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
Putokya is new now. He has a new mind, new wishes. He is under the
tree, and lies there a little while. He cannot walk any more. He can
only roll on the ground like a ball. After resting and thinking a
while, he starts to find his wife; rolls till he comes to the fire.
There is no woman there. He looks around, cannot find her, looks
again, and sees the baby. He rolls to the baby, catches it in his
mouth, eats up the baby in one moment. The head talks then, and
says,--
"I dreamed last night that I ate up my own son."
He is dreadful now. He scatters the pine-cones, quenches the fire,
rages, roars awfully, a real Putokya. He rolls, bounds, knocks against
a tree, cuts it down, breaks it to pieces, scatters it.
Next he starts for the village, springing and bounding along like a
football, making a terrible wind as he goes, reaches the house, looks
through it. All are gone from the house and from the village. All have
run off to Wamarawi.
First he knocks against his own house, breaks it, smashes it to
pieces, and then he breaks all the other houses in the same way, one
after another. He scatters and smashes up everything, wrecks the whole
village, just as if a strong whirlwind had gone through it. The people
are all in Wamarawi, in the stone cave in the mountain, a very great
crowd of them.
Putokya looks around, finds tracks, follows the people southward, goes
with a terrible roar, raising a storm as he moves. He breaks
everything he strikes, except rocks. From these he bounds off like a
football.
He follows the people of the village, follows on their tracks, stops
before Wamarawi, rolls up to the entrance, listens quietly, hears a
sound inside like the buzzing of bees. Putokya is glad. He stops a
while and thinks what to do. "You cannot go from me now," says he.
All the people were inside except Metsi; he had gone north somewhere.
"I will break in the cave," said Putokya.
He began at the west side, went back a whole mile, bounded, rushed,
hurled himself at the mountain, whistled through the air with a noise
like the loudest wind, struck the mountain, made a great hole in it,
but could not go through to the cave. Putokya felt sure that he could
break through. He went back a whole mile again from the north side,
bounded, rushed forward, made a tremendous hole in the north side; but
he could not go through, and the rock closed again.
The people inside are glad now; they are laughing, they think
themselves safe,--jeer at Putokya. Putokya hears them. He is angrier
than ever, he is raging. "I will try the east side," said he; "that is
better."
He went back as before, bounded forward, made a deep hole in the east,
but it closed again, and he left it. He tried the south. It was just
like the other sides. Putokya stops a while, is afraid that he cannot
get in, that he cannot get at the people.
"The Yana are not very wise," said he. "I should like to know who told
them what to do. They did not know themselves. Who told them to go to
Wamarawi?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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