AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS

by Richard Erdoes

  Once more the chief called the daughters and granddaughters of the headmen to come before him. This time one was missing.

  The young Clatsop warrior hurried along the trail which leads to Big River. Other people followed. On the rocks below the high cliff they found the girl they all loved. There they buried her.

  Then her father prayed to the Great Spirit, “Show us some token that my daughter’s spirit has been welcomed into the land of the spirits.”

  Almost at once they heard the sound of water above. All the people looked up to the cliff. A stream of water, silvery white, was coming over the edge of the rock. It broke into floating mist and then fell at their feet. The stream continued to float down in a high and beautiful waterfall.

  For many summers the white water has dropped from the cliff into the pool below. Sometimes in winter the spirit of the brave and beautiful maiden comes back to see the waterfall. Dressed in white, she stands among the trees at one side of Multnomah Falls. There she looks upon the place where she made her great sacrifice and thus saved her lover and her people from death.

  —Reported by Ella Clark in 1953.

  [COCHITI]

  An old woman and an old man were living in the village, and they had an only daughter. They were very poor. When the girl grew up and began to wonder how she could take care of her father and mother, she said to herself, “I will pick up cotton that has been thrown away.” She gathered cotton scraps, combed them, spun them, and rolled the yarn into a ball. When she had enough, she knit a pair of footless stockings. She showed them to her father and mother and said, “I worked hard to make them, and I think it will help us.”

  Next she tried knitting a pair of openwork stockings—the sort of leggings, now made of twine, that women wear for the deer dance. She hung them on the clothes pole and called her parents to see what she had learned.

  “Now I will try to make a big white manta,” she said. Picking up more scraps, she combed them and spun them and wound the yarn into balls. Then threaded her loom and began to weave. When she had finished, she decided to embroider it with different colors. She dyed her yarn and sat sewing on the white manta by the window. By this time the daughter had grown to be a large, handsome girl. While she was embroidering, the young men came around to talk to her about marriage, but she was not interested. She said, “I take care of my father and mother and myself.” When the manta was finished, she presented it to her parents, and her mother hung it over the clothes pole.

  “Now I will make a white ball-fringed sash,” she said. She laid the threads horizontally and began weaving. While she was working, the boys would come to the window and watch, but she paid no attention. When she finished, she took it to her parents, and her mother hung it on the pole.

  “Now I will make a small white manta for a dancer’s sash,” she said. She threaded her loom, wove it, and embroidered it at both ends. Her parents were very happy that their daughter had such initiative.

  “I am going to make a belt,” the girl said. She collected more cotton scraps and went out to pick the plants that are used in dyeing the yarn yellow. She saved urine in a very large jar, and when it was full, dipped some out into a bowl. She pounded up bluestone, wet it with the urine, and poured it into the big jar. Then she threw the yarn into the big jar, and when she took it out on the third day, it was blue as blue could be.

  Next, after boiling the yellow dye plants, the girl dipped the yarn into the dye water. She said to her father, “Shall I take them all out? For I might make the belt only of blue and yellow.” Her father said, “Yes; when you take the yarn out, hang it over a rafter end, and in the lower loops put the rubbing stone so the yarn will dry straight. Then when you die, they won’t stretch you out like that.” Then she dyed some yarn red, wove her belt, and finished it. “When you finish the belt, stretch it well, so they won’t stretch you when you die,” her father told her. This is the advice they give all Indian girls when they weave.

  Now the girl sent her father and mother out to sell what she had made, and when they got home, she was spinning again. “Did you have good luck?” she asked, and they said they had sold them all.

  Soon the people in the village were coming to the girl’s house to buy whatever they wanted. The young men bought so many ball-fringed sashes and small embroidered mantas that at last everybody had a complete dancing costume. Then they said, “Let’s have a great dance before her house and see which of us she will choose to dance with.” So they dressed for the dance and gathered in front of her house. She was sitting in the doorway embroidering a white manta when they began to dance. But she said, “Why do you think I am the only girl in the village? You are all calling me.” She didn’t even lift her head as the dance ended and they left. She finished embroidering the manta and gave it to her mother, who hung it over the pole.

  The family sat by the fireplace, and her father said, “Rest yourself, my daughter.” “I can’t help working,” she replied. “I like it.” Even as she was sitting there, she was pulling cotton apart. She heard the noise of the rattles approaching and said, “They’re coming again! They make a great noise!” It was the rainbow dance, but she didn’t watch. Some of the dancers came to the house and said, “We’re surprised that you don’t even care to look up when we dance.” They went home, but she kept working.

  Next day the young men began to come to ask her to marry them. Each brought a large manta and a small manta and a belt, but she refused them all. “Thank you, but I can make those myself,” she said. “I know how to make whatever I want.”

  “What can we do to persuade her to marry us?” they said. “Let’s all draw pretty things on our houses.” Soon all the young men were busy painting rainbows all over their houses, some on the walls and some on the ladders. Some made little stone birds, set them on both sides of the ladder rungs, and painted them in all colors. The next day she went all through the village, but she didn’t care for the rainbows or birds or sunflowers. “I take care of myself and my parents,” she said. “I don’t need anything more, and I want to stay where I am.”

  Next the young men thought they would tempt her with corn. On top of their roofs they made piles of all the different-colored ears: blue, white, red, dark red, yellow, and many others. As she walked through the village, she looked at the piles, and the young men all trembled with hope. But she didn’t care for any of it. “I tell you boys, I never want to marry. I make my own clothing, and I live very well.”

  So at last the boys said, “We won’t court her any more; she doesn’t care for young men.”

  Coyote heard about this and said, “She’ll have to go with me. I shall offer her nothing at all, but she will belong to me. I’ll go to the mountains to fetch a black currant branch.”

  He went to his house and took his white buckskin moccasins, the skunk skin to tie around his ankles, the openwork stockings, the small white manta for his kilt, white and red yarn to tie around his arms, his white shell beads, his abalone shell, his paint pot, his long parrot-tail feathers, his short parrot-tail feathers, his downy feathers, and his gourd rattle. He did all these up in a bundle and started off. As he went, he came to the place where the black currants grow. He took some and said, “Come along, Payatamu.”

  Arriving at the girl’s village, he went not to her house but to another one. “Hello,” he said, but no one answered, for nobody was there. He went into the inner room and laid down his bundle. “Now come, Payatamu!” He stamped four times rapidly with his foot, and drew on his white buckskin moccasins. He looked down at his feet. “Do I look pretty? Yes, I look pretty,” he said. He stamped four times and put on his lace stockings, and he said, “Do I look pretty? Yes, I look pretty.” He stamped four times, put the skunk skin around his ankles, and said, “Do I look pretty? Yes, I look pretty.” And so he proceeded as he put on each of the things in his bundle. When he was all dressed, he said, “Come, Payatamu, see if I can get that girl. I shall not dance before her house, but in the center of Little Plaza.
” And before he went out, picked up the bunch of black currants in his left hand.

  He went into the center of Little Plaza and began to dance. When they heard the sound of the rattle, everybody looked out and saw a boy dancing. Hearing somebody singing, the girl threw down the white manta she was embroidering and went out. “What a fine-looking boy!” she said. “I’ve never seen him before; I wonder who he is.” She walked into the center of Little Plaza, and she spied his bunch of black currants, of which she was very fond. Then she said to Coyote, “Give me the black currant branch, and I’ll take you to my house.”

  The boys of the village said to her, “What a dirty, miserable girl you are! Why will you take such a little bit of black currants and let him sleep with you? We’ve offered you so much more, but you wouldn’t even look at it.”

  But the girl kept right on and led the dancer to her house. She called to her father and mother, “Here comes Payatamu.”

  Her mother exclaimed, “Oh, my dear daughter! What a mischief you have done!”

  “My dear mother, he has a branch of great black currants. You know how I love black currants, and it’s a long time since I’ve eaten any.”

  Payatamu stayed the night and had intercourse with her, and she gave birth to little coyotes. She was a fine-looking girl, but no one in the village cared about her looks by then.

  Coyote said to the girl’s father and mother, “I shall take my wife and child to my home.” The couple set out and on their journey came near High Bank. There was a big hole in the ground, and Coyote said, “Let me go in first.” The girl asked, “How can you go in? It’s so small.” But he managed, and next the two little coyotes entered, and then the mother peeped through. Inside was a house just as good as her parents’ home. Coyote had as many mantas, and embroidered mantas, and openwork stockings and belts as she had. So she went in, and they lived there ever after.

  —Collected by Ruth Benedict in 1924.

  THE WOMAN WHO

  MARRIED A MERMAN

  [COOS]

  In a village named Takimiya there lived five brothers and a sister. Many men from different places wished to marry the girl, but she did not want to get married. It was her custom to go swimming every day in a little creek. One day while returning from her swim, she noticed that she was pregnant. Her brothers demanded to know how it had happened, but she could not give them an answer because she did not understand it herself.

  She gave birth to a boy, a fretful baby who cried all the time. They did everything to try and soothe him, but nothing worked. At their wits’ end, her brothers finally told her to put the child outdoors. He immediately stopped crying. After a while the mother went out to check on him and noticed, to her surprise, that he was eating a piece of seal meat which someone had strung on a small stick for him. She looked around to see who could have done it, but nobody was there. When she took the child into the house, he started to cry again and would not let anybody sleep. So her brothers told her to take him out again and suggested that she hide and watch what happened.

  The mother lay hidden outside for a whole day without seeing anyone. Suddenly toward evening a man appeared and told her to follow him, because he was her husband. At first she refused, fearing that her relatives would not know where she had gone. But after he promised that she would be safe, she took the baby in her arms and went with him. They approached the creek, and her husband told her to hang onto his belt and keep her eyes closed. Together they plunged into the water. Soon they came to the bottom of the sea—to a village inhabited by many Indians. Her husband was one of the five sons of the village chief, and the couple lived there happy and satisfied.

  The boy grew up, and like many boys on dry land, he loved to play with arrows. His mother would make them for him, meanwhile telling him that his uncles, who lived above the water, had lots of arrows. One day the boy asked her to take him to his land uncles to get some arrows. The father objected to this, but he finally allowed his wife to go up alone. Wearing five sea-otter hides, she started out early one morning. As soon as her brothers saw her, they thought she was a real otter, and they began to shoot arrows at her from the shore. Having been hit repeatedly, the otter would sink, then surface again with the arrows gone. The otter swam up and down the river, and many people in canoes kept shooting at it, but nobody could kill it.

  Eventually everybody gave up the chase except the oldest brother, who followed the otter until it reached the beach. Coming nearer, he caught the shape of a woman beneath the skins and recognized her at once as his lost sister. She told him that she had been the sea otter, and showed him the arrows that the people had shot at her. “I came to get them for my boy,” she said. “My husband is the son of a chief. Whenever the tide is low, you can see our house right in the middle of the ocean.” She gave him the five sea-otter skins, and he gave her as many arrows as she could carry.

  Before going down into the water, she told him, “Tomorrow morning you will find a whale on the beach, right in front of your landing.” And it happened just as she said. The whale landed on the beach, and the men divided its meat among all the people.

  A few months later the woman came again to her relatives, and her brothers noticed that her shoulders were turning scaly and dark like those of a sea serpent. She stayed a while, and then returned to her water home, but she never came ashore again and was seen no more. Long afterwards, many sea serpents came into the harbor. Thinking that they too may have come after arrows, the people kept on shooting at them. They never returned again, but every summer and winter they would put ashore two whales as a gift to their kinsmen above the sea.

  —Based on a myth reported by Harry St. Clair in 1909.

  [CROW]

  Out walking, Old Man Coyote spied a group of good-looking girls picking wild strawberries. “Ah, these pretty young things!” he said. Quickly he buried himself in the earth among some strawberry bushes and let only the tip of his penis protrude.

  Soon the girls came to those bushes. “There’s a big berry here,” said one girl, “different from the others.” She tried to pluck it, but it wouldn’t come loose. “This berry has deep roots,” she said.

  All the other girls came and tried to pick the strawberry. Some pulled at it, some nibbled at it. “Oh, my,” said one, “this berry weeps.” “No,” said another girl, “it has milk in it.” A third said: “Since we can’t pick it, let’s look for a sharp piece of flint and cut it off.”

  The girls searched and found a flint, but when they came back to the berry patch, the strange strawberry had disappeared. “It must have been some trick by that nasty Old Man Coyote,” the girls said to each other. One said: “Yes, I’m sure it was Coyote. We’ll have to get even.”

  One day the girls went to a place along the trail where Old Man Coyote always went hunting. They took their dresses off and smeared themselves with blood from some meat they had been given to cook. Looking as if they had been raped and slain by enemies, they lay there, face down, naked, and bloody.

  Pretty soon Old Man Coyote came along. When he saw the girls with blood all over them, he was scared. “Oh my, oh my!” he said. “What enemy has done this? What shall I do? Maybe the enemy is still around and will come and kill me. Oh my! I must find out how long these girls have been dead. If their corpses are old, then surely the enemy is far away.”

  He bent down and started feeling and smelling the girls’ bodies. Whenever he came near one of the girls’ backsides, she farted right into Old Man Coyote’s face. He said: “Oh, my, I think I am safe. These girls must have been dead a long time, they smell so bad!”

  Then all the girls jumped up laughing, shouting: “Old Man, this time the joke was on you.”

  —Based on two stories told in 1899 and 1903.

  THE FAITHFUL WIFE AND

  THE WOMAN WARRIOR

  [TIWA]

  Here is another Pueblo tale featuring Apache characters.

  A long time ago a band of Apache lived in a place called Namtsuleta, or Yellow
Earth. In the band were two young men: Blue Hawk, son-in-law to the tribe, who was married to the daughter of the head chief, and Red Hawk, his friend.

  Their tribe was fighting with a fearful and dangerous tribe that lived far away, and the two young men meant to go there and get some scalps. One day they packed their horses and started out. When they camped that night, they talked of what was ahead and what they had left behind.

  Red Hawk, the unmarried boy, said to his friend, “As women do, your wife is probably sleeping with another man tonight.”

  “You may think that, but I never would,” said Blue Hawk. “My wife is true to me.”

  “I’ll bet I could go back tonight and sleep with your wife!”

  “My friend, you can go back, but she won’t accept you.”

  “I bet she will.”

  “Well, go and try!” And they bet their pack horses, their food, everything they had with them, and everything they had at home.

  So Red Hawk returned to the village and hung around Blue Hawk’s tipi. He saw his friend’s wife sitting outside, but she never looked at him. Though he kept smiling at her, she ignored him so completely that he was afraid to speak to her.

  “She must be as true as my friend said,” the boy thought. When he realized that he was going to lose the bet, he went to an old woman in the village. He told her everything—about the two friends’ journey and their wager, then about the wife’s coldness and his shame.

  “Is there any way I can see the girl unclothed?” he asked. “Or if not, can you find out what her body looks like? I’ll pay well.”

  “Yes my grandson, I will find out for you.”

  Limping along with a cane, her toes sticking out of her shoes, the old woman shuffled past the wife’s tipi. “Poor old grandmother!” said Blue Hawk’s wife, looking out. She had someone bring the woman inside and fix her a bed of skins in the corner. It was from there late at night that the old one, watching through a hole in her blanket, managed to see the girl undressing.