Indians of North America -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Religion; Modoc mythology
While the gamblers were resting, the young man went home. His
grandmother said: “Take some good smelling leaves and put in your nose,
so you won’t smell what the women are cooking, for it isn’t long since
you were at the swimming places and traveling on the mountains. Every
morning, while you are gambling, you must go, before the sun is up, and
swim in the lake.”
When they began to gamble again, Ndukis said to the chief: “You should
drive Tusasás away. If he makes Kalaslákkas mad, we shall be naked
again. You don’t know what kind of a man he is. He has been to all the
swimming places on the mountains.”
They gambled all night. Kalaslákkas won every game. The next day he
said to Blaiwas: “My swimming place said that just before midday you
must say to me: ‘Now be strong. Be like the chief of gamblers’!”
At midday the chief said: “My nephew, you must be strong; you must be
like the chief of gamblers at the swimming place.”
Those words frightened Kumal’s people. Tusasás looked through an
opening, and called out: “He can’t do more than I can!” Men ran after
him, drove him away, and said: “You will lose your life if you meddle
with that man. His grandmother can do anything.”
At dark they stopped playing. Kumal’s people were naked; they had lost
everything they had.
Old Kletcowas and his five sons were ashamed. The eldest said: “I don’t
want any one to have our nice things; we will bet our sister. If
Kalaslákkas wins her, we will get everything back.”
The old man said: “That is what our girls are for;” then he said to
Blaiwas: “I want that young man to play for my daughter. If he wins her
he can have her for a wife.”
“Will you play for the girl?” asked Blaiwas.
Kalaslákkas didn’t speak; he hung down his head. He was ashamed.
Blaiwas asked him a second time. He didn’t answer. Then Blaiwas asked
for the last time: “Well, what will you do?”
“I will play for her,” said the young man, “but if I win I will stop
playing; I will never gamble again.”
“If you win her, I shall be glad,” said his grandmother. “My body is
worn out; she will take care of me.”
“How many games must I play to get her?” asked Kalaslákkas.
“You must win ten games from us,” said old Kletcowas.
Kalaslákkas played the ten games and won the girl.
Tusasás said: “I could have won the girl long ago, if they had let me
play.”
“Keep still,” said Dúduois, “or you will no longer be a living person.”
“Let him say all he wants to,” said the old woman. “This earth will
punish him. This earth hears every word he says, and when a man says
bad things, she throws them back to him.”
The next day Tusasás was sick. He begged of Blaiwas not to let him die.
“I have no power to save you,” said Blaiwas.
Kalaslákkas gave old man Kletcowas and his sons all the things he had
won from them, and they went home. He took the girl to his
grandmother’s house; she was his wife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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