Indians of North America -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Religion; Modoc mythology
The next morning, when little Kékina called: “Spring is coming! Spring
is coming!” and ran to the tree, he found that all his roots were gone.
He saw Lok’s tracks and knew that she had stolen them. He rolled around
on the ground and cried, he felt so badly. Then he went in and lay down
by his brother, who was making poison arrows. The brother said: “Keep
still, I am going to talk to my arrows and tell them what to do.” He
held the arrows over the fire, and said: “Arrows, you must go right
through the bodies of the big-handed people; the people that never get
enough to eat.”
Old woman Lok was listening around; she said: “You are talking about
the people who killed your father and mother, and will kill you.”
When her brothers came home, she said: “I hate to hear that Kékina boy
talk about killing you.”
The eldest brother said: “Somebody makes him mad; maybe you have been
boasting that we killed his father and mother.” He scolded the woman
till she said: “I am going off; I sha’n’t come back till night.”
While she was gone, old woman Wus stole half of her roots, dug a hole
and hid them, and then made mole tracks around, little hills of dirt.
In Lok’s house the chief slept in the middle, near the fire; two
brothers slept on one side of him and two on the other; the sister
slept by the ladder. That night, when the brothers were asleep, little
Kékina crept into their house. He passed his hands over them and they
all slept soundly, they couldn’t wake up. He cut off the chief’s foot,
put the end of his leg on the log in the fire, and said to it: “Don’t
you waken the chief till you are half burned up.” He took the foot
home. Wus roasted it, and she and her nephews ate it. Then she put out
the fire, rubbed ashes on her mouth to hide the grease, and began to
cry as if she were hungry.
When the leg was half consumed, the chief woke up and screamed: “My leg
is burning! My leg is burning!” His sister said: “This is Kékina’s
work,” but the chief said: “No, I went to sleep with my feet on the
log.” He died the next day.
When his brothers were going to burn the body, old woman Wus said:
“People will make fun of you if you burn your brother. You must put him
in the ground with his burnt leg sticking out. If you feel badly, you
can go away. I will watch, I won’t let anything come to eat him.”
When the Lok brothers had put the chief in the ground and gone off, Wus
dug up the body and cooked it for her nephews to eat; then she stuck a
chunk of burnt wood where the leg had been.
The next day old woman Lok said: “I am afraid Wus and those boys will
dig up our brother’s body and eat it.” And she went to see. She didn’t
go far, for she saw the chunk sticking up out of the ground and thought
it was the leg.
The elder Kékina brother said to Wus: “You must go and find out what
the Loks are doing. You can tell them that I have driven you away.”
When Wus got where the Loks were camped, she began to cry.
They asked: “What are you crying for?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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