AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS

by Richard Erdoes

  All at once the earth shook and began to rise. The boys rose with it. Out of the earth came a cone of rock going up, up, up until it was more than a thousand feet high. And the boys were on top of it.

  Mato the bear was disappointed to see his meal disappearing into the clouds. Have I said he was a giant bear? This grizzly was so huge that he could almost reach to the top of the rock when he stood on his hind legs. Almost, but not quite. His claws were as large as a tipi’s lodge poles. Frantically Mato dug his claws into the side of the rock, trying to get up, trying to get those boys. As he did so, he made big scratches in the sides of the towering rock. But the stone was too slippery; Mato could not get up. He tried every spot, every side. He scratched up the rock all around, but it was no use. The boys watched him wearing himself out, getting tired, giving up. They finally saw him going away, a huge, growling, grunting mountain of fur disappearing over the horizon.

  The boys were saved. Or were they? How were they to get down? They were humans, not birds who could fly. Some ten years ago, mountain climbers tried to conquer Devils Tower. They had ropes, and iron hooks called pitons to nail themselves to the rock face, and they managed to get up. But they couldn’t get down. They were marooned on that giant basalt cone, and they had to be taken off in a helicopter.

  In the long-ago days the Indians had no helicopters. So how did the two boys get down? The legend does not tell us, but we can be sure that the Great Spirit didn’t save those boys only to let them perish of hunger and thirst on the top of the rock.

  Well, Wanblee, the eagle, has always been a friend to our people. So it must have been the eagle that let the boys grab hold of him and carried them safely back to their village. Or do you know another way?

  —Told by Lame Deer in Winner, Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, South Dakota, 1969, and recorded by Richard Erdoes.

  THE FLYING HEAD

  [IROQUOIS]

  In days long past, evil monsters and spirits preyed upon humans. As long as the sun was shining, the monsters hid unseen in deep caves, but on stormy nights they came out of their dens and prowled the earth. The most terrible of all was the great Flying Head. Though only a scowling, snarling head without a body, it was four times as tall as the tallest man. Its skin was so thick and matted with hair that no weapon could penetrate it. Two huge bird wings grew from either side of its cheeks, and with them it could soar into the sky or dive down, floating, like a buzzard. Instead of teeth, the Flying Head had a mouth full of huge, piercing fangs with which it seized and devoured its prey. And everything was prey to this monster, every living being, including people.

  One dark night a young woman alone with her baby was sitting in a longhouse. Everybody had fled and hidden, because someone had seen the great Flying Head darting among the treetops of the forest. The young mother had not run away because, as she said to herself, “Someone must make a stand against this monster. It might as well be me.” So she sat by the hearth, building a big fire, heating in the flames a number of large, red-hot, glowing stones.

  She sat waiting and watching, until suddenly the Flying Head appeared in the door. Grinning horribly, it looked into the longhouse, but she pretended not to see it and acted as if she were cooking a meal. She made believe that she was eating some of the red-hot rocks, picking them up with a forked stick and seeming to put them into her mouth. (In reality she passed them behind her face and dropped them on the ground.) All the while she was smacking her lips, exclaiming: “Ah, how good this is! What wonderful food! Never has anyone feasted on meat like this!”

  Hearing her, the monster could not restrain itself. It thrust its head deep inside the lodge, opened its jaws wide, and seized and swallowed in one mighty gulp the whole heap of glowing, hissing rocks. As soon as it had swallowed, the monster uttered a terrible cry which echoed throughout the land. With wings flapping the great Flying Head fled screaming, screaming, screaming over mountains, streams and forest, screaming so that the biggest trees were shaking, screaming until the earth trembled, screaming until the leaves fell from the branches. At last the screams were fading away in the distance, fading, fading, until at last they could no longer be heard. Then the people everywhere could take their hands from their ears and breathe safely. After that the Flying Head was never seen again, and nobody knows what became of it.

  —Retold from a 1902 tale.

  THE FIRST SHIP

  [CHINOOK]

  In this curious tale, obviously based on an actual incident, the Indians consider the Wasichu, the white men, as monstrous as any ogres or demons.

  An old woman in a Clatsop village near the mouth of Big River mourned the death of her son. For a year she grieved. One day she stopped her crying and took a walk along the beach where she had often gone in happier days.

  As she was returning to the village, she saw a strange something out in the water not far from shore. At first she thought it was a whale. When she came nearer, she saw two spruce trees standing upright on it.

  “It’s not a whale,” she said to herself, “it’s a monster.”

  When she came near the strange thing that lay at the edge of the water, she saw that its outside was covered with copper and that ropes were tied to the spruce trees. Then a bear came out of the strange thing and stood on it. It looked like a bear, but the face was the face of a human being.

  “Oh, my son is dead,” she wailed, “and now the thing we have heard about is on our shore.”

  Weeping, the old woman returned to her village. People who heard her called to others, “An old woman is crying. Someone must have struck her.”

  The men picked up their bows and arrows and rushed out to see what was the matter.

  “Listen!” an old man said.

  They heard the woman wailing, “Oh, my son is dead, and the thing we have heard about is on our shore.”

  All the people ran to meet her. “What is it? Where is it?” they asked.

  “Ah, the thing we have heard about in tales is lying over there.” She pointed toward the south shore of the village. “There are two bears on it, or maybe they are people.”

  Then the Indians ran toward the thing that lay near the edge of the water. The two creatures on it held copper kettles in their hands. When the Clatsop arrived at the beach, the creatures put their hands to their mouths and asked for water.

  Two of the Indians ran inland, hid behind a log awhile, and then ran back to the beach. One of them climbed up on the strange thing, entered it, and looked around inside. It was full of boxes, and he found long strings of brass buttons.

  When he went outside to call his relatives to see the inside of the thing, he found that they had already set fire to it. He jumped down and joined the two creatures and the Indians on shore.

  The strange thing burned just like fat. Everything burned except the iron, the copper, and the brass. Then the Clatsop took the two strange-looking men to their chief.

  “I want to keep one of the men with me,” said the chief.

  Soon the people north of the river heard about the strange men and the strange thing, and they came to the Clatsop village. The Willapa came from across the river, the Chehalis and the Cowlitz from farther north, and even the Quinault from up the coast. And people from up the river came also—the Klickitat and others farther up.

  The Clatsop sold the iron, brass, and copper. They traded one nail for a good deerskin. For a long necklace of shells they gave several nails. One man traded a piece of brass two fingers wide for a slave.

  None of the Indians had ever seen iron or brass before. The Clatsop became rich selling the metal to other tribes.

  The two Clatsop chiefs kept the two men who came on the ship. One stayed at the village called Clatsop, and the other stayed at the village on the cape.

  —Reported by Franz Boas in 1894.

  [CHEYENNE]

  Once in a lonely lodge there lived a man, his wife, and two children—a girl and a boy. In front of the lodge, not far off, was a great lake, and a plain trail le
ading from the lodge down to the shore where the family used to go for water.

  Every day the man went hunting, but before starting he would paint the woman red all over, coating her face, her arms, and her whole body with this sacred medicine to protect her from harm. After he departed, she would leave the children alone in the lodge and go for water; when she returned with it, the red paint was always gone and her hair was unbraided. She would manage to get back with her water just before her husband arrived. Not being a good hunter, he never brought any meat.

  Though he asked her no questions, her husband thought it strange that every night the paint that he had put on his wife in the morning had disappeared. One day he said to his daughter, “What does your mother do every day? When I go out, I paint her, and when I get back, she has no paint on.”

  The girl replied, “Whenever you start out hunting, she goes for water, and she is usually away for a long time.”

  The next day, the man painted his wife as usual and then took his bow and arrows and left the lodge. But instead of going off hunting, he went down to the lake shore, dug a hole in the sand, and buried himself, leaving a little place where he could look out.

  The man had not been hidden long when he saw his wife coming with a bucket. When she was near the water’s edge, she slipped off her dress, unbraided her hair, sat down on the shore, and said, “Na shu eh’, I am here.” Soon the man saw the water begin to move, and a mih’ni, a water spirit, rose from it, crawled out on the land, crept up to the woman, wrapped itself about her, and licked off all the red paint that was on her body.

  The man emerged from his hiding place and rushed down to the pair. With his knife he cut the monster to pieces and cut off his wife’s head. The pieces of the monster crept and rolled back into the water and were never seen again. The man cut off the woman’s arms at the elbow and her legs at the knees. Saying, “Take your wife!” he threw these pieces and her head into the water. Then he opened the body, extracted a side of her ribs, and skinned it.

  Returning to the lodge, he said, “Ah, my little children, I have had good luck; I have killed an antelope and brought back some of the meat. Where is your mother?”

  The children answered, “Our mother has gone to bring water.”

  “Well,” he said, “since I killed my meat sooner than I thought, I carried it back to camp. Your mother will be here pretty soon. In the meantime I’ll cook something for you to eat before I go out again.” He cooked a kettle of meat and took it to the children, who both ate. The little boy, who was the younger and the last one to suckle, said to his sister, “This tastes like mother!”

  “Oh,” said his sister, “keep still; this is antelope meat.” After the children had finished, the little girl saved some of the meat for the mother to eat when she returned.

  The father got his moccasins and other things together and started off, intending never to come back. He was going to look for his tribe’s camp.

  After he had gone, the children were sitting in the lodge, the girl making moccasins and putting porcupine quills on them. Suddenly they heard a voice outside say, “I love my children, but they don’t love me; they have eaten me!”

  The girl said to her brother, “Look out the door and see who is coming.” The boy looked out and then cried, very much frightened, “Sister, here comes our mother’s head!”

  “Shut the door,” cried the girl. The little boy did so. The girl picked up her moccasins and her quills—red, white, and yellow—rolled them up, and seized her root digger. Meanwhile the head had rolled against the door. “Daughter, open the door,” it called. The head would strike the door, roll partway up the lodge, and then fall back again.

  The girl and her brother ran to the door, pushed it open, and stood to the side. The head rolled into the lodge and clear across it to the back. The girl and boy jumped out, the girl closed the door, and both children ran away as fast as they could. As they ran, they heard the mother calling to them from the lodge.

  They ran, and they ran, and at last the boy called, “Sister, I’m tired; I can’t run any longer.” The girl took his robe and carried it for him, and they ran on.

  At last as they reached the top of the divide, they looked back, and there they could see the head coming, rolling along over the prairie. Somehow it had gotten out of the lodge. The children kept running, but at last the head had almost overtaken them. The little boy was frightened nearly to death, as well as exhausted.

  The sister said, “This running is almost killing my brother. When I was a little girl playing, sometimes the prickly pears were so thick on the ground that I couldn’t get through them.” As she said this, she scattered behind her a handful of the yellow porcupine quills. At once there appeared a great bed of tall prickly pears with great yellow thorns. This cactus patch was strung out for a long way in both directions across the trail they had made.

  When the head reached that place, it rolled up on the prickly pears and tried to roll over them, but kept getting caught in the thorns. For a long time it kept trying and trying to work its way through, and at last it did get loose from the thorns and passed over. But by this time the girl and the boy had gone a long distance.

  After a while, however, they looked back and again saw the head coming. The little boy almost fainted. He kept calling out, “Sister, I’m tired; I can’t run any longer.”

  When the sister heard him, she said while she was running, “When I was a little girl, I often used to find the bullberry bushes very thick.” As she said this, she threw behind her a handful of the white quills, and where they touched the ground a huge grove of thick, thorny bullberry bushes grew up. They blocked the way, and the head stopped there for a long time, unable to pass through the bushes.

  The children ran on and on, toward the place where the tribe had last been camped. But at length they looked back and saw the head coming again.

  The little boy called out, “Sister, I’m tired; I can’t run any longer.” Again the girl threw quills behind—this time the red ones—and a great thicket of thorny rosebushes sprang up and stopped the head.

  Again the children went a long way, but at last they saw the head coming, and the boy called out: “Sister, I’m tired.” Then the sister said, “When I was a little girl playing, I often came to small ravines that I couldn’t cross.” She stopped and drew the point of her root digger over the ground in front of her. This made a little groove in the dirt, and she placed the root digger across the groove. Then she and her brother walked over on the root digger, and when they had crossed, the furrow became wider and wider and deeper and deeper. Soon it was a great chasm with cut walls, and at the bottom they could see a little water trickling.

  “Now,” said the girl, “we will run no longer; we will stay here.”

  “No, no,” said the boy, “let’s run.”

  “No,” said the girl, “I will kill our mother here.”

  Presently the head came rolling up to the edge of the ravine and stopped. “Daughter,” it said, “where did you cross? Place your root digger on the ground so that I can cross too.” The girl attempted to do so, but the boy pulled her back every time. At last she managed to lay the root digger down, and the head began rolling over. But when it was halfway across, the girl tipped the stick, the head fell into the ravine, and the ravine closed on it.

  After this the children started on again to look for the people. At last they found the camp and drew near it. Before they arrived, however, they heard a man’s loud voice. As they came closer, they saw that it was their father speaking. He was walking about the camp and telling everyone that while he was out hunting, his two children had killed and eaten their mother. He warned the people that if the children came to the camp, they should not be allowed to enter.

  When they heard this, the children were frightened. Still, they didn’t know what else to do but go on into the camp. The people immediately caught them and tied their hands and feet. And the next day the whole tribe moved away and left the children the
re, still tied.

  In the camp there was an old, old dog who knew what had happened and took pity on the children. The night of their arrival, she went into a lodge, stole some sinew, a knife, and an awl, and took them into a hole where she had her pups.

  The next day after all the people had gone, the children heard a dog howling. Presently the old, old dog approached them. “Grandchildren,” she said, “I pity you and have come to help you.”

  The girl said, “Untie me first, and I can untie my brother.” So the old dog began to gnaw at the rawhide strings around the girl’s hands. The animal had no teeth and could not cut the cords, but they became wet and began to slip. The girl kept working her hands and at last got them free. She untied her legs and then freed her brother. That evening they walked about through the camp and picked up old moccasins to wear. Both children were crying, and so was the dog. They all sat on the hill near the camp and cried bitterly, for they had nothing to eat, no place to sleep, and nothing to cover themselves with, and winter was coming. The girl and the dog sat weeping with their heads hanging down, but the boy was looking about. Presently he said, “Sister, see that wolf; it’s coming straight toward us!”

  “It’s useless for me to look,” said the girl. “I couldn’t kill him by looking at him, so we can’t eat him.”

  “But look, Sister,” said the boy, “he’s coming right up to us’ ”

  At last the girl raised her head, and when she looked at the wolf, it fell dead. Then the dog brought the tools that she had stolen before the tribe left. With the knife they cut the wolf up, and from its skin they made a bed for the dog.

  The children stayed in the abandoned camp, living well now, while the people in the new camp were starving. The children kept a large fire burning day and night and used big logs so that it never went out.