Indians of North America -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Religion; Modoc mythology
One day the boy started off without saying anything to his grandmother.
When she found that he had gone, she cried and felt badly. Tusasás
lived in the village; he saw the boy and said: “I will take that little
fellow for a servant; he can bring water for me.”
“Keep still,” said Blaiwas; “you talk too much.”
The man who killed the boy’s father was there; he said: “That boy has
come to see me. Maybe he wants to kill me.” He was making fun of him.
The boy went into each house to find out what people would say to him.
Some were sorry for him; others drove him away. When he went home, his
grandmother said: “Those people are waiting for you to grow up a
little; then they will kill you.”
After the first time, he went away every evening. One evening he saw,
on the trail, an old dry spear of tula grass. He stepped on it and
broke it; the spear screamed out, just as a person does when hurt. The
boy stepped off from it quickly, and said: “Well, well, I never heard
anything of this kind scream before.” He picked up the pieces of grass.
That minute he fell down. The grass made him fall; it was the spirit of
a skoks.
The boy lost his mind and was almost dead. He thought the spirit said:
“You have broken my back; now I want you to fix me and use me for a
cane. If you meet enemies, use me against them.”
When the boy got back his mind, his mouth was bloody. It is always that
way when a child is going to be a doctor. (Medicines sometimes travel
evenings to meet young boys.) He got up and went home.
When his grandmother saw him, she was scared; she said: “I don’t like
to see you this way. Doctors are killed as well as men who fight; you
won’t live long if you are this kind.”
That night the boy dreamed that the tula cane told him how to make a
regular medicine cane. He made the cane, and the next time he went to
the village he took it with him. It was stronger than the tula grass
cane.
Tusasás said: “Little boy, I am glad you brought me a cane; I will sing
for it.”
Blaiwas said: “You shouldn’t make fun of that boy; let him alone.”
“If we let him alone, he will kill us all,” said Tusasás.
The man who killed the boy’s father tied feathers in the boy’s hair to
make fun of him, and said: “I want to eat you, but if I don’t eat you,
you will have to carry water for me.”
Tusasás said: “He is mine; I will make him work when he is a little
larger.”
Everywhere the boy went they made fun of him because he was so small.
One night he said: “Grandmother, I want you to fix my head.” She shaved
off all of his hair but one tuft on the top of his head; that she
braided, and it stuck up straight. She painted his head and his face
red.
“Haven’t I any name?” asked the boy.
“No,” said his grandmother. “You have never given yourself a name.”
“Call me Sápkokis” (the name of the twist of hair on top of his head).
“And call me by my name every time I come in or go out; it will make me
stronger each time I hear it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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