Kumush The Creator, according to Indian myths
Skoks Spirit
Kumush (our Father) left Tula Lake and wandered over the earth. He went
to the edge of the world and was gone a great many years; then he came
back to Nihlaksi, where his sweat-house had been; where Látkakáwas
brought the disk; where the body of the beautiful blue man was burned,
and where Isis was saved.
Kumush brought his daughter with him from the edge of the world. Where
he got her, no one knows. When he came back, Isis and all the people he
had made were dead; he and his daughter were alone. The first thing he
did was to give the young girl ten dresses, which he made by his word.
The finest dress of all was the burial dress; it was made of buckskin,
and so covered with bright shells that not a point of the buckskin
could be seen.
The first of the ten dresses was for a young girl; the second was the
maturity dress, to be worn while dancing the maturity dance; the third
was the dress to be put on after coming from the sweat-house, the day
the maturity dance ended; the fourth was to be worn on the fifth day
after the dance; the fifth dress was the common, everyday dress; the
sixth was to wear when getting wood; the seventh when digging roots;
the eighth was to be used when on a journey; the ninth was to wear at a
ball game; the tenth was the burial dress.
When they came to Nihlaksi Kumush’s daughter was within a few days of
maturity. In the old time, when he was making rules for his people,
Kumush had said that at maturity a girl should dance five days and five
nights, and while she was dancing an old woman, a good singer, should
sing for her. When the five days and nights were over she should bathe
in the sweat-house, and then carry wood for five days. If the girl grew
sleepy while she was dancing, stopped for a moment, nodded and dreamed,
or if she fell asleep while in the sweat-house and dreamed of some
one’s death, she would die herself.
Kumush was the only one to help his daughter; he sang while she danced.
When the dance was over and the girl was in the sweat-house, she fell
asleep and dreamed of some one’s death. She came out of the sweat-house
with her face and hands and body painted with wáginte. [6] As she stood
by the fire to dry the paint, she said to her father: “While I was in
the sweat-house I fell asleep and I dreamed that as soon as I came out
some one would die.”
“That means your own death,” said Kumush. “You dreamed of yourself.”
Kumush was frightened; he felt lonesome. When his daughter asked for
her burial dress he gave her the dress to be worn after coming from the
sweat-house, but she wouldn’t take it. Then he gave her the dress to be
worn five days later, and she refused it. One after another he offered
her eight dresses—he could not give her the one she had worn when she
was a little girl, for it was too small. He held the tenth dress tight
under his arm; he did not want to give it to her, for as soon as she
put it on the spirit would leave her body.
“Why don’t you give me my dress?” asked she. “You made it before you
made the other dresses, and told me what it was for; why don’t you give
it to me now? You made everything in the world as you wanted it to be.”
He gave her the dress, but he clung to it and cried. When she began to
put it on he tried to pull it away. She said: “Father, you must not
cry. What has happened to me is your will; you made it to be this way.
My spirit will leave the body and go west.”
At last Kumush let go of the dress, though he knew her spirit would
depart as soon as she had it on. He was crying as he said: “I will go
with you; I will leave my body here, and go.”
“No,” said the daughter, “my spirit will go west without touching the
ground as it goes. How could you go with me?”
“I know what to do,” said Kumush. “I know all things above, below, and
in the world of ghosts; whatever is, I know.”
She put on the dress, Kumush took her hand, and they started, leaving
their bodies behind. Kumush was not dead but his spirit left the body.
As soon as the daughter died, she knew all about the spirit world. When
they started she said to her father: “Keep your eyes closed; if you
open them you will not be able to follow me, you will have to go back
and leave me alone.”
The road they were traveling led west to where the sun sets. Along that
road were three nice things to eat: goose eggs, wild cherries and
crawfish. If a spirit ate of the wild cherries it would be sent back to
this world, a spirit without a body, to wander about homeless, eating
wild cherries and other kinds of wild fruit. If it ate of the goose
eggs, it would wander around the world, digging goose eggs out of the
ground, like roots. It would have to carry the eggs in a basket without
a bottom, and would always be trying to mend the basket with plaited
grass. If it ate of the crawfish it would have to dig crawfish in the
same way.
A Skoks offered Kumush’s daughter these three harmful things, but she
did not look at them; she went straight on toward the west, very fast.
After a time Kumush asked: “How far have we gone now?”
“We are almost there,” said the girl. “Far away I see beautiful roses.
Spirits that have been good in life take one of those roses with the
leaves, those that have been bad do not see the roses.”
Again Kumush asked: “How far are we now?”
“We are passing the place of roses.”
Kumush thought: “She should take one of those roses.”
The girl always knew her father’s thoughts. As soon as that thought
came into his mind, she put back her hand and, without turning, pulled
a rose and two leaves. Kumush did not take one. He could not even see
them, for he was not dead.
After a time they came to a road so steep that they could slide down
it. At the beginning of the descent there was a willow rope. The girl
pulled the rope and that minute music and voices were heard. Kumush and
his daughter slipped down and came out on a beautiful plain with high
walls all around it. It was a great house, and the plain was its floor.
That house is the whole underground world, but only spirits know the
way to it.
Kumush’s daughter was greeted by spirits that were glad to see her, but
to Kumush they said “Sonk!” (raw, not ripe), and they felt sorry for
him that he was not dead.
Kumush and his daughter went around together, and Kumush asked: “How
far is it to any side?”
“It is very far, twice as far as I can see. There is one road down,—the
road we came,—and another up. No one can come in by the way leading up,
and no one can go up by the way leading down.”
The place was beautiful and full of spirits; there were so many that if
every star of the sky, and all the hairs on the head of every man and
all the hairs on all the animals were counted they would not equal in
number the spirits in that great house.
When Kumush and his daughter first got there they couldn’t see the
spirits though they could hear voices, but after sunset, when darkness
was in the world above, it was light in that house below.
“Keep your eyes closed,” said Kumush’s daughter. “If you open them, you
will have to leave me and go back.”
At sunset Kumush made himself small, smaller than any thing living in
the world. His daughter put him in a crack, high up in a corner of the
broad house, and made a mist before his eyes.
When it was dark, Wus-Kumush, the keeper of the house, said: “I want a
fire!” Right away a big, round, bright fire sprang up in the center,
and there was light everywhere in the house. Then spirits came from all
sides, and there were so many that no one could have counted them. They
made a great circle around Kumush’s daughter, who stood by the fire,
and then they danced a dance not of this world, and sang a song not of
this world. Kumush watched them from the corner of the house. They
danced each night, for five nights. All the spirits sang, but only
those in the circle danced. As daylight came they disappeared. They
went away to their own places, lay down and became dry, disjointed
bones.
Wus-Kumush gave Kumush’s daughter goose eggs and crawfish. She ate them
and became bones. All newcomers became bones, but those who had been
tried for five years, and hadn’t eaten anything the Skoks gave them,
lived in shining settlements outside, in circles around the big house.
Kumush’s daughter became bones, but her spirit went to her father in
the corner.
On the sixth night she moved him to the eastern side of the house. That
night he grew tired of staying with the spirits; he wanted to leave the
underground world, but he wanted to take some of the spirits with him
to people the upper world. “Afterward,” said he, “I am going to the
place where the sun rises. I shall travel on the sun’s road till I come
to where he stops at midday. There I will build a house.”
“Some of the spirits are angry with you,” said Wus-Kumush. “Because you
are not dead they want to kill you; you must be careful.”
“They may try as hard as they like,” said Kumush; “they can’t kill me.
They haven’t the power. They are my children; they are all from me. If
they should kill me it would only be for a little while. I should come
to life again.”
The spirits, though they were bones then, heard this, and said: “We
will crush the old man’s heart out, with our elbows.”
Kumush left Wus-Kumush and went back to the eastern side of the house.
In his corner was a pile of bones. Every bone in the pile rose up and
tried to kill him, but they couldn’t hit him, for he dodged them. Each
day his daughter moved him, but the bones knew where he was, because
they could see him. Every night the spirits in the form of living
people danced and sang; at daylight they lay down and became
disconnected bones.
“I am going away from this place,” said Kumush, “I am tired of being
here.” At daybreak he took his daughter’s bones, and went around
selecting bones according to their quality, thinking which would do for
one tribe and which for another. He filled a basket with them, taking
only shin-bones and wrist-bones. He put the basket on his back and
started to go up the eastern road, the road out. The path was steep and
slippery, and his load was heavy. He slipped and stumbled but kept
climbing. When he was half-way up, the bones began to elbow him in the
back and neck, struggling to kill him. When near the top the strap
slipped from his forehead and the basket fell. The bones became
spirits, and, whooping and shouting, fell down into the big house and
became bones again.
“I’ll not give up,” said Kumush; “I’ll try again.” He went back, filled
the basket with bones and started a second time. When he was half-way
up he said: “You’ll see that I will get to the upper world with you
bones!” That minute he slipped, his cane broke and he fell. Again the
bones became spirits and went whooping and shouting back to the big
house.
Kumush went down a second time, and filled the basket. He was angry,
and he chucked the bones in hard. “You want to stay here,” said he,
“but when you know my place up there, where the sun is, you’ll want to
stay there always and never come back to this place. I feel lonesome
when I see no people up there; that is why I want to take you there. If
I can’t get you up now, you will never come where I am.”
When he put the basket on his back the third time, he had no cane, so
he thought: “I wish I had a good, strong cane.” Right away he had it.
Then he said: “I wish I could get up with this basketful of bones.”
When half-way up the bones again tried to kill him. He struggled and
tugged hard. At last he got near the edge of the slope, and with one
big lift he threw the basket up on to level ground. “Maklaksûm káko!”
(Indian bones) said he.
He opened the basket and threw the bones in different directions. As he
threw them, he named the tribe and kind of Indians they would be. When
he named the Shastas he said: “You will be good fighters.” To the Pitt
River and the Warm Spring Indians he said: “You will be brave warriors,
too.” But to the Klamath Indians he said: “You will be like women, easy
to frighten.” The bones for the Modoc Indians he threw last, and he
said to them: “You will eat what I eat, you will keep my place when I
am gone, you will be bravest of all. Though you may be few, even if
many and many people come against you, you will kill them.” And he said
to each handful of bones as he threw it: “You must find power to save
yourselves, find men to go and ask the mountains for help. Those who go
to the mountains must ask to be made wise, or brave, or a doctor. They
must swim in the gauwams and dream. When you are sure that a doctor has
tried to kill some one, or that he won’t put his medicine in the path
of a spirit and turn it back, you will kill him. If an innocent doctor
is killed, you must kill the man who killed him, or he must pay for the
dead man.”
Then Kumush named the different kinds of food those people should
eat,—catfish, salmon, deer and rabbit. He named more than two hundred
different things, and as he named them they appeared in the rivers and
the forests and the flats. He thought, and they were there. He said:
“Women shall dig roots, get wood and water, and cook. Men shall hunt
and fish and fight. It shall be this way in later times. This is all I
will tell you.”
When he had finished everything Kumush took his daughter, and went to
the edge of the world, to the place where the sun rises. He traveled on
the sun’s road till he came to the middle of the sky; there he stopped
and built his house, and there he lives now.