Texts of the North American Indian

Writings of E.S. Curtis
Excerpts from "The North American Indian" Set #254, Vol. 8

THE CHINOOKAN TRIBES (cont'd)

MYTHOLOGY (cont'd)

The Transformers (cont'd)

A girl went out to bathe for good luck. Five successive days, as she bathed, she wished for some one to be there, and the fifth time she saw a man lying on her dress. This was Grizzly-bear. She said, "Keep away, keep away from my dress, my relation!" He questioned, "On which side am I your relation?" She repeated: "I wish you would keep away from my dress! I am getting cold, sitting in the water." "Say to me, 'Keep away from my dress, my husband,'" the Bear responded, "and I will go away." So at last she said it. The man then got up and walked away from the dress. She put it on, and the Grizzly-bear carried her home on his back. But as they went, she tore off shreds of her cedar-bark skirt and dropped them in the trail. At length he reached his house. He said to the girl, "Can you eat camas?" She replied, "Yes, of course I can eat camas." He produced some of the roots and roasted them in the ashes. So the girl lived with the Bear, and in due time she bore twins - a girl, whom they called Hlákakonwa, and a boy, who was a Grizzly-bear like his father.

Now this girl who had married the Bear had five brothers. One of them, when she disappeared from the place where she had been bathing, searched and found the pieces of cedar-bark along the trail. He followed, and came out on the edge of a clear space in the woods, and on the other side he saw a house, which he entered. The two Grizzly-bears were alone, the women absent digging roots. The received the young man, by their magic power knowing who he was. The young Bear said, "Uncle, let me louse you." He began to look for lice, and suddenly bit off the man's head and ate it. They buried the body. One the next day came the second brother in search of his sister, and he too was killed and buried. That day, on the way home from the camas meadow, the girl asked her mother, "Have you any brothers at home?" "Yes, I have five brothers," she said. It seems that the girl suspected something. On the following day the third brother found the trail and in it the tracks of his two brothers. He followed, and he also was killed, although the old Bear this time tried to restrain his son.

Now the young Bear made a song: "I have been rolling my uncle's head." The girl, possessing wonderful power, heard it, and said to her mother, "We had better go home and see what my brother is doing." But the young Bear knew at once that they were coming, and when they reached the house there was no sign of what had occurred. On the fourth day the next brother met the fate of the others, and the girl, out in the field with her mother, was filled with anxiety and wished to hurry home, but her mother desired to remain until they had finished digging their camas.

The youngest of the five brothers had been bathing day and night, looking for medicine. His dream told him: "Your brothers have been killed." So he took his arrows and set out. "Do not kill any bird," the dream warned him. He found the clearing and entered the house, and the young Bear greeted him: "My uncle, you have come. I am glad to see you." The man made no reply, nor did he move while the Bear walked all round him. He refused to permit the Bear to louse him. Now the girl began to feel uneasy, and urged her mother to return. So they hurried home, and when they ran into the house, the young Bear lay down behind his uncle. When the woman caught sight of her brother, she cried, "You have come!" "Yes, I have come," he answered. The young man lived there with his sister, and there were no further attempts to take his head.

Daily he gathered pitchwood, which he piled under the beds, and quantities of heavy fuel. Then he told his sister, "Now we will go home." And she consented. While old Grizzly-bear and his son were sound asleep, the young man set fire all around the house, and propped heavy logs against the door, so that they could not open it. Soon the house was burning fiercely, and the young Bear began to cry. The girl turned and saw that the smoke was rising in a column straight to the sky. Five times she turned to look back, and the last time she began to sing, "My brother is gone in smoke to the sky." On her great-toes this girl had long nails like bear-claws.

They reached the village. One day the chief proposed to marry the girl, and it was so arranged. She never talked except privately with her husband, and she never laughed. Jaybird once remarked, "It is strange that our chief's wife never laughs." She said to him, "I am going to laugh." Then she went outside and laughed five times, "Ha-ha-heee!" and the people fell dead. She devoured them all. Then she looked inside the house for her husband, but she could not find him, for, as soon as she began to laugh, Jaybird and the chief had run out of the house, and they had been the first ones to fall dead, although she had not intended to kill them. Not one person was left in the place.

When she realized that she had swallowed her husband, she thrust her finger down her throat and vomited all that she had swallowed, and he was the last to come out, as he had been the first to go down. His legs had been bitten off. She washed him, legless as he was, and put him in a basket, and sang, and after a while he come out laughing, but with no legs. She placed him in the basket, and hung it up in the house.

Soon after this she bore two boys. They were Mus'p and Skomohl. She bathed them daily and nightly so that they would grow quickly. She warned them not to go in a certain direction, for she wished them not to find the place where she had vomited up the bodies of the people. One day they followed her to the prairie where she was digging camas, and as they were shooting, Skomohl, the younger, broke his bowstring. They returned to the house, and, searching for something which they could use for a string, they saw the basket hanging there. They took it down, thinking to find something suitable for a bowstring, but they found a person, who said, "Oh, my children; oh, my children!" He told them that they had a village of people in a certain place, to which he pointed, and that their mother was not human, but iekshthehlo. When their mother came home that evening, she noticed that they were morose, and she asked: "What is the matter, my children? We are alone here, but do not be downhearted." At dark they went to bed, and the younger said: "To-morrow let us go where our mother told us not to go, and see what is there. There must be something." The next morning, while she dug camas, the boys visited the forbidden place, which they found covered with bones and old houses in ruins. Skomohl said: "Surely she is iekshthehlo. She has eaten our old people." He now began to think constantly what he should do.

The next morning they again took down the basket, and the younger tried to put legs on his father, but he could not. Then, leaving the basket and their father inside the house, they set fire to the structure, and smoke rose and fell over the fields like feathers. The woman caught some in her hand and, looking at it closely, said, "Ha! I will catch you!" She knew what her boys had been doing. When she went toward the house, the two boys were running to meet her, and she thought, "I will eat the elder first." But while she was waiting for him, the other ran round behind her, seized her hair, and shook her. All the bones fell rattling out of her skin, which he threw to the ground, and it turned into a female dog. Then the two started to travel, the dog following them.

EDWARD S. CURTIS