Then suddenly there was a strange noise, maybe four, five miles away, like the tearing of a big blanket, the biggest blanket in the world. As soon as he heard it, Old Unc burst into tears. My old ma started to keen as for the dead, and people were running around, weeping, acting crazy.
I asked Old Unc, “Why is everybody crying?”
He said, “They are killing them, they are killing our people over there!”
My father said, “That noise—that’s not the ordinary soldier guns. These are the big wagon guns which tear people to bits—into little pieces!” I could not understand it, but everybody was weeping, and I wept too. Then a day later—or was it two? No, I think it was the next day, we passed by there. Old Unc said: “You children might as well see it; look and remember.”
There were dead people all over, mostly women and children, in a ravine near a stream called Chankpe-opi Wakpala, Wounded Knee Creek. The people were frozen, lying there in all kinds of postures, their motion frozen too. The soldiers, who were stacking up bodies like firewood, did not like us passing by. They told us to leave there, double-quick or else. Old Unc said: “We’d better do what they say right now, or we’ll lie there too.”
So we went on toward Pine Ridge, but I had seen. I had seen a dead mother with a dead baby sucking at her breast. The little baby had on a tiny beaded cap with the design of the American flag.
—From versions told by Dick Fool Bull at Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota, 1967 and 1968.
Recorded by Richard Erdoes.
THE GNAWING
[CHEYENNE]
There is a great pole somewhere, a mighty trunk similar to the sacred sun dance pole, only much, much bigger. This pole is what holds up the world. The Great White Grandfather Beaver of the North is gnawing at that pole. He has been gnawing at the bottom of it for ages and ages. More than half of the pole has already been gnawed through. When the Great White Beaver of the North gets angry, he gnaws faster and more furiously. Once he has gnawed all the way through, the pole will topple, and the earth will crash into a bottomless nothing. That will be the end of the people, of everything. The end of all ends. So we are careful not to make the Beaver angry. That’s why the Cheyenne never eat his flesh, or even touch a beaver skin. We want the world to last a little longer.
—Told by Mrs. Medicine Bull in Birney, Montana, with the help of an interpreter. Recorded by Richard Erdoes.
THE END OF THE WORLD
[WHITE RIVER SIOUX]
Somewhere at a place where the prairie and the Maka Sicha, the Badlands, meet, there is a hidden cave. Not for a long, long time has anyone been able to find it. Even now, with so many highways, cars, and tourists, no one has discovered this cave.
In it lives a woman so old that her face looks like a shriveled-up walnut. She is dressed in rawhide, the way people used to be before the white man came. She has been sitting there for a thousand years or more, working on a blanket strip for her buffalo robe. She is making the strip out of dyed porcupine quills, the way our ancestors did before white traders brought glass beads to this turtle continent. Resting beside her, licking his paws, watching her all the time is Shunka Sapa, a huge black dog. His eyes never wander from the old woman, whose teeth are worn flat, worn down to little stumps, she has used them to flatten so many porcupine quills.
A few steps from where the old woman sits working on her blanket strip, a huge fire is kept going. She lit this fire a thousand or more years ago and has kept it alive ever since. Over the fire hangs a big earthen pot, the kind some Indian peoples used to make before the white man came with his kettles of iron. Inside the big pot, wojapi is boiling and bubbling. Wojapi is berry soup, good and sweet and red. That soup has been boiling in the pot for a long time, ever since the fire was lit.
Every now and then the old woman gets up to stir the wojapi in the huge earthen pot. She is so old and feeble that it takes her a while to get up and hobble over to the fire. The moment her back is turned, the huge black dog starts pulling the porcupine quills out of her blanket strip. This way she never makes any progress, and her quillwork remains forever unfinished. The Sioux people used to say that if the old woman ever finishes her blanket strip, then at the very moment that she threads the last porcupine quill to complete the design, the world will come to an end.
—Told by Jenny Leading Cloud at White River, South Dakota, 1967, and recorded by Richard Erdoes.
MONTEZUMA AND
THE GREAT FLOOD
[PAPAGO]
Before he made man, the Great Mystery Power made the earth and all things which lived upon it. The Great Mystery came down to earth, where he dug out some clay and formed it into a shape and ascended with it into the sky. Then he dropped it into the hole he had dug. At once out of that hole came the Great Montezuma, leading behind him all the Indian tribes. Last to come out of the hole were the wild, un-tameable Apaches, running off in all directions as fast as they were created.
The wise Montezuma taught the people all they needed to know: how to make baskets and pottery, how to plant corn with a digging stick, how to make a fire to cook the food. It was a happy time. The sun was much nearer the earth then, so that it was always pleasantly warm. There was no winter and no freezing cold. Men and animals lived as brothers, speaking a common language all could understand, so that a bug or a bird could talk to a human.
But then came the great flood. Long before it engulfed the earth, Montezuma’s friend, Coyote, had foretold its coming. “You must make a big dugout canoe,” Coyote told Montezuma, who could make anything. “You will need it soon,” Coyote said.
Montezuma, following Coyote’s advice, built the boat, keeping it ready on top of the high mountain that the whites call Monte Rosa. Coyote also made a strange vessel for himself, gnawing at a tree trunk until it fell down, then hollowing it out with his teeth. Coyote closed up the open end with piñon resin. When the great flood which Coyote had foretold finally swept over the land, Coyote crawled into the tree-trunk vessel he had made, while Montezuma climbed into his big dugout canoe. And so they floated upon the waters while all other living things perished. As the waters subsided, the top of Monte Rosa’s peak rose a little above the flood. Both Montezuma and Coyote steered for this spot, the only piece of dry land far and wide. Thus the two friends met, glad to be alive.
Montezuma said to Coyote: “Friend, there must be other dry spots somewhere. You travel fast on four legs. Go west and do some scouting.” Coyote went off and came back tired after four days, saying: “In that direction of the universe I found only water, nothing but water.”
Montezuma told him: “Coyote, my friend, rest a while, and then go and see what you can find in the south.” Coyote rested and then went southward. Again he came back after four days, saying: “Over there in the south, everything is also covered with water.” He went east, and it was the same; water everywhere. Finally Montezuma sent Coyote toward the north, and this time Coyote came back saying: “In the north the waters are receding, and there is much dry land.” Montezuma was well pleased to hear this. He told Coyote, “Friend, there in the north we must begin to make a new world.”
The Great Mystery Power again was busy peopling the earth with men and animals. After life had been recreated, he put Montezuma in charge of everything. Montezuma divided tribes into nations again, giving them just laws to govern themselves, and once again taught humans how to live. And in these tasks Coyote was Montezuma’s faithful helper. Soon the people were increasing together with the animals, and all were happy.
But then Montezuma’s power, which the Great Mystery had given him, went to his head. “We don’t need a Creator,” he said. “I am a Creator myself. My power is equal to the Great Mystery Power. I need nobody to command me; I myself am the Great Commander.”
Coyote warned him to be more humble. “You know that there is a power above us greater than yours—the Power of the Universe. Obey its laws.”
Montezuma answered: “I don’t need your advice. Who are you to t
ry to correct Great Montezuma? Am I not high above you? Am I not your master? Go; I don’t need you anymore.” Coyote left, shaking his head, wondering.
Now Montezuma called all the tribes together and said, “I am greater than anything that has ever been, greater than anything which exists now, and greater than anything that will ever be. Now, you people shall build me a tall house, floor upon floor upon floor, a house rising into the sky, rising far above this earth into the heavens, where I shall rule as Chief of all the Universe.”
The Great Mystery Power descended from the sky to reason with Montezuma, telling him to stop challenging that which cannot be challenged, but Montezuma would not listen. He said: “I am almighty. Let no power stand in my way. I am the Great Rebel. I shall turn this world upside down to my own liking.”
Then good changed to evil. Men began to hunt and kill animals. Disregarding the eternal laws by which humans had lived, they began to fight among themselves. The Great Mystery Power tried to warn Montezuma and the people by pushing the sun farther away from the earth and placing it where it is now. Winter, snow, ice, and hail appeared, but no one heeded this warning.
In the meantime Montezuma made the people labor to put up his many-storied house, whose rooms were of coral and jet, turquoise and mother-of-pearl. It rose higher and higher, but just as it began to soar above the clouds far into the sky, the Great Mystery Power made the earth tremble. Montezuma’s many-storied house of precious stones collapsed into a heap of rubble.
When that happened, the people discovered that they could no longer understand the language of the animals, and the different tribes, even though they were all human beings, could no longer understand each other. Then Montezuma shook his fists toward the sky and called: “Great Mystery Power, I defy you. I shall fight you. I shall tell the people not to pray or make sacrifices of corn and fruit to the Creator. I, Montezuma, am taking your place!”
The Great Mystery Power sighed, and even wept, because the one he had chosen to lead mankind had rebelled against him. Then the Great Mystery resolved to vanquish those who rose against him. He sent the locust flying far across the eastern waters, to summon a people in an unknown land, people whose faces and bodies were full of hair, who rode astride strange beasts, who were encased in iron, wielding iron weapons, who had magic hollow sticks spitting fire, thunder, and destruction. The Great Mystery Power allowed these bearded, pitiless people to come in ships across the great waters out of the east—permitted them to come to Montezuma’s country, taking away Montezuma’s power and destroying him utterly.
—Based on a tale reported in 1883.
The Montezuma in this tale is a Southwestern culture hero, not to he confused with the Aztec emperor of the same name. The Aztec name was carried to the Papago by the Spaniards on their northward march, hut the Papago turned Montezuma into First Man, creator of humans and animals and maker of the terrible “Great Eagle.” The Papago Montezuma died four times, but always returned to life. After he had done his work of teaching the people how to live, or as some say, after the white man’s god forced him to retire, he went to his underworld house in the south and returned to earth no more.
[KIOWA]
Everything the Kiowas had came from the buffalo. Their tipis were made of buffalo hides; so were their clothes and moccasins. They ate buffalo meat. Their containers were made of hide, bladders, or stomachs. The buffalo were the life of the Kiowas.
Most of all, the buffalo was part of the Kiowa religion. A white buffalo calf must be sacrificed in the sun dance. The priests used parts of the buffalo to make their prayers when they healed people or when they sang to the powers above.
So when the white men wanted to build railroads, or when they wanted to farm and raise cattle, the buffalo still protected the Kiowas. They tore up the railroad tracks and the gardens. They chased the cattle off the ranges. The buffalo loved their people as much as the Kiowas loved them.
There was war between the buffalo and the white men. The white men built forts in the Kiowa country, and the woolly-headed buffalo soldiers [the Tenth Cavalry, made up of Negro troops] shot the buffalo as fast as they could, but the buffalo kept coming on, coming on, even into the post cemetery at Fort Sill. Soldiers were not enough to hold them back.
Then the white men hired hunters to do nothing but kill the buffalo. Up and down the plains those men ranged, shooting sometimes as many as a hundred buffalo a day. Behind them came the skinners with their wagons. They piled the hides and bones into the wagons until they were full, and then took their loads to the new railroad stations that were being built, to be shipped east to the market. Sometimes there would be a pile of bones as high as a man, stretching a mile along the railroad track.
The buffalo saw that their day was over. They could protect their people no longer. Sadly, the last remnant of the great herd gathered in council, and decided what they would do.
The Kiowas were camped on the north side of Mount Scott, those of them who were still free to camp. One young woman got up very early in the morning. The dawn mist was still rising from Medicine Creek, and as she looked across the water, peering through the haze, she saw the last buffalo herd appear like a spirit dream.
Straight to Mount Scott the leader of the herd walked. Behind him came the cows and their calves, and the few young males who had survived. As the woman watched, the face of the mountain opened:
Inside Mount Scott the world was green and fresh, as it had been when she was a small girl. The rivers ran clear, not red. The wild plums were in blossom, chasing the redbuds up the inside slopes. Into this world of beauty the buffalo walked, never to be seen again.
—Told to Alice Marriott by Old Lady Horse (Spear-Woman) in the 1960s.
THE COMING OF WASICHU
[BRULE SIOUX]
Many generations ago, Iktome the Spider Man, trickster and bringer of bad news, went from village to village and from tribe to tribe. Because he is a messenger, Spider Man can speak any language, so all tribes can understand what he says.
He came running into the first camp, shouting: “There is a new generation coming, a new nation, a new kind of man who is going to run over everything. He is like me, Ikto, a trickster, a liar. He has two long legs with which he will run over you.” And Iktome called all the chiefs into council, and the head chief asked: “Ikto, what news do you bring from the east?”
Iktome answered: “There is a new man coming; he is like me, but he has long, long legs and many new things, most of them bad. And he is clever like me. I am going to all the tribes to tell about him.” Then Spider Man sang: “I am Iktome, and I roll with the air!”
When he left, three boys followed him to see where he was going. They watched him climb to the top of a hill. There he made his body shrink into a ball, changing himself from a man into a spider. And the boys saw a silvery spider web against the blueness of the sky, and a single strand from it led down to the hill. Iktome climbed into the web and disappeared in the clouds.
The next tribe Iktome visited were the Lakota—the Sioux nation. Two old women gathering firewood saw him standing on a butte near their village. They went home and told the chief: “We saw someone strange standing over there. He was looking at us.” The chief called for two of his wakincuzas—the pipe owners, the ones-who-decide—and said: “Bring this man to me. Maybe he has a message.”
They escorted Ikto, now in human form, into the camp. He stretched out his hand to the west, saying: “I am Iktome. I roll with the air, and I must take my message to seventy camps. This is what I have come to tell you: A sound is coming from the edge of the sea, coming from Pankeshka, the Seashell. It is the voice of Pankeshka Hokshi Unpapi—the Shell nation. One cannot tell where this voice is coming from, but it is someplace in the west. It is telling us that a new man is approaching, the Hu-hanska-ska, the White Spider Man, the Daddy-Longlegs-Man, The Long-White-Bone Man. He is coming across the great waters, coming to steal all the four directions of the world.”
“How will we know
him? How will we know this man?” asked the chief and the wakincuzas.
“Each of his long legs is a leg of knowledge, of wo-unspe. This new man is not wise, but he is very clever. He has knowledge in his legs, and greed. Wherever these legs step, they will make a track of lies, and wherever he looks, his looks will be all lies. At this time, ecohan, you must try to know and understand this new kind of man, and pass the understanding on from generation to generation. My message is carried by the wind.”
Iktome made his body into a small ball with eight legs, and from within the sky again appeared the fine strand of spider web, glistening with dewdrops, and on it Iktome climbed up into the clouds and disappeared.
Ikto next went to the village of the Mahpiya-To, the Blue Cloud people, also known as Arapaho. Again the chiefs and the people assembled to ask what news he was bringing, and he spoke in their own language: “I have brought you a message bundle to open up, and my news is in it. The Iktome-Hu-Hanska-Ska, the White Longlegs, is coming. I flew through the air to bring you the message, but this new kind of man comes walking.”
The Arapaho chief asked: “How is it that you fly and he walks?”
“Wokahta,” said Iktome,” he is traveling slowly, going slowly from the west toward the south and east, eating up the nations on his way, devouring the whole earth.”
AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS Page 56
