I have bagged today.” He untied the strap which he had brought along and
tied together the legs of the first deer he had shot. He stooped down,
raised the deer, knelt on the ground and drew the strap over his
forehead, and was just about to rise with his burden and make off for
his den when, _klo-o-o-o-o!_ he fell down almost crushed under a mass of
white rock. “Goodness! what’s this? Mercy, but this is startling!” He
looked around, but he saw nothing of his game save a shapeless mass of
white rock. “Well, I will try this other one,” said he to himself. He
had no sooner placed the other on his back than down it bore him,
another mass of white rock! “What can be the matter? The devil must be
to pay!” said he. Then he tried the next, with no better success. “Well,
there is one left, anyway,” said he. He tied the feet of the last one
together, and was about to place the strap over his forehead, when he
heard a mighty and thundering tread and great shouting and a terrible
noise altogether, for the people were already gathering about his den.
He made for the mouth of it with all possible speed, but the people were
there before him; they closed in upon him, they clutched at his stolen
garments, they pulled his earrings out of his ears, slitting his ears in
doing so, until he put up his hands and cried: “Death and ashes! Mercy!
Mercy! You hurt! You hurt! Don’t treat me so! I’ll be good hereafter.
I’ll take the clothing off and give it back to you without making the
slightest trouble, if you will let me alone.” But the people closed in
still more angrily, and pulled him about, buffeted him, tore his
clothing from him, until he was left nude and bruised and so maimed that
he could hardly move.
Then the old priests gathered around, and said one of them: “It will not
be well if we let this beast go as he is; he is too large, too powerful,
and too crafty. He has but to think of destruction; forsooth, he
destroys. He has but to think of over-reaching; it is accomplished. It
will not be well that he should go abroad thus. He must be roasted; and
thus only can we rid the world of him as he is.”
So the people assembled and heaped up great quantities of dry firewood;
and they drilled fire from a stick, and lighted the mass. Then they cast
the struggling Tarantula amid the flames, and he squeaked and sizzled
and hissed, and swelled and swelled and swelled, until, with a terrific
noise, he burst, and the fragments of his carcass were cast to the
uttermost parts of the earth. These parts again took shape as beings not
unlike Old Tarantula himself.
* * * * *
Thus it was in the days of the ancients. And therefore today, though
crooked are the legs of the tarantula, and his habit of progress
backward, still he is distributed throughout the great world. Only he is
very, very much smaller than was the Great Tarantula who lived below the
two rocky columns of Thunder Mountain.
Thus shortens my story.
ÁTAHSAIA, THE CANNIBAL DEMON
In the days of the ancients, when the children of our forefathers lived
in Héshokta (“Town of the Cliffs”), there also lived two beautiful
maidens, elder and younger, sisters one to the other, daughters of a
master-chief.
One bright morning in summer-time, the elder sister called to the
younger, “_Háni!_”
“What sayest thou?” said the _háni_.
“The day is bright and the water is warm. Let us go down to the pool and
wash our clothes, that we may wear them as if new at the dance to come.”
“Ah, yes, sister elder,” said the _háni_; “but these are days when they
say the shadows of the rocks and even the sage-bushes lodge unthinkable
things, and cause those who walk alone to breathe hard with fear.”
“_Shtchu!_” exclaimed the elder sister derisively. “Younger sisters
always are as timid as younger brothers are bad-tempered.”
“Ah, well, then; as you will, sister elder. I will not quarrel with your
wish, but I fear to go.”
“_Yaush!_ Come along, then,” said the elder sister; whereupon they
gathered their cotton mantles and other garments into bundles, and,
taking along a bag of yucca-root, or soap-weed, started together down
the steep, crooked path to where the pool lay at the foot of the great
mesa.
Now, far above the Town of the Cliffs, among the rocks of red-gray and
yellow--red in the form of a bowlder-like mountain that looks like a
frozen sand-bank--there is a deep cave. You have never seen it? Well! to
this day it is called the “Cave of Átahsaia,” and there, in the times I
tell of, lived Átahsaia himself. Uhh! what an ugly demon he was! His
body was as big as the biggest elk’s, and his breast was shaggy with
hair as stiff as porcupine-quills. His legs and arms were long and
brawny,--all covered with speckled scales of black and white. His hair
was coarse and snarly as a buffalo’s mane, and his eyes were so big and
glaring that they popped out of his head like skinned onions. His mouth
stretched from one cheek to the other and was filled with crooked fangs
as yellow as thrown-away deer-bones. His lips were as red and puffy as
peppers, and his face as wrinkled and rough as a piece of burnt
buckskin. That was Átahsaia, who in the days of the ancients devoured
men and women for his meat, and the children of men for his sweet-bread.
His weapons were terrible, too. His finger-nails were as long as the
claws of a bear, and in his left hand he carried a bow made of the
sapling of a mountain-oak, with two arrows ready drawn for use. And he
was never seen without his great flint knife, as broad as a man’s thigh
and twice as long, which he brandished with his right hand and poked his
hair back with, so that his grizzly fore-locks were covered with the
blood of those he had slaughtered. He wore over his shoulders whole
skins of the mountain lion and bear clasped with buttons of wood.
Now, although Átahsaia was ugly and could not speak without chattering
his teeth, or laugh without barking like a wolf, he was a very polite
demon. But, like many ugly and polite people nowadays, he was a great
liar.
Átahsaia that morning woke up and stuck his head out of his hole just as
the two maidens went down to the spring. He caught sight of them while
his eyes travelled below, and he chuckled. Then he muttered, as he gazed
at them and saw how young and fine they were: “_Ahhali! Yaa-tchi!_”
(“Good lunch! Two for a munch!”) and howled his war-cry,
“_Ho-o-o-thlai-a!_” till Teshaminkia, the Echo-god, shouted it to the
maidens.
“Oh!” exclaimed the _háni_, clutching the arm of her elder sister;
“listen!”
“_Ho-o-o-thlai-a!_” again roared the demon, and again Teshaminkia.
“Oh, oh! sister elder, what did I tell you! Why did we come out today!”
and both ran away; then stopped to listen. When they heard nothing more,
they returned to the spring and went to washing their clothes on some
flat stones.
But Átahsaia grabbed up his weapons and began to clamber down the
mountain, muttering and chuckling to himself as he went: “_Ahhali!
Yaa-tchi!_” (“Good lunch! Two for a munch!”).
Around the corner of Great Mesa, on the high shelves of which stands the
Town of the Cliffs, are two towering buttes called Kwilli-yallon (Twin
Mountain). Far up on the top of this mountain there dwelt Áhaiyúta and
Mátsailéma.
You don’t know who Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma were? Well, I will tell you.
They were the twin children of the Sun-father and the Mother Waters of
the World. Before men were born to the light, the Sun made love to the
Waters of the World, and under his warm, bright glances, there were
hatched out of a foam-cup on the face of the Great Ocean, which then
covered the earth, two wonderful boys, whom men afterward named _Ua nam
Atch Píahk’oa_ (“The Beloved Two who Fell”). The Sun dried away the
waters from the high-lands of earth and these Two then delivered men
forth from the bowels of our Earth-mother, and guided them eastward
toward the home of their father, the Sun. The time came, alas! when war
and many strange beings arose to destroy the children of earth, and then
the eight Stern Beings changed the hearts of the twins to _sawanikia_,
or the medicine of war. Thenceforth they were known as Áhaiyúta and
Mátsailéma (“Our Beloved,” the “Terrible Two,” “Boy-gods of War”).
Even though changed, they still guarded our ancients and guided them to
the Middle of the World, where we now live. Gifted with hearts of the
medicine of war, and with wisdom almost as great as the Sun-father’s
own, they became the invincible guardians of the Corn-people of Earth,
and, with the rainbow for their weapon and thunderbolts for their
arrows,--swift lightning-shafts pointed with turquoise,--were the
greatest warriors of all in the days of the new. When at last they had
conquered most of the enemies of men, they taught to a chosen few of
their followers the songs, prayers, and orders of a society of warriors
who should be called their children, the Priests[22] of the Bow, and
selecting from among them the two wisest, breathed into their nostrils
(as they have since breathed into those of their successors) the
_sawanikia_. Since then we make anew the semblance of their being and
place them each year at mid-sun on the top of the Mountain of Thunder,
and on the top of the Mountain of the Beloved, that they may know we
remember them and that they may guard (as it was said in the days of the
ancients they would guard) the Land of Zuñi from sunrise to sunset and
cut off the pathways of the enemy.
[22] Here and hereafter I use this term _priest_ reluctantly, in
lack of a better word, but in accordance with Webster’s second
definition.--F. H. C.
Well, Áhaiyúta, who is called the elder brother, and Mátsailéma, who is
called the younger, were living on the top of Twin Mountain with their
old grandmother.
Said the elder to the younger on this same morning: “Brother, let us go
out and hunt. It is a fine day. What say you?”
“My face is in front of me,” said the younger, “and under a roof is no
place for men,” he added, as he put on his helmet of elk-hide and took a
quiver of mountain-lion skin from an antler near the ladder.
“Where are you two boys going now?” shrieked the grandmother through a
trap-door from below. “Don’t you ever intend to stop worrying me by
going abroad when even the spaces breed fear like thick war?”
“O grandmother,” they laughed, as they tightened their bows and
straightened their arrows before the fire, “never mind us; we are only
going out for a hunt,” and before the old woman could climb up to stop
them they were gaily skipping down the rocks toward the cliffs below.
Suddenly the younger brother stopped. “Ahh!” said he, “listen, brother!
It is the cry of Átahsaia, and the old wretch is surely abroad to cause
tears!”
“Yes,” replied the elder. “It is Átahsaia, and we must stop him! Come
on, come on; quick!”
“Hold, brother, hold! Stiffen your feet right here with patience. He is
after the two maidens of Héshokta! I saw them going to the spring as I
came down. This day he must die. Is your face to the front?”
“It is; come on,” said the elder brother, starting forward.
“Stiffen your feet with patience, I say,” again exclaimed the younger
brother. “Know you that the old demon comes up the pathway below here?
He will not hurt them until he gets them home. You know he is a great
liar, and a great flatterer; that is the way the old beast catches
people. Now, if we wait here we will surely see them when they come up.”
So, after quarrelling a little, the elder brother consented to sit down
on a rock which overlooked the pathway and was within bow-shot of the
old demon’s cave.
Now, while the girls were washing, Átahsaia ran as fast as his old
joints would let him until the two girls heard his mutterings and
rattling weapons.
“Something is coming, sister!” cried the younger, and both ran toward
the rocks to hide again, but they were too late. The old demon strode
around by another way and suddenly, at a turn, came face to face with
them, glaring with his bloodshot eyes and waving his great jagged flint
knife. But as he neared them he lowered the knife and smiled,
straightening himself up and approaching the frightened ones as gently
as would a young man.
The poor younger sister clung to the elder one, and sank moaning by her
side, for the smile of Átahsaia was as fearful as the scowl of a
triumphant enemy, or the laugh of a rattlesnake when he hears any old
man tell a lie and thinks he will poison him for it.
“Why do you run, and why do you weep so?” asked the old demon. “I know
you. I am ugly and old, my pretty maidens, but I am your grandfather and
mean you no harm at all. I frightened you only because I felt certain
you would run away from me if you could.”
“Ah!” faltered the elder sister, immediately getting over her fright.
“We did not know you and therefore we were frightened by you. Come,
sister, come,” said she to the younger. “Brighten your eyes and
thoughts, for our grandfather will not hurt us. Don’t you see?”
But the younger sister only shook her head and sobbed. Then the demon
got angry. “What are you blubbering about?” he roared, raising his
knife and sweeping it wildly through the air. “Do you see this knife?
This day I will cut off the light of your life with it if you do not
swallow your whimpers!”
“Get up, oh, do get up, _háni_!” whispered the elder sister, now again
frightened herself. “Surely he will not cut us off just now, if we obey
him; and is it not well that even for a little time the light of life
shine--though it shine through fear and sadness--than be cut off
altogether? For who knows where the trails tend that lead through the
darkness of the night of death?”
You know, in the speech of the rulers of the world and of our
ancients,[23] a man’s light was cut off when his life was taken, and
when he died he came to the dividing-place of life.
[23] One of the figures of speech meaning the gods.
The _háni_ tried to rally herself and rose to her feet, but she still
trembled.
“Now, my pretty maidens, my own granddaughters, even,” said the old
demon once more, as gently as at first, “I am most glad I found you. How
good are the gods! for I am a poor, lone old man. All my people are
gone.” (Here he sighed like the hiss of a wild-cat.) “Yonder above is my
home” (pointing over his shoulder), “and as I am a great hunter, plenty
of venison is baking in my rear room and more sweet-bread than I can
eat. Lo! it makes me homesick to eat alone, and when I saw you and saw
how pretty and gentle you were, I thought that it might be you would
throw the light of your favor on me, and go up to my house to share of
my abundance and drink from my vessels. Besides, I am so old that only
now and then can I get a full jar of water up to my house. So I came as
fast as I could to ask you to return and eat with me.”
Reassured by his kind speech, the elder sister hastened to say: “Of
course, we will go with our grandfather, and if that is all he may want
of us, we can soon fill his water-jars, can’t we, _háni_?”
“You are a good girl,” said the old demon to the one who had spoken;
then, glaring at the younger sister: “Bring that fool along with you and
come up; she will not come by herself; she has more bashfulness than
sense, and less sense than my knife, because that makes the world more
wise by killing off fools.”
He led the way and the elder sister followed, dragging along the
shrinking _háni_.
The old demon kept talking in a loud voice as they went up the pathway,
telling all sorts of entertaining stories, until, as they neared the
rocks where Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma were waiting, the Two heard him and
said to one another: “Ahh, they come!”
Then the elder brother jumped up and began to tighten his bow, but the
younger brother muttered: “Sit down, won’t you, you fool! Átahsaia’s
ears are like bat-ears, only bigger. Wait now, till I say ready. You
know he will not hurt the girls until he gets them out from his house.
Look over there in front of his hole. Do you see the flat place that
leads along to that deep chasm beyond?”
“Yes,” replied the elder brother. “But what of that?”
“What but that there he cuts the throats of his captives and casts their
bones and heads into the depths of the chasm! Do you see the notch in
the stone? That’s where he lets their blood flow down, and for that
reason no one ever discovers his tracks. Now, stiffen your feet with
patience, I say, and we will see what to do when the time comes.”
Again they sat and waited. As the old demon and the girls passed along
below, the elder brother again started and would have shot had not
Mátsailéma held him back. “You fool of a brother elder, but not wiser.
No! Do you not know that your arrow is lightning and will kill the
maidens as well as the monster?”
Finally, the demon reached the entrance to his cave, and, going in,
asked the girls to follow him, laying out two slabs for them to sit on.
“Now, sit down, my pretty girls, and I will soon get something for you
to eat. You must be hungry.” Going to the rear of the cave, he broke
open a stone oven, and the steam which arose was certainly delicious and
meaty. Soon he brought out two great bowls, big enough to feed a whole
dance. One contained meat, the other a mess resembling sweet-bread
pudding. “Now, let us eat,” said the demon, seating himself opposite,
and at once diving his horny fingers and scaly hand half up to the
wrist in the meat-broth. The elder sister began to take bits of the food
to eat it, when the younger made a motion to her, and showed her with
horror the bones of a little hand. The sweet-bread was the flesh and
bones of little children. Then the two girls only pretended to eat,
taking the food out and throwing it down by the side of the bowls.
“Why don’t you eat?” demanded the demon, cramming at the same time a
huge mouthful of the meat, bones and all, into his wide throat.
“We are eating,” said one of the girls.
“Then why do you throw my food away?”
“We are throwing away only the bones.”
“Well, the bones are the better part,” retorted the demon, taking
another huge mouthful, by way of example, big enough to make a grown
man’s meal. “Oh, yes!” he added; “I forgot that you had baby teeth.”
After the meal was finished, the old demon said: “Let us go out and sit
down in the sun on my terrace. Perhaps, my pretty maidens, you will comb
an old man’s hair, for I have no one left to help me now,” he sighed,
pretending to be very sad. So, showing the girls where to sit down,
without waiting for their assent he settled himself in front of them and
leaned his head back to have it combed. The two maidens dared not
disobey; and now and then they pulled at a long, coarse hair, and then
snapped their fingers close to his scalp, which so deceived the old
demon that he grunted with satisfaction every time. At last their knees
were so tired by his weight upon them that they said they were done,
and Átahsaia, rising, pretended to be greatly pleased, and thanked them
over and over. Then he told them to sit down in front of him, and he
would comb their hair as they had combed his, but not to mind if he hurt
a little for his fingers were old and stiff. The two girls again dared
not disobey, and sat down as he had directed. Uhh! how the old beast
grinned and glared and breathed softly between his teeth.
The two brothers had carefully watched everything, the elder one
starting up now and then, the younger remaining quiet. Suddenly
Mátsailéma sprang up. He caught the shield the Sun-father had given
him,--the shield which, though made only of nets and knotted cords,
would ward off alike the weapons of the warrior or the magic of the
wizard. Holding it aloft, he cried to Áhaiyúta: “Stand ready; the time
is come! If I miss him, pierce him with your arrow. Now, then--”
He hurled the shield through the air. Swiftly as a hawk and noiselessly
as an owl, it sailed straight over the heads of the maidens and settled
between them and the demon’s face. The shield was invisible, and the old
demon knew not it was there. He leaned over as if to examine the
maidens’ heads. He opened his great mouth, and, bending yet nearer, made
a vicious bite at the elder one.
“Ai, ai! my poor little sister, alas!” with which both fell to sobbing
and moaning, and crouched, expecting instantly to be destroyed.
But the demon’s teeth caught in the meshes of the invisible shield,
and, howling with vexation, he began struggling to free himself of the
encumbrance. Áhaiyúta drew a shaft to the point and let fly. With a
thundering noise that rent the rocks, and a rush of strong wind, the
shaft blazed through the air and buried itself in the demon’s shoulders,
piercing him through ere the thunder had half done pealing. Swift as
mountain sheep were the leaps and light steps of the brothers, who,
bounding to the shelf of rock, drew their war-clubs and soon softened
the hard skull of the old demon with them. The younger sister was
unharmed save by fright; but the elder sister lay where she had sat,
insensible.
“Hold!” cried Mátsailéma, “she was to blame, but then--” Lifting the
swooning maiden in his strong little arms, he laid her apart from the
others, and, breathing into her nostrils, soon revived her eyes to
wisdom.
“_This day have we, through the power of sawanikia, seen[24] for our
father an enemy of our children men. A beast that caused unto fatherless
children, unto menless women, unto womenless men (who thus became
through his evil will), tears and sad thoughts, has this day been looked
upon by the Sun and laid low. May the favors of the gods thus meet us
ever._”
[24] To “see” an enemy signifies, in Zuñi mythology, to take his
life.
Thus said the two brothers, as they stood over the gasping, still
struggling but dying demon; and as they closed their little prayer, the
maidens, who now first saw whom they had to thank for their
deliverance, were overwhelmed with gladness, yet shame. They exclaimed,
in response to the prayer: “_May they, indeed, thus meet you and
ourselves!_” Then they breathed upon their hands.
The two brothers now turned toward the girls. “Look ye upon the last
enemy of men,” said they, “whom this day we have had the power of
_sawanikia_ given us to destroy; whom this day the father of all, our
father the Sun, has looked upon, whose light of life this day our
weapons have cut off; whose path of life this day our father has
divided. Not ourselves, but our father has done this deed, through us.
Haste to your home in Héshokta and tell your father these things; and
tell him, pray, that he must assemble his priests and teach them these
our words, for we divide our paths of life henceforth from one another
and from the paths of men, no more to mingle save in spirit with the
children of men. But we shall depart for our everlasting home in the
mountains--the one to the Mountain of Thunder, the other to the Mount of
the Beloved--to guard from sunrise to sunset the land of the
Corn-priests of Earth, that the foolish among men break not into the
Middle Country of Earth and lay it waste. Yet we shall require of our
children the plumes wherewith we dress our thoughts, and the forms of
our being wherewith men may renew us each year at mid-sun. Henceforth
two stars at morning and evening will be seen, the one going before, the
other following, the Sun-father--the one Áhaiyúta, his herald; the
other Mátsailéma, his guardian; warriors both, and fathers of men. May
the trail of life be finished ere divided! Go ye happily hence.”
The maidens breathed from the hands of the Twain, and with bowed heads
and a prayer of thanks started down the pathway toward the Town of the
Cliffs. When they came to their home, the old father asked whence they
came. They told the story of their adventure and repeated the words of
the Beloved.
The old man bowed his head, and said: “It was Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma!”
Then he made a prayer of thanks, and cast abroad on the winds white meal
of the seeds of earth and shells from the Great Waters of the World, the
pollen of beautiful flowers, and the paints of war.
“It is well!” he said. “Four days hence I will assemble my warriors, and
we will cut the plume-sticks, paint and feather them, and place them on
high mountains, that through their knowledge and power of medicine our
Beloved Two Warriors may take them unto themselves.”
Now, when the maidens disappeared among the rocks below, the brothers
looked each at the other and laughed. Then they shouted, and Áhaiyúta
kicked Átahsaia’s ugly carcass till it gurgled, at which the two boys
shouted again most hilariously and laughed. “That’s what we proposed to
do with you, old beast!” they cried out.
“But, brother younger,” said Áhaiyúta, “what shall be done with him
now?”
“Let’s skin him,” said Mátsailéma.
So they set to work and skinned the body from foot to head, as one
skins a fawn when one wishes to make a seed-bag. Then they put sticks
into the legs and arms, and tied strings to them, and stuffed the body
with dry grass and moss; and where they set the thing up against the
cliff it looked verily like the living Átahsaia.
“Uhh! what an ugly beast he was!” said Mátsailéma. Then he shouted:
“_Wahaha, hihiho!_” and almost doubled up with laughter. “Won’t we have
fun with old grandmother, though. Hurry up; let’s take care of the rest
of him!”