Gletcówas
Kéis Rattlesnake
Nébăks Sickness
Snoútiss Blowsnake
Wéwenkee Whipsnake
Kéis and his brother, Snoútiss, lived on the southwest side of Little
Shasta. The three Gletcówas brothers lived on the northwest side.
The Gletcówas brothers were great hunters; they made snares of grass
ropes knotted and tied together, and fastened them between trees. Each
morning they drove deer into the snares. As the brothers traveled, they
called out their own name, “Gletcówas,” and they called it as they went
home at night. When they had snared as many deer as they wanted, they
packed them up and carried them to the house; they never skinned or cut
up a deer in the woods. The Gletcówas brothers were so small that they
looked like children, but they were young men.
Kéis, the elder of the two brothers who lived on the southwest side of
the mountain, always sat at home making bows and arrows. Snoútiss, his
little brother, dug roots, and while he was digging he listened to the
Gletcówas brothers. He heard their song, and knew that they were great
hunters. One day he said to Kéis: “The Gletcówas brothers have plenty
of meat.”
“Let us go to their snares and get some,” said Kéis.
“They never cut up their deer in the woods,” said the younger brother;
“if they did, they couldn’t catch any more; they carry them home whole.
You might go to their house and ask for meat, but don’t go near their
snares; if you do you will get into trouble.”
Kéis went, but he didn’t do as his brother told him. He went straight
to the snares the Gletcówas brothers had set. In one of the snares was
a large fat deer. Kéis tried to untie the knot in the rope around its
neck; he couldn’t do it; so he pulled at it till he broke out all but
two of his teeth.
“We will go to the snares, and see if we have caught anything,” said
the eldest of the Gletcówas brothers.
“I will stay and dry meat,” said the youngest. There was a great deal
of meat hanging on trees near the house.
When the two brothers came to where their snares were, they saw a man.
“Who are you?” asked one of them.
Kéis didn’t answer, but as soon as they untied the deer he sprang upon
it and cried: “This is mine!”
“No, it is ours!” said the eldest brother, “but if you will come with
us, we will give you some of the meat. We can’t cut the deer up here;
it would spoil our snares.”
Kéis didn’t listen to them; he went off. His mouth was bleeding, and he
was mad. When he got home, he sat down and began to make poison—fever
and black vomit and terrible things.
“What is the matter?” asked Snoútiss. “What makes your mouth bleed? Why
are you working so hard over that bad stuff? It is wrong to make that.
It may get out of our house and spread everywhere; then the people to
come will have these terrible things and die.”
“Those brothers in the northwest took my deer from me,—a large, fat
one,” said Kéis, and he kept on making the medicine.
“You must have gone to their snares,” said the boy. “They couldn’t cut
the deer up there in the woods.”
Kéis didn’t answer, and Snoútiss thought: “I will go and find out what
has made Kéis so mad.” When he got to the house of the three brothers,
they said: “Come in, little boy. What is the trouble with your
brother?”
“All his teeth are out, but two, and with those he is making bad
medicine. He is mad; he says that you took a deer away from him.”
“We took our own deer. We told him to come and get some of the meat,
but he wouldn’t; he went away without saying a word.”
The brothers gave Snoútiss meat; he took it and started for home. When
he got to the house he looked in at the smoke hole and he was
frightened. His brother was hard at work; the whole house was dripping
with sores; there were aches and pains of all kinds, and terrible
sickness.
“I can’t come in,” cried the little boy. “You have made those things
and now they will be here always, and will make trouble. You got mad
for nothing. I can’t stay with you; I will go to my uncle.”
When Snoútiss came in sight of Wéwenkee’s house, a little boy saw him,
and called to his father: “A boy is coming!”
“That is Snoútiss,” said Wéwenkee. “He has never been here before; he
wouldn’t come now if he wasn’t in trouble.”
When Snoútiss got to the house, he stood outside, crying.
“Tell him to come in,” said Wéwenkee to his son. Snoútiss went in.
“What is the matter? Why do you cry?” asked his uncle.
“My brother is mad. He has made all kinds of terrible sores and
sickness. I feel badly, for those things can never be got rid of; they
will live always to trouble the people who are to come. It looks badly
and smells badly in our house. My brother got mad for nothing.”
“Those Gletcówas brothers are mean men,” said Wéwenkee, “but if Kéis
wanted meat he should have gone to their house. I am stronger than your
brother; I have a wildcat skin blanket, all painted. I will go home
with you. How far away is your house?”
“On the other side of a flat there are big rocks, our home is under
those rocks. I don’t want to go there. I can’t go in the house, it
smells so badly.”
“I will go alone,” said his uncle.
When Wéwenkee got to the house, he crawled in through a crack in the
wall. His nephew didn’t see him, didn’t know that he was there. There
was such a terrible smell in the house that Wéwenkee couldn’t stay; so
he got out quickly. The only way he could look in was by painting red
stripes across his forehead and around his wrists. When he got home, he
said to Snoútiss: “You told me the truth. Hereafter there will be all
kinds of sickness. Sickness will spread everywhere. Does Kéis think he
is more powerful than I am? I can do all that he can do. I know that
what he has made will live always. Will you go home now?” asked
Wéwenkee.
“I don’t want to go,” said Snoútiss.
Wéwenkee started off again. After he had gone, his wife said to
Snoútiss: “You should have gone with your uncle. Do you think that he
has only one blanket? His blankets are doubled around his body, one
over another, and one is worse than another. They are blankets of
sickness and sores. Wéwenkee is chief of those things; he can make more
bad medicine than your brother can. When he is mad, he can raise a
terrible whirlwind. That is the kind of man he is. You should have gone
with him.”
Snoútiss went out then and followed his uncle, but Wéwenkee didn’t see
him. As the old man traveled, sores came out all over him. He cried,
and his tears were drops of matter. When he went into his nephew’s
house, he said: “You have done wrong; now all this bad stuff will soak
into the earth and make great trouble.”
Wéwenkee made a big ball of soft bark, rolled it around and gathered on
it all the sores and sickness that were on the top and sides of the
house, and on the ground. “Don’t you wink again and let that stuff
fall,” said he to his nephew.
He rolled the bark ball over Kéis’ body, cleaned him of sores, and then
he squeezed the ball over his own head and said: “This is mine. How did
you dare to let this out? Sickness belongs to Nébăks. It is only loaned
to us; we had no right to let it out till he told us to. Now it has
gone from us; I have saved some, but a great deal has scattered and
gone through the world. You have frightened your brother so he won’t
come back to you”—Wéwenkee didn’t know that Snoútiss was on top of the
house listening to what he said.
“Will you change skins with me?” asked Wéwenkee.
“No,” said Kéis, “I want my own skin.”
“It is too bad I can’t get up all this sickness,” said Wéwenkee,—he was
still rolling the bark ball,— “it has soaked into the ground, and in
hot weather and in winter it will come out.”
Kéis didn’t say much, for he didn’t want Wéwenkee to see that his teeth
were gone.
“The Gletcówas brothers are bad men, but you should have asked them for
meat, not tried to steal it,” said Wéwenkee.
“They wanted to kill me.”
“How many teeth have you?” asked Wéwenkee.
“Two.”
“Let me have them for a little while.”
“No, I want them myself; people will always hate me, these teeth will
defend me. If I want to kill any one I can do it with my teeth. I can
throw medicine at them and kill them. I shall keep poison medicine in
the ends of my teeth; I will be as bad as others are.”
“I will always be good, unless somebody makes me mad,” said Wéwenkee.
“In later times people will like my skin and want to take it. Maybe
they will throw dirt at me so they can hide my face and eyes from them,
but they can do me no harm. I will not be a servant to any one; but
those who go to the swimming ponds on the mountains, and those who are
willing to travel at night, I will like. I will give them my skin, and
the earth will give me another. [7] I shall never appear to any one,
who is not a doctor.”
“I will do just as I have done,” said Kéis. “If I get mad, I will kill
people by throwing out sickness.”
“If you do, you will be hated, and you will always be in trouble,” said
Wéwenkee. And he begged hard for Kéis to put away sickness. “You are my
nephew,” said he; “you should do as I say. I am a chief, too. I am
sorry for the people who are to come, and you ought to think of them.
Let us put sickness back in our bodies, and never use it unless this
earth tells us to. It won’t be long that we shall be persons; soon we
shall live under rocks and in holes in the ground. When the people to
come take our places, they will hate you. I am sorry for your little
brother. I would go away now, but I don’t want to be changed till some
one comes to tell me what I shall be.”
So Wéwenkee talked to his nephew, and at last Kéis took off all his
sicknesses and tied them up in a bundle. He put the bundle in his
quiver, and said: “I will only take these out when people abuse me.”
Then he told his brother to come in.
“My little nephew,” said Wéwenkee, “those Gletcówas can turn to
anything; sometimes they are fish and sometimes they are bugs or ticks.
You might catch one of them and think that you were holding him in your
hand, but he would be gone. You can remember better than Kéis; that is
why I tell you about those brothers. Sometimes they are large animals,
sometimes they are a straw on a trail, or a stump of burnt wood, or
lice. Often, in the night, they are wind; or they are mole hills for
men to fall over. I can’t tell you all that they turn to. I know they
are going to kill your brother, for he has tried to kill them.” Then he
said to Kéis: “Stand up.” When his nephew stood up, Wéwenkee turned him
around, looked at him on every side, and said: “I don’t like any part
of your skin, and your mind is mean. What part of my skin do you like?”
Kéis said: “I like the spots on your breast and the gloss on your
body.”
“Lie down,” said Wéwenkee, “and cover yourself up and sleep all day;
then maybe your mind will be better and you won’t get mad so easily.”
He told him over and over not to open the bundle of sickness, then he
told Snoútiss to watch Kéis, and if he started to untie the bundle to
come and tell him. He said: “Nobody will be able to kill sickness; your
brother has spoiled the world. In later times we may have no mind, but
we may want to go near houses. People will hate Kéis, but they will
say: ‘His uncle was chief before we came,’ and they will know that I
won’t hurt them.”
Kéis slept till night, then he woke up and sent his brother for water.
“I wonder why he sent me for water when there was water in the house,”
thought Snoútiss, and he hurried back and looked in at the smoke hole.
Kéis was sitting by the fire, untying his bundle. When he heard
Snoútiss on the top of the house, he tied up the bundle and pulled his
blanket around him.
“What were you doing?” asked Snoútiss.
“I was covering myself up.”
“I know what you were doing,” said the boy; “you were letting out
sickness. Our uncle told you never to untie that bundle.”
Snoútiss ran off to his uncle’s house and told him what Kéis had done.
Wéwenkee was so mad at his nephew that he stretched himself out full
length; then he made a circle around the world and pressed everything
together, but Kéis went in among rocks and Wéwenkee couldn’t press hard
enough to break them.
“What are you doing?” asked Wéwenkee.
“What I want to,” said Kéis.
“If you want to be great of your own strength, I will leave you,” said
Wéwenkee, and he started for home.
Now Kéis began to sing like a doctor; the three Gletcówas brothers
heard his song, and wondered who was around among the rocks singing.
“I will find out,” said the eldest brother, and he went toward the
rocks.
The second brother followed him. When near they smelt smoke,—Kéis was
smoking Indian tobacco,—and they knew who was singing. “I wonder what
that man is doing,” said one of the brothers; “we must think how to
kill him.”
Now Wéwenkee sent Snoútiss to see what Kéis was doing; he came back,
and said: “My brother is among the rocks, singing.”
Wéwenkee rubbed himself around in the dirt, and said: “This is what I
knew would happen when he went by his own strength. All that I have
talked to your brother I will take off and give to the dirt. I will rub
off all that I promised to help him, and give it back to the ground. We
will no longer be living persons. You will remember me in later times,
for I have been a great chief. You will be near me always, for you will
be my brother. Hereafter you will be only a little snake and blow with
your mouth.” Right away Snoútiss became a common little snake. Then
Wéwenkee turned himself into a whipsnake.
The youngest of the Gletcówas brothers listened to Kéis’ song and
watched for him to come out from among the rocks. As he ran back and
forth he called: “Gletcówas! Gletcówas!”
“What is the matter?” asked his brothers.
“I have no father or mother; that is why I cry all the time.”
The brothers said to one another: “Kéis is the man who killed our
father and mother; we must kill him.”
As Gletcówas went toward the rocks, he hit against a mole hill and
fell; then he talked to the earth, and said: “You shouldn’t treat me in
this way. I have no father or mother; you should carry me safely.”
As Gletcówas fell, Kéis came out from among the rocks. He had grown so
tall that he almost touched the sky. His song was loud and nice.
The brothers hid behind rocks and tied cross sticks to their arrows.
“Go up to the sky,” called they to their youngest brother, for Kéis was
just going to throw his medicine at him.
The brothers shot their arrows and hit Kéis. He fell, but he kept
singing. The eldest brother pulled up a tree stump and pounded him on
the head till he died. They cut Kéis into small pieces, threw the
pieces over the rocks, and said: “You will no longer be great; even old
women will kill you.” The pieces became rattlesnakes.
Then the three brothers went north. Kéis had made them lose their
minds. They crossed the Shasta River and became birds.