feed him, and he was particularly fond of grain food. When, having
eaten his fill, the old Cock would settle down, stiff of neck and not
looking this side nor that, but sitting in the sun _kâ-tâ-kâ-tok-ing_ to
himself, the little Mouse would dodge out, steal a bit of tortilla or a
crumb, and whisk into his hole again. Being sleepy, the _Tâkâkâ_ Cock
never saw him, and so, day after day the Mouse fared sumptuously and
grew over-bold. But one day, when corn was ripe and the Cock had been
well fed and was settling down to his sitting nap, the Mouse came out
and stole a particularly large piece of bread, so that in trying to push
it into his hole he made some noise and, moreover, had to stop and
tunnel his doorway larger.
The Cock turned his head and looked just as the Mouse was working his
way slowly in, and espied the long, naked tail lying there on the ground
and wriggling as the Mouse moved to and fro at his digging.
“Hah! By the Grandmother of Substance, it is a worm!” cackled the Cock,
and he made one peck at the Mouse’s tail and bit it so hard that he cut
it entirely off and swallowed it at one gulp.
The Mouse, squeaking “Murder!” scurried down into his sleeping-place,
and fell to licking his tail until his chops were all pink and his mouth
was drawn down like a crying woman’s; for he loved his long tail as a
young dancer loves the glory of his long hair, and he cried continually:
“_Weh tsu tsu, weh tsu tse, yam hok ti-i-i!_” and thought: “Oh, that
shameless great beast! By the Demon of Slave-creatures, I’ll have my
payment of him! For he is worse than an owl or a night-hawk. They eat
us all up, but he has taken away the very mark of my mousehood and left
me to mourn it. I’ll take vengeance on him, will I!”
So, from that time the Mouse thought how he might compass it, and this
plan seemed best: He would creep out some day, all maimed of tail as he
was, and implore pity, and thus, perchance, make friends for a while
with the _Tâkâkâ_ Cock. So he took seed-down, and made a plaster of it
with nut-resin, and applied it to the stump of his tail. Then, on a
morning, holding his tail up as a dog does his foot when maimed by a
cactus, he crawled to the edge of his hole and cried in a weak voice to
the _Tâkâkâ_:
“_Ani, yoa yoa! Itâ-ak’ya Mosa,
Motcho wak’ya,
Oshe wak’ya,
Ethl hâ asha ni ha. Ha na, yoa, ha na!_”
Look you, pity, pity! Master of Food Substance,
Of my maiming,
Of my hunger,
I am all but dying. Ah me, pity, ah me!
Whereupon he held up his tail, which was a safe thing to do, you see,
for it no longer looked like a worm or any other eatable.
Now, the _Tâkâkâ_ was flattered to be called a master of plenty, so he
said, quite haughtily (for he had eaten and could not bend his neck, and
felt proud, withal), “Come in, you poor little thing, and eat all you
want. As if I cared for what the like of you could eat!” So the Mouse
went in and ate very little, as became a polite stranger, and thanking
the Cock, bade him good-day and went back to his hole.
By-and-by he came again, and this time he brought part of a nutshell
containing fine white meat. When he had shouted warning of his coming
and entered the corral cage, he said: “Comrade father, let us eat
together. Of this food I have plenty, gathered from yonder high nut-tree
which I climb every autumn when the corn is ripe and cut the nuts
therefrom. But of all food yours I most relish, since I cannot store
such in my cellar. Now, it may be you will equally relish mine; so let
us eat, then, together.”
“It is well, comrade child,” replied the Cock; so they began to eat.
But the Cock had no sooner tasted the nut than he fairly chuckled for
joy, and having speedily made an end of the kernel, fell to lamenting
his hard lot. “Alas, ah me!” he said. “My grandmother brings me, on rare
days, something like to this, but picked all too clean. There is nought
eatable so nice. Comrade little one, do you have plenty of this kind,
did you say?”
“Oh, yes,” replied the Mouse; “but, you see, the season is near to an
end now, and when I want more nuts I must go and gather them from the
tree. Look, now! Why do you not go there also? That is the tree, close
by.”
“Ah me, I cannot escape, woe to me! Look at my wings,” said the Cock,
“they are worn to bristles--and as to the beard on my breast, my chief
ornament, alas! it is all crumpled and uneven, so much have I tried to
fly out and so hard have I pushed against the bars. As for the door, my
grandmother claps that shut and fastens it tightly with thongs, be you
sure, as soon as ever she finishes the feeding of me!”
“Ha! ha!” exclaimed the Mouse. “If that’s all, there’s nothing easier
than to open that. Look at my teeth; I even crack the hard nuts with
these scrapers of mine! Wait!” He ran nimbly up the wicket and soon
gnawed through the holding-string. “There! comrade father; push open the
door, you are bigger than I, and we will go nutting.”
“Thanks this day,” cried the Cock, and shoving the wicket open, he ran
forth cackling and crowing for gladness.
Then the Mouse led the way to the tree. Up the trunk he ran, and climbed
and climbed until he came to the topmost boughs. “Ha! the nuts are fine
and ripe up here,” he shouted.
But the _Tâkâkâ_ fluttered and flew all in vain; his wings were so worn
he could not win even to the lowermost branches. “Oh! have pity on me,
comrade child! Cut off some of the nuts and throw them down to me, do!
My wings are so worn I cannot fly any better than the grandmother’s old
dog, who is my neighbor over there.”
“Be patient, be patient, father!” exclaimed the Mouse. “I am cracking a
big one for you as fast as I can. There, catch it!” and he threw a fat
nut close to the Cock, who gleefully devoured the kernel and, without so
much as thanks, called for more.
“Wait, father,” said the Mouse. “There! Stand right under me, so. Now,
catch it; this is a big one!” Saying which the Mouse crawled out until
he was straight over the Cock. “Now, then,” said he, “watch in front!”
and he let fall the nut. It hit the Cock on the head so hard that it
bruised the skin off and stunned the old _Tâkâkâ_ so that he fell over
and died for a short time, utterly forgetting.
“_Té mi thlo kô thlo kwa!_” shouted the Mouse, as he hurried down the
tree. “A little waiting, and lo! What my foe would do to me, I to him
do, indeed!” Whereupon he ran across, before ever the Cock had opened an
eye, and gnawed his bristles off so short that they never could grow
again. “There, now!” said the Mouse. “Lo! thus healed is my heart, and
my enemy is even as he made me, bereft of distinction!” Then he ran back
to his cellar, satisfied.
Finally the Cock opened his eyes. “Ah me, my head!” he exclaimed. Then,
moaning, he staggered to his feet, and in doing so he espied the nut. It
was smooth and round, like a brown egg. When the Cock saw it he fell to
lamenting more loudly than ever: “Oh, my head! _Tâ-kâ-kâ-kâ-â-â!_” But
the top of his head kept bleeding and swelling until it was all covered
over with welts of gore, and it grew so heavy, withal, that the _Tâkâkâ_
thought he would surely die. So off to his grandmother he went,
lamenting all the way.
Hearing him, the grandmother opened the door, and cried: “What now?”
“Oh, my grandmother, ah me! I am murdered!” he answered. “A great,
round, hard seed was dropped on my head by a little creature with a
short, one-feathered tail, who came and told me that it was good to eat
and--oh! my head is all bleeding and swollen! By the light of your
favor, bind my wound for me lest, alas, I die!”
“Served you right! Why did you leave your place, knowing better?” cried
the old woman. “I will not bind your head unless you give me your very
bristles of manhood, that you may remember your lesson!”
“Oh! take them, grandmother!” cried the Cock; but when he looked down,
alas! the beard of his breast, the glory of his kind, was all gone. “Ah
me! ah me! What shall I do?” he again cried. But the old woman told him
that unless he brought her at least four bristles she would not cure
him, and forthwith she shut the door.
So the poor Cock slowly staggered back toward his corral, hoping to find
some of the hairs that had been gnawed off. As he passed the little
lodge of his neighbor, the Dog, he caught sight of old _Wahtsita’s_ fine
muzzle-beard. “Ha!” thought he. Then he told the Dog his tale, and
begged of him four hairs--“only four!”
“You great, pampered noise-maker, give me some bread, then, fine bread,
and I will give you the hairs.” Whereupon the Cock thought, and went to
the house of a Trader of Foodstuffs; and he told him also the tale.
“Well, then, bring me some wood with which I may heat the oven to bake
the bread,” said the Trader of Foodstuffs.
The Cock went to some Woods near by. “Oh, ye Beloved of the Trees, drop
me dry branches!” And with this he told the Trees his tale; but the
Trees shook their leaves and said: “No rain has fallen, and all our
branches will soon be dry. Beseech the Waters that they give us drink,
then we will gladly give you wood.”
Then the Cock went to a Spring near by,--and when he saw in it how his
head was swollen and he found that it was growing harder, he again began
to lament.
“What matters?” murmured the Beloved of the Waters.
Then he told them the tale also.
“Listen!” said the Beings of Water. “Long have men neglected their
duties, and the Beloved of the Clouds need payment of due no less than
ourselves, the Trees, the Food-maker, the Dog, and the Old Woman.
Behold! no plumes are set about our border! Now, therefore, pay to them
of thy feathers--four floating plumes from under thy wings--and set them
close over us, that, seen in our depths from the sky, they will lure the
Beloved of the Clouds with their rain-laden breaths. Thus will our
stream-way be replenished and the Trees watered, and their Winds in the
Trees will drop thee dead branches wherewith thou mayest make payment
and all will be well.”
Forthwith the _Tâkâkâ_ plucked four of his best plumes and set them, one
on the northern, one on the western, one on the southern, and one on the
eastern border of the Pool. Then the Winds of the Four Quarters began to
breathe upon the four plumes, and with those Breaths of the Beloved came
Clouds, and from the Clouds fell Rain, and the Trees threw down dry
branches, and the Wind placed among them Red-top Grass, which is light
and therefore lightens the load it is among. And when the Cock returned
and gathered a little bundle of fagots, lo! the Red-top made it so light
that he easily carried it to the Food-maker, who gave him bread, for
which the Dog gave him four bristles, and these he took to the old
Grandmother.
“Ha!” exclaimed she. “Now, child, I will cure thee, but thou hast been
so long that thy head will always be welted and covered with
proud-flesh, even though healed. Still, it must ever be so. Doing right
keeps right; doing wrong makes wrong, which, to make right, one must
even pay as the sick pay those who cure them. Go now, and bide whither I
bid thee.”
When, after a time, the Cock became well, lo! there were great, flabby,
blood-red welts on his head and blue marks on his temples where they
were bruised so sore. Now, listen:
It is for this reason that ever since that time the medicine masters of
that people never give cure without pay; never, for there is no virtue
in medicine of no value. Ever since then cocks have had no bristles on
their breasts--only little humps where they ought to be;--and they
always have blood-red crests of meat on their heads. And even when a hen
lays an egg and a _tâkâkâ_ cock sees it, he begins to _tâ-kâ-kâ-â_ as
the ancient of them all did when he saw the brown nut. And sometimes
they even pick at and eat these seeds of their own children, especially
when they are cracked.
As for mice, we know how they went into the meal-bags in olden times and
came out something else, and, getting smoked, became _tsothliko-ahâi_,
with long, bare tails. But that was before the Cock cut the tail of the
_tsothliko_ Mouse off. Ever since he cried in agony: “_Weh tsu yii weh
tsu!_” like a child with a burnt finger, his children have been called
_Wehtsutsukwe_, and wander wild in the fields; hence field-mice to this
day have short tails, brown-stained and hairy; and their chops are all
pink, and when you look them in the face they seem always to be crying.
Thus shortens my story.
THE GIANT CLOUD-SWALLOWER
A TALE OF CAÑON DE CHELLY
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
Deep down in cañons of the Southwest, especially where they are joined
by other cañons, the traveller may see standing forth from or hugging
the angles of the cliffs, great towering needles of stone--weird,
rugged, fantastic, oftentimes single, as often--like gigantic
wind-stripped trees with lesser trees standing beside them--double or
treble. Seen suddenly at a turn in the cañon these giant stones startle
the gazer with their monstrous and human proportions, like giants,
indeed, at bay against the sheer rock walls, protecting their young, who
appear anon to crouch at the knees of their fathers or cling to their
sides.
Few white men behold these statuesque stones in the moonlight, or in the
gray light and white mists of the morning. At midday they seem dead or
asleep while standing; but when the moon is shining above them and the
wanderer below looks up to them, lo! the moon stands still and these
mighty crags start forth, advancing noiselessly. His back is frozen, and
even in the yielding sand his feet are held fast by terror--a delicious,
ghostly terror, withal! Still he gazes fascinated, and as the shadow of
the moonlight falls toward him over the topmost crest, lo, again! its
crown is illumined and circled as if by a halo of snow-light, and back
and forth from this luminous fillet over that high stony brow, black
hair seems to tumble and gather.
Again, beheld in the dawn-light, when the mists are rising slowly and
are waving to and fro around the giddy columns, hiding the cliffs
behind them, these vast pinnacles seem to nod and to waver or to sway
themselves backward and forward, all as silently as before. Soon, when
the sun is risen and the mists from below fade away, the wind blows more
mist from the mesa; you see clouds of it pour from the cliff edge, just
behind and above these great towers, and shimmer against the bright sky;
but as soon as these clouds pass the crag-nests they are lost in the
sunlight around them--lost so fast, as yet others come on, that the
stone giants seem to drink them.
Of such rocks, according to their variety and local surroundings, the
Zuñis relate many tales which are so ingenious and befitting that if we
believed, as the Zuñis do, that in the time of creation when all things
were young and soft and were therefore easily fashioned by whatever
chanced to befall them--into this thing or that thing, into this plant
or that plant, this animal or that, and so on endlessly through a
dramatic story longer than Shakespeare or the Bible--we would fain
believe also as he does in the quaint incidents of these stories of the
time when all things were new and the world was becoming as we see it
now.
One of these tales, a variant of others pertaining to particular
standing rocks in the west, south, or east, is told of that wonder to
all beholders, “El Capitan,” of the Cañon de Chelly in the north. No one
who has seen this stupendous rock column can fail to be interested in
the following legend, or will fail to realize how, as this introduction
endeavors to make plainer, the Zuñi poet and philosopher of olden times
built up a story which he verily believed quite sufficient to account
for the great shaft of sandstone and its many details and
surroundings.--F. H. C.
Häki Suto, or Foretop Knot, he whose hair was done up over his forehead
like a quail’s crest, lived among the great cliffs of the north long
ago, when the world was new. He was a giant, so tall that men called
him _Lo Ikwithltchunona_, or the Cloud-swallower. A devourer of men was
he,--men were his meat--yea, and a drinker of their very substance was
he, for the cloud-breaths of the beloved gods, and souls of the dead,
whence descend rains, even these were his drink. Wherefore the People of
the Cliffs sought to slay him, and hero after hero perished thuswise.
Wherefore, too, snow ceased in the north and the west; rain ceased in
the south and the east; the mists of the mountains above were drunk up;
the waters of the valleys below were dried up; corn withered in the
fields; men hungered and died in the cliffs.
Then came the Twin Gods of War, Áhaiyúta and Mátsailéma, who in play
staked the lives of foes and fierce creatures. “Lo! it is not well with
our children, men,” said they. “Let us destroy this Häki Suto, the
swallower of clouds,” said they.
They were walking along the trail which leads southward to the
Smooth-rocks-descending.
“O, grandchildren, where be ye wending?” said a little, little quavering
voice. They looked,--the younger, then the elder. There on the tip of a
grass-stalk, waving her banner of down-stuff, stood their grandmother,
Spinner of Meshes.
“The Spider! Our Grandmother Spider!” cried one of the gods to the
other. “Ho! grandmother, was that you calling?” shouted they to her.
“Yea, children; where wend ye this noon-day?”
“A-warring we are going,” said they. “Look now!
“No beads for to broider your awning
Have fallen this many a morning.”
“Aha, wait ye! Whom ye seek, verily I know him well,” said the
Spider-woman.
“Like a tree fallen down from the mountain
He lies by the side of the cliff-trail
And feigns to sleep there, yet is wary.
I will sew up his eyes with my down-cords.
Then come ye and smite him, grandchildren.”
She ran ahead. There lay Häki Suto, his legs over the trail where men
journeyed. Great, like the trunks and branches of pine trees cast down
by a wind-storm, were his legs arching over the pathway, and when some
one chanced to come by, the giant would call out: “Good morning!” and
bid him “pass right along under.” “I am old and rheumatic,” he would
continue, oh, so politely! “Do not mind my rudeness, therefore; run
right along under; never fear, run right along under!” But when the
hunter tried to pass, _kúutsu!_ Häki Suto would snatch him up and cast
him over the cliff to be eaten by the young Forehead-cresters.
The Spider stepped never so lightly, and climbed up behind his great
ear, and then busily wove at her web, to and fro, up and down, and in
and out of his eyelashes she busily plied at her web.
“Pesk the birds and buzz creatures!” growled the giant, twitching this
way and that his eyebrows, which tickled; but he would not stir,--for he
heard the War-gods coming, and thought them fat hunters and needs must
feign sleepy.
And these? Ha! ha! They begin to sing, as was their fearless wont
sometimes. Häki Suto never looked, but yawned and drawled as they came
near, and nearer. “Never mind, my children, pass right along under, pass
right along under; I am lame and tired this morning,” said he.
Áhaiyúta ran to the left. Mátsailéma ran to the right. Häki Suto sprang
up to catch them, but his eyes were so blinded with cobwebs that he
missed them and feigned to fall, crying: “Ouch! my poor back! my poor
back! Pass right along under, my children, it was only a crick in my
back. Ouch! Oh, my poor back!” But they whacked him over the head and
stomach till he stiffened and died. Then shouting “_So ho!_” they shoved
him over the cliff.
The Navahos say that the grandmother tied him there by the hair--by his
top-knot--where you see the white streaks on the pillar, so _they_ say;
but it’s the birds that streak the pillar, and _this_ is the way. When
Häki Suto fell, his feet drave far into the sands, and the Storm-gods
rushed in to the aid of their children, the War-gods, and drifted his
blood-bedrenched carcass all over with sand, whence he dried and
hardened to stone. When the young ones saw him falling, they forthwith
flocked up to devour him, making loud clamor. But the Twain, seeing
this, made after them too and twisted the necks of all save only the
tallest (who was caught in the sands with his father) and flung them
aloft to the winds, whereby one became instantly the Owl, who twists her
head wholly around whensoever she pleases, and stares as though
frightened and strangled; and another the Falcon became, who perches
and nests to this day on the crest of his sand-covered father, the Giant
Cloud-drinker. And the Falcons cry ever and ever “’Tis father; O
father!” (“_Tí-tätchu ya-tätchu._”)
But, fearing that never again would the waters refreshen their cañons,
our ancients who dwelt in the cliffs fled away to the southward and
eastward--all save those who had perished aforetime; they are dead in
their homes in the cliff-towns, dried, like their corn-stalks that died
when the rain stopped long, long ago, when all things were new.
Thus shortens my story.
[Illustration: ZUÑI WOMEN CARRYING WATER
Photo by A. C. Vroman]
THE MAIDEN THE SUN MADE LOVE TO, AND HER BOYS
OR, THE ORIGIN OF ANGER
Let it be about a person who lived in the Home of the Eagles (K’iákime),
under the Mountain of Thunder, that I tell you today. So let it be. It
was in the ancient, long-forgotten times. It was in the very ancient
times beyond one’s guessing. There lived then, in this town, the
daughter of a great priest-chief, but she had never, never, never since
she was a little child, come forth from the doorway of the house in
which she dwelt. No one there in that town had ever seen her; even her
own townspeople had never seen her.
Now, day after day at noon-time, when the Sun stood in the mid-heavens,
he would look down from the sky through a little window in the roof of
her house. And he it was who instant was her lover, and who, descending
upon the luminously yellow trail his own rays created, would talk to
her. And he was her only companion, for she knew not her own
townspeople, neither had she seen them since she was a child. None save
only her parents ever saw her.
“Wonder what the cacique’s child looks like,” the people would say to
one another. “She never comes out; no one has seen her since she was a
little child.” And so at last they schemed to get a look at her. One
said: “I have it! Let us have a dance for her. Then it may be she will
deign to come forth.”
The young man who spoke was chief of the dances, and why should he not
suggest such a thing? So, his friends and followers agreeing, they began
to make plumes of macaw feathers--beautiful plumes they were--for the
Plume dance. They set a day, and on that day, in the morning, they
danced, with music and song, in the plaza before the house of the great
priest-chief where the girl lived. They looked along the top of the
house in vain; the girl was not there; only her old parents sat on the
roof.
“Oh! I’m so thirsty!” cried the chief of the dance, for he it was who
wanted to see the girl.
“Run right in and get a drink,” said the girl’s old ones. So the young
man climbed the ladder and went into the first room. There was no water
there; then he went into the second room, but there was no water there;
then into the third room, but still he found no water. He looked all
around, but saw nothing of the priest-chief’s daughter. All the same,
she was back in the fourth room, sitting there just as if no dance were
going on in the plaza, weaving away at her beautiful trays of colored
splints.
Well, the young man went back; they finished their dance, but no one saw
anything of the priest-chief’s daughter; and when the dancers all
returned to their ceremonial chamber they said to one another: “Alas!
although we danced for her, she came not out to see us!”
Now, in reality, the Sun, who was her lover, and came down each day on a
ray of his own light to visit her, loved her so much he would not that
she should come forth from her house and be seen of men. Therefore he
set an Eagle upon the house-top in a great cage to watch her. He was a
very wise old Eagle. He could understand every word that the people
said. And he it was that she fed and watered from day to day. Now, the
dancers in the ceremonial chamber asked: “What shall we do?”
“Why, let us dance again,” said the chief of the dances, “and if we do
not succeed, yet again.” They did as he said, but with no better success
than before; so at last the two Warrior Priests of the Bow grew angry,
and although they were the girl’s father’s own warriors, they ordered
the Warrior festival, or _Óinahe_ dance. “Surely,” said they, “she will
come forth, and if not, let her perish, for how can she refuse the
delight of the great _Óinahe_, where each young man dances and masks
himself according to his fancy?”