Indians of North America -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Religion; Modoc mythology
“We forgot our drill.”
“I thought people never forgot their drills. What are you here for?”
“We came to hunt for deer and rabbits.”
“I have looked around all the morning,” said Yahyáhaäs; “I have been
everywhere, but I haven’t seen a deer track.”
“We may as well give up hunting and go home,” said one man to another.
“Can’t you feed me smoke?” asked Yahyáhaäs.
“We have no tobacco.”
“This earth will make people trouble if they don’t carry a fire-drill
and tobacco,” said Yahyáhaäs. “If you can’t feed me with smoke, you
must wrestle with me.”
“We have no pipe or fire-drill to make smoke with,” said the eldest
Blaiwas brother. “How can we feed you with smoke when we can’t start a
fire? We are in a hurry. We didn’t come here to wrestle or play games,
we came to hunt.”
“This is my way,” said Yahyáhaäs. “If people don’t feed me smoke and
make me glad. I wrestle with them and throw them; then I am glad. Will
you feed me smoke?”
“We can’t,” said Blaiwas. “We have no tobacco.”
“Then we will wrestle,” said Yahyáhaäs.
The men didn’t want to wrestle; they said they didn’t know how. But
Yahyáhaäs kept talking about wrestling, talked till half a day was
gone.
Yahyáhaäs was red from head to foot. His red cane was sharp at both
ends, and on his back was a red quiver full of red, sharp-pointed
arrows.
At last Blaiwas said to his brothers: “We had better wrestle with him.
It is just as well for us all to die here. If we start for home, he
will kill us.”
Yahyáhaäs fixed a place for his leg and piled up stones on a cliff
above the lake. The eldest brother was chief; he was the first man to
wrestle. He said: “Be strong, my brothers, you can’t save yourselves.
If he throws me over the cliff into the lake, don’t get weak. Be strong
and all die together.” Then he sent a young boy to the village to tell
the people that Yahyáhaäs was going to kill him and his brothers.
Right away Yahyáhaäs threw Blaiwas over the cliff. As he sank in the
lake, his bones boiled up to the top of the water, washed against the
rocks, and rattled terribly.
Yahyáhaäs threw over one man after another. As each man sank, he turned
to bones and the bones floated against the rocks, struck hard and made
a great noise.
In Blaiwas’ house there was an old medicine woman. She woke up, and
said: “I dreamed that I saw people crying and putting ashes on their
heads. Our men have been killed. At noon to-morrow we shall get word of
it.”
“Women always have bad dreams,” said Tusasás. “There is nobody in the
world strong enough to kill the five brothers.” At noon the next day a
boy came along the trail; he was crying and screaming. When he got to
Blaiwas’ house, he said: “The five brothers are killed. By this time
not one of them is alive.” He went to the next village and told the
same news.
Tusasás threw dirt on his head and rolled in the ashes. The people cut
off their hair and mourned. The next morning they said: “Let us go and
see the place where our men were killed.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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