AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS

by Richard Erdoes

  “No way will we kill them,” said their mother. “These children will turn out all right, by and by.”

  But they didn’t turn out all right. The small monsters grew fast, much faster than ordinary children, and became very big. They had four legs and arms each. They hurt other children; they upset tipis; they tore up buffalo robes; they befouled people’s food.

  A wise man, who could see things in his mind which had not yet happened, said: “Kill these strange bad things before they kill you.”

  But their mother said: “Never. They’ll be fine young men some day.”

  They never became fine young men; instead they started killing and eating people. At that point all the men in the village rushed at them to do away with them, but by then it was too late. The monsters had become too big and too powerful to be killed.

  They grew taller and taller. One day they went into the middle of the camp and stood back to back, one facing east, one facing south, one facing west, and one facing north. Their backs grew together, and they became one.

  As they grew higher and higher, most people took refuge near the monsters’ feet, where the huge creatures could not bend down to catch them. But people who stayed farther off were seized by mile-long arms, killed, and eaten. The four monsters, now grown together, rose up to the clouds, and their heads touched the sky.

  Then the man who could see into the future heard a voice telling him to set up a hollow reed and plant it in the ground. The man did, and the reed grew bigger and bigger very fast. In no time it rose to touch the sky. The man heard the voice again, saying: “I will make a great flood. When the signs of bad things coming appear, you and your wife climb up inside this hollow cane. Be naked as you were born, and take with you a pair of all the good animals in order to save them.”

  The man asked: “What sign will you be sending?”

  “When all the birds in the world—birds of the woods, the sea, the deserts, and the high mountains—form up into a cloud flying from north to south, that will be the sign. Watch for the cloud of birds.”

  One day the man looked up and saw a big cloud made up of birds traveling from north to south. At once he and his wife moved up into the hollow reed, taking with them all the animals they wished to save.

  Then it began to rain and did not stop. Waters covered the earth and kept rising until only the top of the hollow cane and the heads of the monsters were left above the surface.

  Inside the hollow reed, the man and his wife heard the voice again: “Now I shall send Turtle to destroy the monsters.”

  The monsters’ heads were saying to each other: “Brothers, I’m getting tired. My legs are weakening. I can’t keep standing much longer.”

  The floods swirled around them with strong currents that almost swept them away. Then the Great Turtle began digging down underneath the monsters’ feet. It uprooted them, and they could not keep their footing but broke apart and toppled over. They fell down into the waters, one sinking toward the north, one toward the east, one toward the south, and one toward the west. Thus the four directions came into being.

  After the monsters had drowned, the waters subsided. First the mountaintops reappeared, then the rest of the land. Next came hard-blowing winds that dried the earth. The man climbed down to the bottom of the hollow reed and opened the hole at its foot. He looked out. He stuck out his hand and felt around. He said to his wife: “Come out. Everything is dry.”

  So they emerged, followed by all the animals. They left the reed, which collapsed and disappeared. But when they stepped out on the earth, it was bare; nothing was growing.

  The wife said: “Husband, there’s nothing here and we are naked. How shall we live?”

  The man said: “Go to sleep.” They lay down and slept, and when they woke the next morning, all kinds of herbs had sprung up around them.

  The second night while they slept, trees and bushes grew. Now there was firewood to keep them warm, and all kinds of woods for making bows and arrows.

  During the third night green grass covered the earth, and animals appeared to graze on it.

  The man and his wife went to sleep a fourth time and woke up inside a grass hut. They stepped out and found a stalk of corn. Then they heard the voice say: “This will be your holy food.” It told the woman how to plant and harvest the corn and ended with: “Now you have everything you need. Now you can live. Now you will have children and form a new generation. If you, woman, should plant corn, and something other than corn comes up, then know that the world will come to its end.”

  After that, they never heard the voice again.

  —Retold from various sources.

  A TALE OF ELDER BROTHER

  [PIMA]

  You people desired to capture Elder Brother so that you might destroy him, so you went to Vulture. He made a miniature earth, shaping the mountains, routing the water courses, and placing the trees, and in four days he completed his task. Mounting the zigzag ladders of his house he flew forth and circled about until he saw Elder Brother. Vulture saw the blue flames issuing from Brother’s heart and knew that he was invulnerable. In his turn Elder Brother knew what had made the earth, and wished to kill him.

  Elder Brother, as he regained consciousness, rose on hands and feet and swayed unsteadily from side to side. He looked at the land about him, and at first it seemed a barren waste, but as he recovered from his bewilderment he saw the wonderful world Vulture had built.

  Looking about him he saw a river toward the west along which grew arrow bushes. From these he cut four magic sticks; placing his hand on these he blew smoke over them, whereupon magic power shone forth from between his fingers. He was much pleased with this and laughed softly to himself. He rubbed his magic bag of buckskin four times with each of the four sticks and then put them in and tied it. Then, with his strength fully recovered, Elder Brother began to move. He arose and crushed all mortal magicians; the orator, the warrior, the industrious, and the provident woman, and even ground his own house into the earth. Then he sank beneath the surface of the earth. He reappeared in the east and made a transparent trail back to the place where he had gone down. About the base of his mountains the water began to seep forth; entering, he came out with spirit refreshed. Taking all waters, even those covered with water plants, he dipped his hands in and made downward passes. Touching the large trees he made downward sweeps with his hands.

  Going to the place where he had killed Eagle he sat down looking like a ghost. A voice from the darkness asked, “Why are you here?” He answered sadly that despite all that he had done for them the people hated him. He went on to the east, renewing his power four times at the place where the sun rises. He blew his hot breath upon the people, which like a weight held them where they were. He went along with the sun on his journey, traveling along the south border of the trail where there was a fringe of beads, feathers, strings of down, and flowers. He jerked the string holding these so that they fell and made the magicians jump. Later he did the same thing in the north.

  On his journey along the sun’s orbit Elder Brother came to Talking Tree. “Why do you come like a ghost?” asked Tree. He replied, “Despite all I have done for the people they hate me.” Tree broke one of its middle branches and cut a notch around it to form a war club and gave it to him. Then Tree broke a branch on the south side and made a bundle of ceremonial sticks from it for him. He saw a trail toward the south and another toward the north bordered with shells, feathers, down, and flowers, and he turned them all over.

  Arriving at the drinking place of the sun, he knelt down and saw a dark-blue stone. He left there the sticks cut from the arrow bush which he knew contained all his enemies’ power, but he kept in his grasp the sticks cut from Talking Tree. Toward the south were strewn necklaces, earrings, feathers, strings of down, and flowers, all of which he jerked and threw face down. Toward the north he threw down the same objects, and as they struck the earth the magicians jumped again. Reaching the place where the sun sets he slid down four time
s before he reached the place where Earth Doctor lived.

  “Why do you come looking like a ghost?” asked the god. “Despite all that I have done for them the people hate me,” he answered. By Earth Doctor’s order the wind from the west caught him up and carried him far to the east, then brought him back and violently tossed him back down to earth. The south wind carried him to the north; the east wind carried him to the west; the wind from the zenith carried him to the sky; all carelessly dropped him back down again. From his cigarette containing two kinds of roots Earth Doctor blew smoke upon the breast of Elder Brother, whereupon green leaves sprang forth and he gained consciousness. Earth Doctor cleared the ground for a council and then picked up Elder Brother as he would have taken up a child and put him in his house.

  Earth Doctor sent Gray Gopher up through the earth to emerge in the east by the white water where lay the eagle tail. He came out by the black water where lay the raven feathers. He came out by the blue water where lay the bluebird’s feathers. He came out by the yellow water where lay the hawk feathers. He found so many people that he feared they could not be conquered. But he gnawed the magic power of their leader until he weakened it. Then he returned to the council in the nether world, where his power as a magician was recognized, and he was placed on a mat with Elder Brother.

  The people were now ready to do whatever Elder Brother desired of them and, like fierce predatory animals or birds of prey, they poured out of the underworld and fell upon the people of the upper world, whom they conquered without difficulty. The victors swept the property and everything relating to the conquered from the face of the earth.

  Consider the magic power which abode with me and which is at your service.

  —Based on Frank Russell’s 1908 report on the Pimas.

  This fantastic tale of creation and violence features several related episodes in the life of the great Pima culture hero, Elder Brother, whose task it is to assert order in the primordial chaos. Elder Brother fixes the features of the landscape, he brings elements of Pima culture, and he struggles with representatives of predation and evil, vanquishing them or, in turn, being killed himself and rising to live on another day. The Pima tell such stories not as self-contained tales but in a narrative chain, one incident suggesting the next, achieving an episodic progression with neither beginnings nor ends.

  Just as trees, ponds, clouds, and rocks are thought of as living beings, so the sun, moon, and stars in their firmament are depicted in Indian mythology as alive and endowed with human passions and yearnings. The sun, the father of light who begets all living things upon mother earth, the illuminator of the primordial darkness, is life giver as well as destroyer. The sun is usually male, though it is female among the Juchi, Cherokees, and Eskimos (all of whom regard the moon as male). In the tales of many tribes, the sun makes love to mortal women, sometimes marries, and has offspring by them.

  The great shining orb is the ultimate fertilizing agent in the universe, usually the embodiment of the male principle, though not necessarily the god at the center of religion. There may be other chief deities or supernatural phenomena and spirits which represent different powers. Tales depict mortal men and women turning themselves into the morning and evening stars, or even into the moon, and taking on lovers and spouses in those guises. In historical times, the only instance of human sacrifice among the Plains tribes occurred among the Skidi-Pawnee who, once a year, sacrificed a girl captive to the morning star. Representing the evening star, protectress of all growing things, the maiden was painted half red and half black (symbolizing day and night) and ritually shot to death with arrows to send her to her celestial husband. Very old people among the Sioux still tell of ancestors who, participating in a ghost dance in 1890, fell down in a trance and in that state of unconsciousness traveled to the morning or evening star, waking up with star flesh or moon flesh in their clenched fists.

  The creation myth of the Bella Coola relates how the fierce Bear of Heaven guarded the place of sunrise. At the place of sunset an immense pillar upheld the sky. The sun’s path was a bridge as wide as the distance between the winter, the “place where the sun sits down,” and summer, the “place where the sun stands up.” Three dancing slaves accompany him on his path, and whenever he drops his torch, an eclipse plunges the earth into darkness.

  Indian myths, like those in every other culture, grapple with the basic paradoxes at the center of the human world, and certain primal themes emerge which we in the West have often come to associate with Greek prototypes, even though their evolution has been wholly separate on this continent. Thus one Northwest Coast myth closely resembles the Helios-Phaeton story of ancient Greece. A woman conceives by sitting in the sun’s beams, and her son matures in one year. He shoots arrows into the sky and climbs up the ladder they form to visit his father. After pestering his father, he is finally permitted to carry the flaming disk along the appointed path, but tottering under his heavy burden, he gets too close to earth. The oceans boil, the forests catch fire, and everything bursts into flames. The father quickly steps in to assume the load, and the presumptuous boy is turned into a mink.

  Other themes include Promethean thefts and an Orpheus-like journey to the underworld in an attempt to defy the finality of death, seen in the story of a Cherokee tribe trying to help a grieving female sun retrieve her dead daughter.

  The sun can also be reduced to a small object stolen from the other side of the world by a trickster or friendly animal to bring light to a tribe living in darkness.

  Whether they are hunters or planters, people who live close to nature are keen observers of the stars and planets. They study the sky to determine the right time for planting and harvesting, or to discover where to find game at certain times of the year. The prehistoric mound builders of Kahokia, in what is now eastern Missouri, had their own Stonehenge, an astronomical observatory consisting of a circle of upright poles. Among the prehistoric ruins of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, one kiva—a large, partially underground, circular ceremonial chamber—is so constructed that on the day of the summer solstice, and on this day only, a shaft of light shines through a slit in its stone wall.

  From the spiral image of the sun chipped into a rock wall in the Southwestern United States to the Plains Tunkashila, Grandfather, whose sunbeams impregnated the Mother Goddess so that she gave birth to gods, humans, and animals alike, the sun plays a radiant role in Indian mythology. He is Shakuru of the Pawnees, who gives health and strength to warriors. He is Paiyatemu of the Keres, regulating the seasons and determining the time for planting and harvesting. He is Ataksak of the North, the personification of joy, clothed in raiments of brilliant cords, whose body shines even in death. He is T’ahn of the Tewa, with his face surrounded by rays of feathers. He is the shining, piercing embodiment of the Sioux Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, who is in and of everything.

  [BRULE SIOUX]

  Far from being relics, Indian myths are still told on winter nights, and as some of the old tales die, new legends are being born according to a medicine mans dreams or visions. It is a rare privilege to be present as a legend’s birth, as with this one, told for the first time by Leonard Crow Dog in 1981.

  This story has never been told. It is in no book or computer. It came to me in a dream during a vision quest. It is a story as old as the beginning of life, but it has new understandings according to what I saw in my vision, added to what the grandfathers told me—things remembered, things forgotten, and things re-remembered. It comes out of the World of the Minds.

  Some people say we are descended from Adam and Eve, but there was no Adam or Eve in our creation. Some people try to tell us that we were born with the burden of original sin, but that is an alien white man’s concept. Sin was not in the mind of the universe of our creators or the created.

  When this world came into being seven million eons ago, it was composed of numberless hoops, skeletons with no substance. Land, the whole earth, had yet to be made. All was orbits within orbits within orb
its. The world on which we are sitting now, our earth, was made up of sixteen sacred hoops. There was no earth, no land, but there were planets and stars. Above all there was the great sun. He controlled all the orbit powers. He had the sole power to communicate, to talk planet-talk between the universes, stars, and orbits.

  The sun had seven shadows, and in them he recreated himself. The seventh shadow was the important one. The sun looked at it and saw that its design was different. This shadow was the creator of the red man’s land.

  Then the great sun called to all the orbits, planets, and stars: “Come to the sixteen hoops! Come to the sixteen hoops!” and they all went to the place the sun had appointed and made earth-plan talk. The sun would not allow them to leave until they were done. And that great ball called earth, the earth planet himself, said to the sun: “Instruct us in the way of the universe.” For this purpose and for this reason the orbs and the orbits talked to each other. They related to each other and that was the first relation-making feast, the first alonwanpi of the universe.

  And one of the orbits, the east, asked the sun: “Why have you called us to come here? What have you called me for?”

  “I have called you because you shall take part in this creation. You will breathe into these sixteen hoops. You will breathe into them with your Takuskanskan, the moving power, the quickening power which is part of the Wakan Wichohan, the big sacred work we must do.”

  And the orbit which is called the south asked the sun: “Why did you call me? I have come with my planets and my orbits and you must tell me what to do.” In this manner the orbits talked.

  Then the west asked: “Sun, why have you called all the orbits and planets here? What is the purpose?”