Indians of North America -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Folklore; Modoc Indians -- Religion; Modoc mythology
When the girls started, Wus watched them till they went out of sight;
he was saying things in his mind. As they traveled, they became old
women, with humps on their backs; their bodies shriveled up, there was
no flesh on their bones, they could scarcely move; their hair turned
white, and their teeth fell out. Their beautiful clothes turned to
dirty straw; their strings of beads were twisted bark; their baskets
looked old and broken and the roots in them turned to moldy skins; the
shells and porcupine quills were bits of bark.
The younger sister said: “We didn’t go the way our mother told us to.
That man was Wus; he has done this. If we had gone on the east side of
the lake, we shouldn’t have met him. We should have done as our mother
told us; she is old, and she knows more than we do.” After a long time,
they got to the chief’s house. The five brothers were out hunting. The
chief didn’t know what to give the women to eat; he thought they were
too old to eat roasted liver (old people’s food). When he gave them
some, they pushed it away. They lay down to sleep, and while they were
sleeping the five brothers came. They knew Máidikdak’s daughters and
knew who had made them old.
The youngest brother asked: “Did you give these women anything to eat?”
“I gave them liver,” said the old man, “but they couldn’t eat it; they
haven’t any teeth.”
The young man was glad they had come; he sat down and watched them.
About midnight they turned to beautiful girls. In the morning, when
they woke up, they were old women again.
The chief said to himself: “What kind of a man is my son? Why does he
stay by those dirty old women?”
The young women heard his thoughts and they felt badly. At last they
crawled up and went out to wash in the river. The elder sister said:
“If we swim, maybe it will make us young again.”
They took off their dirty, ragged clothes and old torn moccasins and
began to swim. Right away they turned to beautiful girls; their long
hair floated on the top of the water. As they swam, they talked and
laughed, for they were glad to be young again. They made sport of their
father-in-law, and said: “That big chief thought we were old women; he
fed us liver!”
The young man heard this and said to his father: “You fed those girls
dirty liver. Did you think they were old women?”
The girls kept diving down in the water and coming up, and soon they
began to change. They became green-headed ducks, and floated off toward
home. The young man felt badly; he didn’t want them to go.
Old Máidikdak heard them coming, and when they were near the house, she
said: “My daughters, you didn’t do as I told you. I told you about that
bad man. If I hadn’t this would be my fault; now it is yours.” She
tried to catch them, but couldn’t. At last she went under the water and
caught hold of their legs. She pulled off their feathers and they were
girls again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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