said she didn't know who this young boy was, or who his parents were. Soon after she went out to look for them. But she couldn't find who the parents were of the young boy her daughter admired.

She waited for a week and finally her father told her when the day was she was going to get married. When that day came she got ready. Everybody was waiting in the mudhouse when she entered with her mother and father. Then she saw the boy. It was the same boy she had met picking

berries. She smiled at him and he smiled back. Maruss was happy she was going to marry him. They had a baby girl a year later. That baby was named Alexandra. But one day when Maruss went out berry picking she saw this big brown animal in the willows looking at her. It was a bear. She did what her parents had told her to do, but that bear suddenly ran out and charged her. Then tore her apart. The next day when her mother went out to look for her she found her where she had been picking berries. Then her husband ran out to look for this animal and shot it. He skinned the bear and brought back the fur. They buried her parts in that skin, and the young girl Alexandra was told this story about her mother when she was old enough to know. She passed it on to her daughter who still lives today.