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
"We will go, we will go," said the Hakas.
The fire was ready; the Tennas were there. They came earlier, and
acted just as they had acted the second day. Ten more Hakas were
killed by them that day.
The Hakas would not go on the fourth day. The Tennas began now to kill
Hakas whenever they found them out hunting, or fishing, whenever they
saw them in the woods anywhere. When the Haka women went to dig
roots, or find worms, or gather acorns, the Tennas killed them
wherever they caught them. When the children went out to play or went
to get water, they killed them. The Tennas killed on till only one old
woman, Tsuwalkai Marimi, and her grandson, Tsawandi Kamshu, were left
of all the Hakas.
One evening Tsawandi Kamshu hung his bow (an old bow bound around
closely with deer sinew) over his bed on the south side of the
sweat-house. With this bow he hung an otter-skin quiver full of
arrows.
"My grandmother," said he in the night, "I may not come back
to-morrow. If anything happens, the bow and the quiver and all that
are with them will fall on the bed. You will know then that some one
has killed me. But a child will rise from the spittle which I have
left near the head of the bed; a little boy will come up from the
ground."
Tsuwalkai Marimi listened, said nothing, made no answer. Tsawandi
Kamshu went out the next morning at daybreak, stayed out all that day.
At dusk the bow fell with the quiver.
The old woman began to cry. She cried bitterly. "All our people are
dead," said she. "All our people are gone, and I am alone."
She went around crying; went along the four sides of the house; went
to where the bows, arrows, and otter-skin quivers were hanging; cried
all that night, cried all the next day.
The Tennas watched for the old woman, watched closely. They wanted to
kill her, but they could not break, into the house, and she would not
go out to them. They wanted to kill her and put an end to the last of
the Hakas.
While Tsuwalkai was crying the second night, the Tennas were near the
house listening and watching.
"The old woman is laughing," said they. "She is having some feast;
that is why she is laughing. She must be glad, that old woman."
Tsuwalkai heard these words of her enemies. "Oh, Tennas, do not talk
that way," said she. "Something may happen yet that will hurt you.
Some one may come who will make your hearts sore. You may drop tears
yet, you may be sorry."
The old woman cried the third night and third day. The fourth night
she dropped no tears, but she could not sleep. In the middle of the
fourth night she heard crying on the ground near Tsawandi Kamshu's
sleeping-place. A little baby was crying, rolling, struggling,
wailing. The old woman listened, she heard "U ná, u ná." She was
frightened at first.
"I must be dreaming of a baby, I must be dreaming," said she. "Oh, my
people are making me dream. I hear a noise like the crying of a baby
in my sweat-house. Oh, it is no baby; I am only dreaming."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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