Creation Myths of Primitive America: In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of MankindCurtin, Jeremiah
Religion
Creation Myths of Primitive America: In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind
Curtin, Jeremiah
Creation -- Mythology; Indian mythology -- North America; Indians of North America -- Folklore
KOL TIBICHI
Kol Tibichi was born at Norpat Kodiheril on Wini Mem, just before
daylight. When a small boy, he used to go out by himself. If he went
to play with other boys sometimes, he would not stay with them. He
went out of sight, disappeared, and was lost. Then his father or
mother or others would find him in this place or that unexpectedly.
Sometimes they found him at home, sometimes at a distance, far away in
some gulch or on some mountain. It happened that his mother would look
at his bed in the night-time and see him there sleeping. She would
look again and find that he was gone. She would look a third time, and
find him just as at first. In the day he would be seen in one place
and be gone the next moment.
Once he was playing with children; they turned aside to see something,
then looked at him. He was gone. After a while they saw him in the
water under the salmon-house. Another time he disappeared.
"Where has he gone?" asked one boy.
"I cannot tell," answered another.
Soon they heard singing.
One asked, "Do you hear that?"
"Yes," said the other; "where is it?"
They listened and looked. Soon they saw Kol Tibichi sitting near the
north bank of the river, under water.
"We must run and tell his father and mother."
Two of the boys ran to tell his father and mother. "We lost your son,"
said they. "He went away from us. We looked for him a long time and
could not find him. Now we have found him; we have seen him sitting
under water; we don't know what he is doing."
His mother hurried out; ran to the river.
"We think he must be dead," said people who had gathered there. "We
think that some yapaitu [spirit] has killed him."
They soon saw that he was alive; he was moving. "Come, my son," called
his mother, stretching her hands to him,--"come, my son; come out,
come to me." But he stayed there, sitting under water.
A quarter of an hour later they saw that the boy had gone from the
river. The people heard singing in some place between them and the
village. They looked up and saw that the boy was half-way home and
going from the river.
"That is your son," called they to the woman.
"Oh, no," said the woman; but she ran up and found that it was her
son.
Another time the boy goes south with some children. These lose him,
just as the others had. In half an hour they hear singing.
"Where is he?" ask some.
"On this side," says one.
"On that," says another.
South of the river is a great sugar-pine on a steep bank. They look,
and high on a limb pointing northward they see him hanging, head
downward, singing.
They run to his mother. "We see your son hanging by his feet from a
tree."
The woman hurries to the river, runs in among the rocks and rubbish
around the tree, reaches toward the boy, throws herself on the rocks,
crying, "Oh, my child, you'll be killed!"
In a moment he is gone; there is no sign of him on the tree. Soon a
shouting is heard at the house: "My wife, come up; don't cry, our son
is here!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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