Indians of North America -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Religion; Modoc mythology
“You know that you can’t fool me. I have a young brother; I want him to
go with me. It is getting late; where is he?” Every time Tekewas turned
her body she talked to the sun, told it to go quick, so it would be
dark soon.
Her brothers didn’t want her to stay all night, so they took the basket
from under the ground, and got Tûtats ready to go. They let down his
hair and combed it. It was blue and beautiful, and reached to his feet.
He cried all the time they were combing it, for he didn’t want to go
with his sister. When she started, he walked behind her, crying.
Tekewas talked to the sun, told it to go down, scolded it to make it
hurry. The sun was scared and it went as though it were sliding down a
slippery place. When they came to a clump of cedar trees, it was
already dark. Tekewas stopped and said: “We will camp here.”
“It is too near,” said Tûtats; he was crying.
“It is too dark to follow the trail,” said Tekewas. She built a fire
and gave Tûtats roots from her basket. After eating, he lay down on one
side of the fire and she on the other; then she thought: “Let him go to
sleep quick.” When he was asleep, she went over to lie by him.
He woke and got up; he was still crying. “Let her sleep till I get
half-way to the sky,” said he to himself. He found a log, put it by his
sister’s side, and told it to keep her asleep. Then he hurried home.
“What is the trouble?” asked his brothers. “Why did you come back?”
“I don’t like my sister. I left her asleep. When she wakes up she will
come to kill us. We must get away from here.”
The brothers hired old man Kaltsik to help them. Kaltsik made a basket
and put the five brothers into it; then he made a web, took the basket
up into the air, let it down into the web, and started.
“Don’t look down till I tie you to the sky,” said the old man. “If you
do, you will fall out and get killed.”
When Tekewas woke up, she ran back to the house and asked: “Where are
my brothers?”
“I don’t know,” said the old woman.
“Yes, you do. Here is a trail going up to the sky!” Tekewas was so mad
that she ran around the house so fast and so many times that she set it
on fire.
Old man Kaltsik was half-way to the sky when he saw the blaze, and
said: “Your house is burning!” The eldest brother forgot and looked
down, over the edge of the basket. That minute the web broke, and the
five brothers fell out, one after another.
The mother and daughter were fighting; each had a wooden paddle. When
Tekewas saw her brothers falling, she said to her mother: “You mustn’t
say: ‘Fall this side’; you must say: ‘fall in the middle.’”
“Fall this side! Fall this side!” cried the mother.
Tekewas knocked the paddle out of her hand into the fire. Four of the
brothers fell into the fire. When sparks flew out, Tekewas pushed them
back with her paddle. As often as her mother got her paddle out of the
fire, Tekewas knocked it in again. The youngest brother fell last.
“This side! This side!” cried his mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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